(Hey y’all! This piece is far from done; however, I am looking for feedback as this is a new style of writing I’ve never tried before; I am really enjoying it though! I’ll be updating this piece periodically and will likely make another announcement or repost when it’s finished but, in the meantime, feel free to read what I’ve got so far and let me know you’re thoughts! I plan on posting more frequently now as I’m taking some of the pressure of perfection off of myself. I am just going to write and post what I like because I like it and will no longer be chasing that impossibly high standard that prevented me from posting for so long. Love Yall <3)
The peaceful bliss of a cool summer night is a wonderful thing. The slight breeze blowing in through the windows could lull even the lightest of sleepers into a deep sleep. Like a brick. A hairy, sweaty, unaware brick that was somehow sleeping through an alarm loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood.
“Dad! Dad! Dad!” A pair of tiny arms rocked the middle-aged brick with all their might, but little could stand in the way of the brick and their dreamy escape from reality. “Claire. Time to put that pube strength to good use.”
“It’s called puberty but okay,” A well placed slap was more than enough to jolt the brick out of his coma.
“OW! Dammit kids wha-“
“The store is being robbed!” Wesley, the middle child yelled in his father’s face. “I’m too pretty to be held at gunpoint!”
Steve, the father, shot out of bed, unintentionally pushing his three children to the floor with a thud.
Ash, the youngest daughter, shot to her feet and grabbed a pair of throwing stars she had set on the dresser only moments ago. She thrusted them in her father’s direction. “Here Dad, take one of these. I would have carved them all to bits by now, but I need you to be my meat shield. You’re lucky I’m giving you a weapon at all.” She spoke with sincerity and confidence, the kind you could only have at nine years old.
“What? Oh my god Ash no. Where did you even get these?” Steve confiscated the throwing stars from her and pricked his finger as he struggled to get them out of her unyielding, kung-fu grip. “Ow! These are actually sharp! Now I’m really concerned. But also, not surprised somehow.”
“Ugh fine, I’ll just get the grenade.” She said as she turned to exit the room.
Steve ran over and shut the bedroom door, locking it and pulling Ash and the other children back to the bed. “Ash no. And you know that grenade is a model, right?”
“The grenade already knows that it’s gorgeous Father, but there’s no runway here!” Wesley chimed in.
As this was going on, Claire, the oldest child, sat motionless on the bed making a long, monotone and frankly quite grading groaning noise. It was kind of impressive how long she was able to groan without stopping to take a breath. When she did stop to breathe, she began panting, sort of. It was more like slow forced exhales of breath that sounded like someone laughing sarcastically. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” She went on and on.
After corralling the other two, Steve pulled Claire into the bed and tried to calm her down. “It’s okay honey. The door is locked and I’m sure they don’t want to get into the apartment anyway. I think.”
“You think?!” This started her up again.
“Oh crap. Here Claire look,” Steve reached over and grabbed his iPad from off the dresser. Well, it was sort of like an iPad, except it was just a really crappy cheap alternative that only worked about half the time. Fortunately, it chose to be the one good string of luck granted to the family that night. It worked well enough to allow Steve to pull up security footage of the store located just below them.
The store was a little card/gaming shop that carried all sorts of products, one of which, was a string of highly expensive Burobu cards. Now, the store was filled with three dirty crooks breaking every piece of glass in sight, grabbing everything that wasn’t nailed down.
Steve felt a tsunami of emotions begin the build in his chest. Anger, sadness, fear. But those emotions were quickly quelled as his three children huddled around him. They scrambled over each other (and Steve) to try and get a better look at the tiny tablet screen.
“They look scrawny. Uncoordinated. Unprepared for a surprise attack. I could take ’em. You guys could help too I guess…” Ash tried to talk big game to hide her fear.
“Ahhhh. The shop wasn’t pretty enough for TV before, now we’re gonna be all over the news! First impressions matter people! This is a disaster!”
Claire managed to calm herself enough to say, “Oh god what about all of Mom’s stuff?!”
The rest of the world went silent as those words played over and over again in Steve’s head.
