Another cloudless yet finger biting cold, spring day in Chicago. Gust of cool air and bisque daffodil petals blooming amongst the suburban streets. Avenues crawling with people, but no sound, no musicians, no speaking, nothing. On one side of the street lay clean-cut, vibrant buildings of offices and higher class job facilities. On the other side men, women and children lay on rugged blankets cradling each other in their goosebump riddled arms. But in the pit of what use to be the Football stadium kneeled an innocent girl, trying to protect the rights of the people she cared about. An audience of cruel, inhuman people who had lost all innocence watched their leader, a friend, a father, about to commit a horrible crime. Hear racing, lungs pumping, pistol to her head, Olivia Scott and her glassy blue eyes and fearless commitment to the club kneel, refusing to give in. She could hear the sound of the bullet, the smell of the ammunition waiting to connect with her freckle cluttered forehead. She’ll let them take her life before she ever lets them manipulate her again. Her blonde curls fly away from her face in the strong gusts and the dust flutters around her bare knees, making her look more courageous and strong than ever. The sound of birds is dead now, they fled after the governments bombing, as did most of the individuals with no own opinions or values to human life, no matter the race.

1 week before…

OLIVIA: 2043, a world abounding of white privilege and racial slurs. Olivia enters her gleaming, clean Mercedes as she watches the girls and boys across the road step up the dirty bus steps of the public transport that is set aside for people of colour. A “gift” if you will from the government, lucky to get that much out of those big headed, wealthy, white men, including her father, John Scott. In a time where John preached against befriending an individual of another race due to their criminal records and impure looks, it would be terrifying for the public eye to discover his own, pure daughter’s best friend was an African American girl, Jean.  Of course, she would have to suffer the death sentence for what she does next. Following the mustard yellow bus, Olivia turns off to her suburb within Chicago, a clean, litter-free, mansion paradise and watches in her rearview mirror as Jean’s bus moves towards the crumbling houses and destructed community she was forced to live in. Jean lived a lifestyle similar to Olivia’s before her Mother was stripped of her medical job and father was thrown in prison for a crime he committed in his younger years. He had already done the time, the pain and the horror of prison for it, but of course, he was still a harm to the higher class society. Olivia approaches the towering gates to her house, staunch men with guns and mutts, protecting the most important man in the country from any harm. Not that any man of colour would ever dear try to commit a crime outside of their district. Before the gates lay an immaculate, remarkable building that would outdo the White House. It seemed approaching and roped you in from the outside but on the inside, it had lost all hope and was a transparent prison of pain and heartbreak for Olivia. A place where all her fondest childhood memories lay with her Mother, Lara and loving home situation before Lara’s life was cruelly snatched for her association with a man that wasn’t John. A dark-skinned man in fact, this is how it all began. She was an alluring woman who came with many complicated secrets and an astonishing daughter. Lara was a symbol of beauty in a nation where powerful, white privileged men were manipulating the easy manipulated to think like them. She was who inspired Olivia to do what she would do next, starting the club. The club of the men and women who couldn’t be manipulated,  not anymore. They had their own values and the strengths to fix where it all went wrong, John’s place in parliament. The guardian they called him, nothing but kind words for the man who separated the innocent from the sinful, the victims from the criminals, the white from the black.

JEAN: “Mom? are you here? MOM!” Jean’s husky voice screeches over the strong gust of wind blowing through the shattered windows for her heroin addict Mother, Raven. Her deep, bronzed eyes scanning the space as she moves swiftly from room to room searching for her Mom. Every morning when Jean leaves her decaying humble abode she’s unsure if her Mother will be conscious, let alone alive when she gets home. A real mess her life had become. Father in prison for another 20 years yet and her Mother, honourable doctor turn heroin addict, the only constant she had was Olivia. Her sister, that’s how it felt when your Mom’s raised you like sisters, makes sense only being 3 weeks and 4 days apart. Eyes quivering and shaken awake Raven is startled to see Jean, shoot her a look like she was a stranger welcoming herself into her home. One of Jean’s deepest fears slowly becoming the reality she lives in. Her Mother becoming just another broken women in her life, not the Mom she had once been influenced by the most manipulating man in Chicago. Olivia’s father or not, Jean couldn’t help but have a hate for him. A hate that goes well beyond simply dividing the black from the white or from throwing her family into a home that was disintegrating at her fingers, a hate that was burning up inside herself and she had to do something. That something was what Jean and Olivia would pursue.

Join the conversation! 3 Comments

  1. There are some strengths to this piece – particularly in the way you’re developing vivid imagery around your story. I also like the way you’ve managed the timeframe of your piece, controlling the delivery of information to keep your reader interested.

    Sometimes your tenses are in conflict. As a general rule, when you start a sentence in a tense, all the verbs must continue in that tense. If you’re not able to see where these lapses are happening, I encourage you to read your work aloud and pay attention to whether you’re adjusting the tense of the verbs.

    At times, you also begin telling us what is happening rather than showing us through the action. Try to think a little more like a film-maker, where everything we learn has to be seen or heard (or smelled, tasted etc) actually in the scene.

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  2. The ideas in this piece are really strong – as is some of the description. The focus at this last step needs to be upon the written accuracy of it. Sentence demarcation needs to be clear and accurate – which might mean re-writing some of your more complex sentences so they’re two simpler ones.

    Work hard on the editing and trust that your authorial voice will come through.

    Good on you for making such an effort and putting so much into your writing.

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  3. Achievement Achievement with Merit Achievement with Excellence
    Produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas. Produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas and is convincing. Produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas and commands attention.

    Achieved

    Reply

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