Gasoline Can Man
(This is based off a true event and was written in my diary a few years ago, I have changed details)
The tear in my curtain guided a sharp ray of moonlight directly into my barely sleeping eyes. It was only 10pm at this time, but the moon was at its highest, shining brighter than ever. Sitting up I watched as the shadowed silhouettes and flashing lights travel across my bedroom walls, illuminating the busy night life. This city never sleeps, each night the sound of screeching cars and brawl outbursts interrupts my once peaceful evenings. Well I guess ever since we moved out of our family home into this rundown rental flat nothing is peaceful anymore.
Moving houses wasn’t as cruisey as we all expected, especially the night before my birthday. Living with eight people in one home doesn’t help either. There was moutains so stuff. But not all of it got to the new house in nick condition. Two tables were smashed, boxes of items were squashed and containers of things lost. It took the movers two whole days to get all of it to the new house. It’s a 25 minute drive to and from my new school with good traffic, walking home however takes me at least one and a half hours. I'm not looking forward to it...
...Walking home from school is torturous. The cold wind slaps me in the face cracking my lips, drying my eyes and ripping out my once needly pinned hair. I needed to get home ASAP. I push my legs as fast as they can, barely walking but not quite jogging. My calf muscles on fire.
I see the street signs becoming more and more familiar. My neighbourhood at last. In what? Only an hour, best time yet.. But before I could celebrate I hear the plaintive scream of sirens penetrate my ears, getting louder and louder, ringing inside my head. I feel my body whip around without my mind's permission to see nothing more than the flashing blurs of blue and red glows masked by the rain. Two cop cars, three cop cars, all racing in my direction. What the hell are they doing here?
“Sorry Hun, you’re not allowed to come past here, for your own safety we need you to not come onto the street okay.”
“Why? I live in there.” I questioned the young officer.
“I need you to leave right now, do you have a mobile phone?” she asks me, talking as if I was a baby, “Would you be able to phone your parents and ask them to come and pick you up, or do you need one of our officers to take you home?”
“I’ll call them” I bluntly respond.
Storming off back down the road I watch as officer’s dash into my street and block off others around it. What is going on? I knew the only way I would be able to find out is if I waited for the news to give a rubbishy, undetailed report. Or, see for myself.
That's it.
I race round the side of a small car wrecking property on the corner of the two streets. Climbing up into a thick-trunked tree, all the way to the top, scanning the area.
I knew someone was dead before the crack of the gunshots reached my ears. The sound of the bullets sliced through the air, startling the life out of me, making me loosen my grip of the branches. Regaining my stability I spin around to the direction of the shots, I couldn’t even identify what was happening before a blaze of fire explodes into the air, the flames towering over the car wrecks and dry trees in a backyard just a house away from where I'm hidden.
Jumping out of the tree I race out of the property. Sweat, rain and tears covering my entire body, stinging my eyes. I didn’t want to know what had just happened, I didn’t want to hear the news.