Jokers And Jesters

Prologue

Zayn was just sitting with his mother when it happened. He was just listening to her sing in the garden.

"Are you, are you

Coming to the tree

They strung up a man

They say who murdered three.

Strange things did happen here

No stranger would it be

If we met at midnight

In the hanging tree."

She sang slow and quiet. Her voice low and mellow. The song sounded wrong, and not like someone like his mother would sing about. Zayn knew why she sang this song, it made him sad. See, his mother, Trisha, didn't want to marry a mafia boss, such as his father. She wanted a quiet life, she wanted to live in a small house in the countryside, she wanted to have farm animals, she wanted to have peace.

But then she fell in love with Zayn's father, and she was married to him before he told her. She never wanted to be the wife of a mafia boss. She was furious, she had left him for about 2 months when she found out she was pregnant. And after a long inner argument, she went back to him.

It was truly sad to see his mother so tired and strained.

"Are you, are you

Coming to the tree

Where the dead man called out

For his love to flee.

Strange things did happen here

No stranger would it be

If we met at midnight

In the hanging tree."

The song was about a man, who cried out for his love to flee, away from him. The man in the song is bad, he killed people as Zayn's mom says. Zayn thinks the man is his father. He sometimes would walk in on his dad torturing people. Once, he saw a whole family killed right in front of his eyes.

He would always run to his mother and tell her what he saw to her. She would always put on a frown and just tell him to calm down, and sing to him.

Just today, he walked in on his dad killing a man with lots of tattoos.

Just then, a sound came from behind his mother's head. His mother froze and turned slowly, but she made sure to hide her son from the vision of the man who was pointing a gun at her.

"Get up." The man said fiercely. Zayn wasn the brightest kid, but he knew that last time his momma was talked to like that, his father had them thrown into a snake pit then had in the basement. So he was about to tell this man out, when his mother put him down and scuttled him under the bench where he couldn't be seen.

She got up quickly and the man grabbed both of her hands behind her back and started walking up to the house.

Something told Zayn to stay put, so he did until his mother was out of sight. Once he was sure that there was nobody around, he slid from under the bench and carefully made his way to the house.

Zayn knew some secret passageways, which he liked to use when hiding from his sisters. He walked around until he opened a loose floorboard that was in his father's office. He could only fit his head through the gap, so he watched silently as his family was tangled into the office. When they were, loud banging sounds started to go off. Zayn hates loud noises so he withdrew his head from the gap, and put the floorboard back into place.

It probably was an hour when he stopped hearing footsteps. He stuck his head through the gap, only to find his family layback. He started to wiggle the other floor board next to the loose one. Soon enough, he was able to get his whole body out of the hole.

When he looked at his family again, he stopped breathing.

Then we were all covered in blood. Originally white clothes were not painted red. That's when he saw his mother, her eyes were still open, and she was breathing, but it was shallow. He rushed to her.

"Mommy!" he cried. He was scared, he had only seen his father do this to people, but now it was his family.

"Z-Zayn?" she looked so dazed and out of it.

"Mommy?" Zayn cried again. He didn't want to lose his mommy. He wanted to wake up. To see his sisters huddled around his mother, he wanted to see his father talking about money to his worker.

"Z-Z-Zay-n. Y-You n-need t-to Leav-ve n-now." And then his mother's eyes closed and her breathing became nonexistent. He cried and whaled. He whined, he sniffed, he howled.

But then he felt someone pulling him off his mother's body. He immediately started to fight the hands. It was probably the men that killed his mommy, trying to kill him too!

"Shh. Everything is going to be okay." a soothing tone whispered in his ear. He turned only to find a female police officer holding him. He knew he was safe then. He was going to be okay.

****

The song is not mine, it is a song called Hanging Tree, and I love you all!.

This is dedicated to my best friend in the world, Dana, or @Arfbomb44  . Check her out!