Example Of The People That Used To Be People Creative Writing

Has anyone ever noticed a lot of people around that don’t really register on the radar? They aren’t invisible, not exactly. But on the other hand they are more like ghosts than the real people in the city. When real people are rushing around to work sometimes there are flickers in and out of the crowds on the sidewalk. Or grayish shadows moving along the edges of the building even on a sunny day. Since there is no such thing as ghosts they must be people. Right? Probably people who are like that can do a lot of things real people can’t do. But it’s hard to tell whether they are doing good things or bad things or even where they come from.
That is not really the beginning of my story. My story is about Jimmy who was all shiny and bright like a newly minted penny, anyway that is how my grandfather explained the beginning. Jimmy’s life started a long time ago, maybe even before my grandpa was born but sometimes my Grandpa wondered out loud “If someone were to tell Jimmy he was supposed to be dead by now Jimmy would probably just laugh and fade away.” Jimmy could do cool stuff like that ‘just fade away.’ That’s a strange thing for people to do because he would be there talking to a person but then his edges would start turning all fuzzy. His clothes started looking bleached almost white and so would his face and the very next thing he just was not standing there anymore. Some people would keep on talking for five or ten minutes before they even noticed Jimmy wasn’t standing there anymore. That is a perfect trick for a robber.
Jimmy had a lot of fun growing up. He was a good kid with a lot of friends and no worries in the world. Grandpa told me the whole story. Then when Jimmy started growing up he started acting a little bit different. Mostly he was acting like he had another life and that his life in the neighborhood and at school were sort of annoying but not very important. Jimmy would slip in and out of school mostly just in time for gym and basketball games, he was always a great athlete. Grandpa said Jimmy was a really good athlete but he still got kicked off the football team. That didn’t make much sense but Grandpa explained the whole thing in one simple sentence. Jimmy was so strong and so angry all the time that when he played football he would steam right over and even right through the other boys.
Whoever was in the way was in big trouble because Jimmy didn’t take time to notice whether the guys were on his side or the other side. Grandpa said he knows for sure that there were a lot of broken arms and legs because of Jimmy. Grandpa said he heard a lot or rumors too about worse things happening; really bad things that were a lot worse at those football games. Whatever happened was so bad, well, the rumors anyway, my grandpa would not even tell me the rumors. That’s awful creepy.
Well eventually some very bad things happened to Jimmy. He was probably seventeen years old when his parents went on a vacation, He begged them to let him stay home. He didn’t tell them but the last thing he wanted to do was hang out with a couple of old people on the beach. He was ashamed because his parents couldn’t speak American perfectly. It turns out his parents weren’t born here they had run away from Poland when they were being chased by some
soldiers in a war. So anyway everyone else could understand them fine but Jimmy was terrible to them. He said a lot of mean things to them and he did whatever he wanted to without paying any attention to them. They were going crazy trying to figure out what to do.
And then one day they went on a summer vacation leaving Jimmy behind. They never came back though. There had been a big pile of cars, a real freak accident and they didn’t make it. That was the official report. My Grandpa told me though the rumor. He even whispered it to me “The rumor is they ran away from Jimmy and never came back home. They started a new life secretly in another town where Jimmy couldn’t find them.”
After that Jimmy wasn’t in the neighborhood for much longer. The house wasn’t paid for and the bank took it away. Jimmy didn’t have a place to live anymore. He disappeared from the neighborhood and from the school without even saying good-bye to anyone. He sort of faded away. Grandpa knew more than he was saying though. Finally after a couple of days he brought up Jimmy again. He had an idea what happened to the shiny penny boy who turned into a bad penny. Sound like a really bad penny because Jimmy was a really mean fellow. Grandpa can’t be sure but some of the parts fit together and the story does make some sense.
After a couple of years a gang of men started hanging around together downtown. The sort of shoved people around and stole their money. There were special tests to be able to join the gang and they were pretty hard to pass. They didn’t live in regular houses like other people. The gang all bunked together at a big concrete warehouse at the edge of town. It wasn’t exactly at the edge where the fields started, Grandpa told me. There were a whole lot of concrete warehouses pushed and jumbled together the region of town between the river and the fields. They warehouses were factories when the wars were going on but now there was not more work. All that part of twin was like walking on Mars. There were no straight streets only little jagged paths. the warehouses bumped into each other so you might walk into one and then have to walk through three more warehouses before you could find a way out. They started calling that part of town ‘No Man’s Land’ after all the bad history was learned.
The leader of the gang ran the gang like they were members of the ancient gladiators in ancient Rome. Joining the gang was easy but staying in the gang was not a bit of fun. The leader would be very friendly to guys he wanted in the gang. At first everyone was excited to be part of the group. They thought they would have more. They thought they were going to be really important and powerful too. After the new members were tricked into joining the gang they found out the crazy rules.
