Long Story: The Curse Brothers

After a run-in with the Curse brothers, Danny Dornan would need lots and lots of adhesive bandages. And maybe a doctor too. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I took a risk by starting my tenth grade narrative “Long Story” with a romance when there was a chance I’d have to read it in front of the class.  Tenth graders don’t have a lot of patience for romance, unless there are naked bodies and some humor.  I could put some funny moments in my story, but all my characters had to keep their clothes on.  As I read my story to the class, my peers laughed every time I said “sweet-voiced dimwit.”  But a high school story also requires some action.

Therefore, “Long Story” needed a villain.  In high school, the perfect villain is the bully.  Everybody hates bullies.  Even real life bullies hate bullies in fiction.  And the only thing worse than a bully is a group of bullies, so I created my own team of evil bullies.

And thus, the Curse brothers were born!  Danny Dornan, the protagonist of “Long Story,” was in trouble now.

Long Story

Chapter Two

The Curse Brothers

That sweet-voiced dimwit was going to get me killed.

I had just convinced Melinda to let me walk her home after school when I found out that she lived on South Wade Street.  There wasn’t a lot wrong with South Wade Street.  It wasn’t rundown or anything like that. The houses were kind of nice.  There weren’t a bunch of murders or crime or anything like that. South Wade Street would have been a nice neighborhood, except for the Curse Brothers.

There were four of them: Tommy, Joey, Timmy, and Johnny Krzinski.  They were called the Curse brothers for several reasons.  It was easier to say “Curse” than “Krzinski.”  All four liked to curse a lot.  And everybody that crossed their path was cursed.  Even the mother was cursed because she was dead.  The three oldest Curse brothers were built the same, with bodies like tanks and faces like pizzas.  The youngest was Johnny, and he had the body of a turd, small, dirty, and smelly.

Johnny might have been the youngest and smallest of the Curse brothers, but he was the most dangerous.  Since he had three older brothers that terrorized the neighborhood and protected him, he knew he could get away with anything.  He picked fights with older kids and then laughed when his brothers beat them up for him.  That meant that a bunch of high school kids had to run away from a ten-year-old.  It had never happened to me, but I could imagine the humiliation, getting taunted by the skinny Curse runt while the older brothers lurked in the background, waiting to pounce in a Pearl Harbor style attack.

One of my friends got chased by Johnny Curse once.  Johnny threw a bunch of rocks as my friend walked home.  The other Curse brothers stood a few feet behind Johnny and laughed.   My friend tried running, but he tripped, and he got clobbered with a rock.  The Curse brothers laughed so hard that they couldn’t even follow my friend the rest of the way.  I guess he was lucky the Curse brothers had a sense of humor.

Timmy Curse was in tenth grade with me, and I had managed to stay off a first name basis with him.  Every once in a while, he’d say something like “Hey, stupid,” or “Hey, fairy,” but then he’d walk away.  That’s how the Curse brothers were.  If one of them said “Hey, stupid,” you were usually okay.  If one of them said, “What are you looking at?” then you’d better start running.

That’s what had happened to my friend Rodney last summer.  He was walking home from a chess tournament when the Curse brothers surrounded him.  As they came up to him, Timmy had yelled at him, “What are you looking at?”  Rodney stood there and said, “Nothing.”  Then he got beat up.

I guess the Curse brothers didn’t like people looking at them, so the trick was to look for the Curse brothers without appearing to look at them.

I really didn’t want to get beat up by the Curse brothers while walking Melinda home.  But I couldn’t admit that to her.  No guy wants to look like a coward in front of his girlfriend.  Even if I am a coward, I didn’t want to look like one.  So I had to convince Melinda to walk home the long way without he knowing I was a coward.

“We can talk longer if we take the long way to your house,” I said, almost cringing.  I loved hearing Melinda’s voice, and the point of walking her home was to hear her talk, but I thought she could sense my fear of the Curse brothers.

“And you can buy me a malt at the ice cream shop,” Melinda said with no hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” I said, relieved that she wasn’t a mind reader.

So I slung Melinda’s pink Josie and the Pussycats backpack over my shoulder, and we walked down the school hallway to the crowded exits.

A pink backpack would normally make a guy like me a target, but nobody said anything.  One guy in the hallway was about to.  I could see him notice me and the backpack, the smirk growing on his face as he thought of his insult, and then he saw Melinda next to me, and the smirk vanished.  Melinda wasn’t pretty, but she was a girl, and most guys will leave other guys alone if they’re carrying a girlie backpack for a girl.  It’s part of an unwritten code.

So I made it out of school with my new girlfriend without getting humiliated.  Now if I could get to the ice cream shop and to Melinda’s house and back out of South Wade Street without being spotted by the Curse brothers, I’d have it made.

No problem… with a hint of sarcasm.

*****

To be continued in Long Story: Write about What You Know .

Or to start “Long Story” from the beginning, read Long Story: Teachers with Funny Last Names .