Here is an excerpt of my NaNoWriMo novel, titled “Revenge is Sweet.” I hope you enjoy it!
I sat in the back of the car as we drove to my dad’s work. DC Talk played through the speakers. My parents had always been the rap type of people, if you can call DC Talk "rap." I didn’t care for rap. I much more prefered country or something that actually had a good tone to it. The music was a little to loud, but I tried to bare it.
"This shouldn’t take long," my dad said from the driver’s seat. "Just have to get my laptop and then we’ll be on our way to South Carolina."
"Thank God. I can’t bear this Michigan weather much more," my mom replied.
It was Christmas break and that meant always going to South Carolina to see my dad’s mom and dad. This was one of my favorite things to do. I loved the mountains and the trees. It was a fresh relief from the continuous, pretty much flat landscape of southeast Michigan. Anything else in that state didn’t matter as much as that. Anyway, my grandma and grandpa weren’t that fond of me or my mom since they didn’t like my mom that much when my dad was dating her.
The only thing that kept my family here in Newground was dad’s job and our church. Dad ran a publishing company called "Samuel and Gabriel Publishing Group;" a group dad and a long time friend of his, Lewis Womack, Mr. Lewis to me, had created about six years ago. They were getting a lot of business I guess because my dad had a lot of meetings lately.
I looked up at the building as we turned into the parking lot. The windows were reflective on the outside so no one could see in, yet people on the inside could see out.
Dad parked in his reserved parking space. "Do you two want to come in?"
"Why not?" my mom said. "Come on, Elijah." I unbuckled my seat belt and shoved open the door. The cold winter wind bit at my nose and my ears. I pulled my beanie cap more down my head and brought my scarf up to cover my nose.
We entered through the double glass doors into the medium-sized lobby. Two overstuffed, leather chairs and a couch sat at each corner of the room. Directly across from the entrance was the receptionist desk. A large lady sat there, typing away at what seemed to me like five hundred words a minute.
i followed my parents into the elevator. "Can I press the button?" I asked.
"Of course," mom said, slightly smiling. Pressing the buttons in an elevator was as entertaining and exciting to me as getting a large lollipop is to a five year old.
We stepped off the elevator when we got to dad’s floor. Dad’s friend, Mr. Lewis, came towards them when he saw us.
"Glad to see you," he said with what seemed to be a sigh of relief. "We have a problem with an author about the cover of his new book. He thinks that the colors should be different, but one of the workers said that we won’t do anything. But, of course, we can. You need to talk to them before you leave."
Another thing to delay us. Just great.
"I’ll take care of it," my dad told him.
"Oh. And there’s someone in your office, waiting for you. says he’s looking for an internship."
"Well, we could use some fresh meat with how busy we have been this year. I’ll talk to him."
Me, my mom and Mr. Lewis followed my dad down the hallway and into his office. A man sat in one of the three chairs in front of my dad’s desk.
"Hello," my dad said. "Can I help you?"
The man stood up from his seat and turned around. He held a gun in one hand and aimed it at my dad. My mom screamed and I saw my dad tense. Panic shot through my veins. What was he doing? Who was he and why did he have a gun?
"Woah," dad said. "What’s going on here?"
The man shifted the gun towards me and said, Lock the door, kid."
Scared and panicked for mine and my , I almost ran to the door but decided that if I did that, the man would surely shoot me; so I walked to the door and locked it with my shaking, sweaty hands.
"What do you want?" Mr. Lewis asked. His voice contained a mix of nervousness, panick and anxiousness.
"You two," the man pointed at my mom and dad with the gun. "Sit down in the chairs." He motioned towards the chair behind him. My mom mumbled a prayer as tears poured down her face.
"Now," the man said. My parents walked past him and sat down in the chairs.
My parents’ most likely killer looked at me and Lewis. "You two… kneel." We did as he said without a word eventhough I was tempted to scream and hurt the man, but that wouldn’t end well. He would put a bullet in my head before I could reach him, much less hurt him even a little. I was helpless to save my parents. Why wouldn’t Mr. Lewis do something? Because he would also be killed if he tried to save my mom and dad. My parents would die. I knew it, but I tried to deny it; I tried to tell myself it was all just a dream. I closed my eyes, hoping that if I counted to three while doing that would make it all go away and we would be on our way to my grandparents’.
It didn’t work. A gunshot sounded and then another. I screamed and screamed, the next thing I saw was Mr. Lewis running towards my parents’ murderer and wrestling the gun away from him.
"Get on the ground! Now!" The man did what he was told as he had no choice and Mr. Lewis took out his cellphone and dialed something. After a few seconds, he said, "There’s been a double murder at the Samuel and Gabriel Publishing Group. I have the killer at gunpoint. Please hurry."
I kept my eyes from catching a glimpse of my dead parents as I waited. I felt nauseous and vomited. I retched a few times after I had thrown up everything in my system.
The police came ten minutes later and aressted the man who had killed my parents.
"Dead," a woman said. I looked up, wiped my tears away and convulsed again. Blood was puddled on the ground and I saw my mom’s and dad’s limp bodies.
Both. Dead.
"No!" I screamed. I stood up and clenched my fists in defiance of the horrible thruth. "They…are…not…dead!"
Someone came behind me and took hold of my shoulders and I knew it was Mr. Lewis. I pushed him off of me and started towards my mom and dad. Someone else grabbed me and I tried to fight them off also, but they held on. Mr. Lewis came in front of me, blocking my view of my parents "They are, Elijah. I’m so sorry." He lead me out of the office and we followed a policeman into a conference room, while I kept screaming at the top of my lungs. People poked their heads out of their rooms to see what was happening.
"The detecive will be here shortly," he said softly. He closed the door and Mr. Lewis and I sat in two chairs across the table from each other. My legs barely hung over the edge. I buried my face into my arms and sobbed. Why? Why would someone kill his parents?
"I’m sorry, Elijah. This shouldn’t have happened. We’ll get to the bottom of this."
"Why didn’t you do something before that man killed them?" I screamed.
His expression looked as if he had been smacked in the face.
"I couldn’t have. If I did, he would kill me and your parents still. Then you would be left alone."
"Who cares? What if you got to him when he wasn’t looking?"
"I was scared, too."
"Not as much as I was," I said. Tears still made their way down my cheeks, chin and neck and into my shirt.
"There’s nothing we can do now, you know that, don’t you?"
I started sobbing and could only manage to speak an inaudible, "Yeah."
Why did my parents have to die the way that they did? Was their killer a man that they knew?
"I’m going to get even with him," I told Mr. Lewis
"You’re only ten, Elijah."
"I won’t always be."
Evan W.S. Morgan 