What about Mom’s stuff?
The poor family stood outside their once sort of charming game store. The robbers used a rented truck and a massive tow hook to rip the front door off its hinges. This also somehow managed to knock one of the letters off of the sign, changing the name of the store from “Dice Roll” to “Dic Roll”, which could mean a number of things.
“Shit,” Steve mumbled while staring up at the sign, logically out of anything else to say.
“Shit,” Wes repeated.
“Wes.”
“This is a situation that calls for swearing father!”
“Fine. You each get one.”
They used way more than one.
The family began to slowly clammer their way through the store, walking over mountains of broken glass and the scattered remains of the store’s least valuable merchandise.
The police were also there. Two officers paced around the store, writing who knows what in their notepads. They grunted quietly as Steve stared at them, breathing just a little bit too hard. One of the officers noticed.
“Sorry about our dad, he’s been too out of shape to breathe properly for a few years now. He doesn’t have much time left.”
“Ash,”
The officer ignored the little girl and pulled Steve aside. “Looks like a pretty standard smash and grab. We’ll do our report, a standard search, and let you know if we find anything.”
“If?” Steve said in high-pitched, overly concerned tone.
“These kinds of robberies have been going on all over the country, and frankly, it’s hard to track down these crooks. Plus, our stations don’t like allocating a lot of resources to track down expensive cardboard. Just run a claim through your insurance and you’ll probably get more money than all this crap was worth,”
“Uhh, okay well they also took a few family heirlooms. Like they took a painting my wife made and a few other things important to us.”
“Just have your wife make you a new painting. Isn’t that what artists do? Paint.”
“She’s dead.”
“Did you try getting a new wife?”
As the officer and Steve had their little back and forth, the kids took their own personal inventory of their losses. Wes mourned over all of the game miniatures that were stolen and Ash gathered broken glass and the remaining Burobu cards in two separate containers.
“What’s that for?” Wes asked, pointing at the Tupperware half filled with broken glass.
“I figure if those guys come back, we can set a trap over the door. Like we pull a secret rope behind the counter that dumps it all on their heads, or… OH! We could bake it into muffins and give them out as ‘free samples.’ You love food Wes, you know anything about baking?”
“I just eat it. I don’t need to know how it works. Frankly I’d like to keep it that way, I don’t want food to lose all its mysterious magic.”
Meanwhile, Claire stood in front of the broken checkout counter, staring up at a rectangular outline on the wall above the register. That was where their mother’s painting was. It was a magnificent piece and quite a conversation starter for customers. The painting was of Steve and Her as mythical warriors, holding up giant magic staffs and swords. Behind them, was a sort-of medieval baby carriage attached to Steve via a rope tied around his belt. The carriage carried the three kids dressed in various fantasy armors. Steve had asked why she painted them as babies and not as adults or some kind of magical creatures. That was when his wife turned to him and excitedly explained that she wanted to create a new painting each year, representing the kids as they got older.
“We have to get Mom’s painting back,” Claire said loud enough for the other kids to hear. They gathered around her at the counter and looked longingly at the spot where the painting once hung.
“It’s our own version of Taken! And I make a great Liam Neeson,” Wes exclaimed!
“First of all, you’d make a great chubby, depressed, lost-his-groove version of Liam Neeson. Second, Claire makes a great point. Speaking of points…” Ash glanced down at her collection of glass.
The kids silenced their scheming when the two officers passed them on their way out the non-existent door. They all gave different yet equally unsettling faces at the officers, prompting them to hurry up their exit.
Steve walked over to little chaotic cluster, “Kids I know you’re upset about the stuff we lost but I don’t want you doing anything stupid or dangerous. Like you usually do,”
“Well w-” Claire began as Ash aggressively slapped a hand over her mouth.
“We would never father, we’re good children who listen to everything their pa-pa says,” Ash made her most innocent nine year old face.
“Uh huh. Okay well go to school. I guess I’ll clean up on my own and try to figure out how to pay for all this. Maybe prayer, that’s like a thing that people do. Have we tried that before?”