Something very strange happened because there was not enough food to go around for everyone. There were a lot of fights over food and a lot of houses were robbed. Sometimes only the groceries were taken but none of the money. That was a clue that the gang was not only an outlaw gang but some crazy man’s idea of his own Kingdom.
There was some gossip about the tests that were given to members to prove they weren’t afraid. They would have to jump on trains that were still moving and jump off of tall buildings. Probably the worst of all was the way Jimmy had the new boys fight each other. They were expected to fight til they were dead or they killed the other one. All the new members had to draw straws. And then the two of the boys that came up with the short straws; they had to fight like the gladiators until one of them was dead and there was no way out for them. They could fight and either win or lose. They could refuse to fight but then they would be shot dead right there. New members were always joining the gang but the numbers in the gang always stayed about the same. Nobody in the city noticed at first what was happening. Then after awhile a lot of dead bodies turned up when the landfill was going to be covered over for a new tennis court. That was very creepy.
All the street lights in the world could not light up that city. The sunniest days were dark and grey. People didn’t look at each other they just slid past each other to work and home and tried not to stay out on the streets very long. Things were very bleak. Everyone was so afraid to leave their house the gang wasn’t making any money. Some people left paper bags full of groceries on the sidewalks so the gang would take the food without breaking into the house. For a long time nothing changed. There wasn’t much fun and there wasn’t much of a future in the town. Every day was just like every other day even in the winter and summer. All four seasons seemed just alike. The snow in the winter was never white and the sun in the summer never quite shone through the clouds.
Everyone stopped thinking about Jimmy and the gang but that didn’t help the situation at all. The town needed some help. Something needed to be done to shake things up. The only problem was that no one could imagine life could be any different. They had forgotten about the days before the gang and King Jimmy ran the town. Grandpa said that about this time he had graduated from the police academy. Grandpa said that sometimes the police academy seemed as bad as being in Jimmy’s gang but he said, anyway the training was good for what happened next.
There was a big group of rookies that played poker every week and the loser had to take a dare. One weekend Grandpa was the loser. His worst enemy on the force was the winner. That meant that the dare Grandpa had to take was whatever dare his worst enemy could think of to
give. Grandpa looked his enemy straight in the eye; he was going to take the dare not matter what. He was going to take the dare and he was going to throw it back in his enemies face later that night. That was what Grandpa was thinking anyway. The dare was “Go to the warehouses and kill King Jimmy.”
The dare was the worse dare in the world. There was nothing worse Grandpa’s enemy could have said. But it turns out that Grandpa wasn’t that surprised. He had been preparing for this day. Grandpa said if the dare hadn’t been made that night the end of the story would still be the same. Grandpa was ready to make his move that night as well as any time later so a few days earlier didn’t matter. Grandpa was 26 years old. He was as strong as a bull. He had discovered Jimmy’s favorite hiding place in the warehouses. Jimmy had a lot of bodyguards but he never kept them too close because Jimmy didn’t trust his body guards very much. That was the weak point in Jimmy’s defenses. Grandpa knew that was the key to finding Jimmy alone; the only chance to arrest Jimmy. Or at the worse Grandpa was ready to kill Jimmy in self defense.
Grandpa left the poker game in his own car and drove to the warehouse district without another word. He parked in a small space at the back of the warehouse district. The space was small and tight for the car but once the car was parked it couldn’t be seen. The only heavy gear he had was his mountain climbing gear. He slipped in and out of the maze of alleys between the warehouses with no trouble at all. He had mapped out every detail over the previous six months. He had already planned his route to the exact spot where he wanted to climb. He found the spot and very quickly he had ascended to the roof top.
He stashed the rope in an old wooden box on the roof. The next thing was to very stealthily unlock the roof door to the stairs. Grandpa was going into the building to meet Jimmy face to face. He quietly but quickly unlocked the door and then moved along the dark hallways to the room he had been staking out. The warehouse was not quiet even at that time of night. There was shouting and yelling. Some of the doors had little slivers of light shooting into the hallway. Grandpa ignored all that was going on around him, keeping his mind focused to the job ahead. He had planed his route so that he never saw a single body guard. In moments he was in front of Jimmy’s room. He knocked on the door and heard Jimmy’s voice growl something. Jimmy’s footsteps headed towards the door. As soon as the door was unlocked and Jimmy had turned the knob Grandpa was pushing the door open. Jimmy was so shocked he stood petrified his feet stuck on the ground like he was standing in cement. This was not the welcome Grandpa had expected but he took full advantage of the time to handcuff Jimmy’s hands behind his back. And then Grandpa read him his rights.
My Grandpa grew ten feet taller that day. He was the bravest man in the world. He told me to forget about the flickering people moving around downtown. They were just members of the gang who were still hanging around.