Holding Grudges

File I

I never took pleasure in driving down this road, neither day nor night, it genuinely didn't matter. Although at night it was especially excruciatingly... slow. At least in my mind, it was. With traffic lights, stop signs and speed bumps at realistically almost every corner. No exaggeration whatsoever. And with only dimly lit streetlights where swarms of moths gathered, fluttering about, it wasn't the peek time to drive. But at least the moths' night would most certainly be better than mine, I thought to myself as I looked up at them from within my car, having to stop at yet another stop sign again. But it was the speed bumps that were my worst enemies, my rivals sort of speak on this adventure. Going over them left me with my vision blurred, due to the fact of how many there were and the rate at which they were lined up. I always tried to convince myself to make a rolling stop at, at least one stop sign but, I could never bring myself to do it. Predominantly because the neighborhood watch's observations subsequently were everywhere, and at all hours to boot. But also, there were plenty of CCTV cameras surrounding the area too. Even if I tried to use side roads, they were all the same story.

"The watch and their power." I conveyed letting out a slight chuckle.

It was the age-old story. Some decade and a half ago a young seven-year-old girl was playing with her ball, and it happened to roll onto the street. And she was tragically involved in a hit and run accident. She unfortunately didn't make it, bless her soul. And the motorist behind the wheel has never been caught even to this day.

Justice for Jane Anderson posters were still up from last week's annual protest rally and candlelight ceremony with white flower petals coasting across the sidewalk within the soft flowing wind. Even after it had occurred so long from the time of her passing the neighborhood were still up in arms. And I don't blame them. This was a quiet neighborhood and it had been for years and, I mean years.

I was traveling this way to meet a friend... more like an acquaintance now; David A. Williams, he really liked the initial A, for some reason. I never asked him why, but I never really cared to ask him if I'm being completely honest with myself. We met back in high school... I mean more like we were compelled to meet by our parents because they were family friends at the time. David wasn't the most popular kid in school and that's putting it politely. It wasn't that the other kids didn't like him or anything, it was after that tragedy that he began to become more distant from everybody else, including himself.

On that dreadful morning of which date, I can't for the life of me remember, that transformed David's life forever, his father dropped him off at school as he did every morning. His father was a Firefighter and a well-respected one at that too, almost everyone knew who he was. And that was why no one made fun of David for his quote on quote, Daddy dropping him off to school. You know how teenagers are, they'll make fun of anyone for almost anything.

The day started off just like any other would. Gym class basically at the crack of dawn as it always felt like at least to me, as I was always still waking up. And then onto Math class, like clockwork. Oh, how it reeked in Math class afterward. Sweaty teenage bodies filled up the classroom with only thin layers of cheap dollar store deodorant doing its best to mask the dreadful essence and a broken desk fan that only worked on the low setting. Though even still you could smell that faint level of deadly intoxication. It was a miracle that any of us even survived. Most days it felt as if we were in the trenches of the great war without a gas mask on, trying to respire, only without inhaling the deathly poisonous mustard gas that swarmed the fresh supply of what little oxygen was left within the room. Even the teacher had an aerosol can on his desk spraying it every so often. Though the efforts he made were entirely in vain as the moldy stench excommunicating from our bodies only created the spray into a new gas variation.

It wasn't until the P.A system chimed in, and the principal called upon his name. I'll never forget what was said over that speaker. I'm sure it still haunts David to this day. Hell, maybe even every student at the school is still haunted to this day?