“I say a prayer each time I go number two,” Wes said merrily.
“Well, be sure to ask him for some money next time. Now go to school.”
And with that, the kids were off, charting an expedition to the land of education where they would meticulously plot their revenge.
Steve stood alone in the store now. He just stood there for a while, taking in the destruction. Finally, his eyes landed on the spot where the painting was. He let out a long, defeated sigh as he stared at that spot for the next ten minutes.
“Ahhh I can’t believe it! I’m officially a Tinker!” Steve’s beautiful wife exclaimed, holding up some legal documents that made their marriage official.
“Melissa Tinker? Are you sure you wanna take my last name?” Steve pondered, unsure if it would have been any better for him to take her last name and become Steve Shoemaker.
Melissa turned to her husband and squished his cheeks in her hands. “You need to stop second guessing everything Mr. Look around! Things are good and they’re only going to get better!” She gestured to the empty store lot they had just purchased with the money they were going to spend on their wedding.
“But-“
“No butts, no nuts, no coconuts.” Melissa placed a finger over Steve’s mouth. “This place is our dream. It gives me the freedom to be creative all day every day and it gives you the chance to share something you love with others! People are going to be flocking to this place because of you, people are going to fall in love with gaming and all your nerdy stuff because of YOU!” She charged Steve and jumped into his arms. His strength wasn’t there of course, and they both collapsed to the ground the second she made contact. They both lay on the floor for a moment before giggling uncontrollably.
“You’ve got quite the way with words darling. Maybe things will be okay,” Steve finally admitted.
“You’re damn right. Just like me. All the time. Now c’mon, we gotta get the kids to bed.” She stood up and walked over to the two-person baby carriage that held Ash and Wes. Claire stood next to it, giving her siblings the stink eye.
“It’s my turn to ride.” Claire demanded in her signature monotone voice, even at five years old.
“You’re too big sweetheart, I’m sorry.” Melissa began, crouching down to meet Claire at eye level, “But you can ride with me. I’ll give you a piggy upstairs alllllllll the way to your bed.” The two youngest kids giggled as Claire began crawling onto her mother’s back.
Steve stood back and watched the happy display of his family. Through all the stress, all the unpaid bills, and all the horrors of life so graciously told to us via the news, moments like this made it all worth it. Steve smiled and walked over to join his family.
“Woahhhh,” Gasps made their way around the lunch table the kids usually sat at as they filled their friends in on what happened.
“What are you guys gonna do?” Their friend, Taller-Than-Average Timmy asked them. He didn’t love his assigned school title, but it was accurate. He was taller than the other two Tim’s in the school, plus he preferred that nickname to the alternative, Diabetes Timmy. It just didn’t have as good of a ring to it.
“Well Tim my good man, our plan involves one word. Murder. Then we just take what’s ours and go about our lives as heroes.” Ash answered with a concerning lack of sarcasm in her tone.
“I don’t think Mom would want us to do anything that would put us in danger. And my life skills afterschool club says that there’s always silver linings. Like now we have enough room in the store for some of those sexy anime figurines. It’s about time we upped our sex appeal a little.” Claire responded, trying to keep a level head.
“That’s what Dad’s for!” Wes chimed in.
“If you’re planning on going after these guys, you need something to go off of,” Their nerdy friend Carl chipped in, further fueling Ash, “you guys said your dad had some kind of security footage, what did you see?”
“Didily squat is what we saw! We saw a tiny bit over his shoulder, but our dad said he didn’t want to ‘traumatize us’ or something stupid like that.” Ash said.
“We could log into our home security cameras on someone else’s phone. Dad showed me how since he won’t buy me my own phone.” Claire said, pausing for a moment as she felt torn between saving her mother’s legacy and listening to her father, “or we could, y’know, not do that.”
“Claire you genius!” Ash yelled, which caused Claire to begin her signature groan.
“Ehhhhhhhhhuhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
“Who here has a phone?” Wes asked, his question was followed by complete silence from their group.
Ash began making an evil face at her nervous sister. “Claire,” she began clenching her tiny fist, “eighth graders are much more likely to have a phone than any of us. You know has one, don’t you?”
“Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” She was locked in a groan cycle.
Ash jumped up on the table and got right in Claire’s face, “it’s okay baby I’m not upset with you. I just need you to tell me where to get a phone. That’s not too hard now is it?” Ash questioned her sister in her best good cop voice. When her questions were only met with more groans she immediately flipped the switch and grabbed her sister by the collar of her shirt, now in full interrogation mode, “who has it?! Tell me dammit!”
Claire’s groans only got worse as Ash began shaking her. Wes poked his smaller sister in the shoulder and said, “sidebar?”
Ash groaned and let go of her sister’s collar, “I’m not done with you yet.”
Wes led Ash to the other side of the cafeteria, out of earshot of the others. He made sure to bring a few breadsticks with so he wouldn’t have to waste his precious eating time.
“This better be good Wes, I was just starting to get somewhere.”
“C’mon Ash, you know how suggestable Claire is. We just need to assign her a fake role or something and she’ll be puddy in your hands. And you won’t have to beat her up, probably.” Wes spoke through mouthfuls of food, “the only way we’re getting Mom’s stuff back is if all three of us are on the same page.”
“Fine. What do you suggest we say to get her on board?”
“I was kind of hoping you would know,”
“Ugh Wes! Chew with your mouth closed for the love of…” Ash mumbled as she walked back to the table with Wes in tow.
Claire was still groaning when they got back and Ash walked over to her much calmer this time. “Hey Claire, do you remember how Mom used to dress you up in all those different costumes and you would act out the characters? Of course, you do you’re the only one old enough to remember her. Well, you really killed those roles, Dad told me all about it. Complete character embodiment, really highbrow acting stuff.”
Claire nodded, “yeah I guess I remember.”
“Wellll I have a new role for you to play,” Ash reached into Claire’s backpack and pulled out her hall pass badge. She popped the cap off of a blue marker and wrote “Police” on it.
“That’s school property you probably shouldn’t write on-“
“You’re gonna be the bad cop. And I’m going to be the good cop who comes up with all the questions. You use your pube strength to rough up anyone who gets in our way,” Ash said as she pinned the badge to Claire’s shirt.
Claire immediately began taking on the role as she envisioned herself becoming a no-nonsense cop who does anything in the name of justice. In her mind, she pinned a running criminal to the ground, cuffing him and saying, “got you! You’re going away for a long long time.” Then the crook turned his head and yelled, “you’ll never catch me!” Claire looked down at him and said, “but I already got you.” The vision faded and a new look of determination fell over her face. “Criminals better watch out, there’s a new cop in town. And her name is Claire.” Claire said aloud.
“Yeah yeah great now who has a phone we can use?” Ash tried asking again.
“Michelle B. does,” Claire said. Michelle was easily the scariest girl in school and there was no doubt in any of their minds that if she had a phone, it was likely stolen. She once got expelled for dropping the F-Bomb on the principle after he confiscated her cigarettes. “But I don’t know she’s pretty scar-“
“Officer Claire laughs in the face of danger!” Wes chipped in, helping to sell her role.
“Mmm yeah okay,” that was all it took to get her to stand up and begin walking towards Michelle, who was sitting alone in a corner of the cafeteria. “Time for Claire to get in there,” she said to herself.
“Wes, I need you to go with her and keep Michelle distracted. If she won’t let us borrow her phone, I’m going to snatch it.” Ash said, smiling and rubbing her tiny hands together.
“I’d prefer to keep all my limbs intact but okay. Doing it for Mom!” Wes filled himself with determination (and with the melted chocolate he had been marinating in his front pocket) and followed Claire.
“Good luck Ash. Do you want some insulin to fuel your mission?” Tim asked, painfully genuine.
“No thanks Timmy boy I’ll be fine, these fingers were made for stealing. And the other two will probably be okay. I’ve seen Claire play off a broken arm because she fell in front of a boy she liked. That girl doesn’t feel pain I swear.” Ash assured Tim as she turned to join her siblings.
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