“The neighbourhood has seen better days, but Mrs. Pauley has lived there since before anyone can remember. She raised a family of six boys, who’ve all grown up and moved away. Since Mr. Pauley died three months ago, she’d had no income. She’s fallen behind in the rent. The landlord, accompanied by the police, have come to evict Mrs. Pauley from the house she’s lived in for forty years.
Today’s prompt: write this story in first person, told by the twelve-year-old sitting on the stoop across the street.
Today’s twist: For those of you who want an extra challenge, think about more than simply writing in first-person point of view — build this twelve-year-old as a character. Reveal at least one personality quirk, for example, either through spoken dialogue or inner monologue.”
No idea what a stoop is, so in this post, in an altered reality, everything is exactly the same, but a stoop = a bench.
I remember it started just like every other Sunday. I used to walk down my road, taking the first turn on the left, and I would stop off at the small corner shop to buy a can of some sort of fizzy drink. Then I would walk along the cracked streets for a while. Those were the days. I’d pass the old mill’s yard (what a horrible place, I had always thought) and walk up towards the housing estate. The white cracked paint, once bright, long before I was even born, I always thought summed up the neighbourhood perfectly: once brilliant, and bright, now cracked and with no-one who was willing to repair it.
After a while, I sat down, sipping my drink for a while on that hot, concrete bench on the corner by what was once a park, now a wasteland of weeds and nettles, the bane of any twelve-year-old’s existence. Nettles were horrible, I’d always thought, never run through nettles.
I was there when the police car pulled up, two officers getting out. One was old, the other was younger but looked very serious. From the back stepped a tall, unhappy looking man, and he joined the policemen standing on the pavement. They had stopped right outside Mrs. Pauley’s house, talking amongst themselves for a moment, then opened the garden gate and strolled up the garden path. I remember thinking very little of it, save that they were unusual visitors for Mrs. Pauley to have in her house.
I remember Mrs. Pauley opening the door, a surprised look on her face. It took a moment for the words they were speaking to hit her, her face hanging confused in mid air. And then she began shouting. It was horrible, I remember thinking, how much the adults shouted. She continued shouting for what must have been a good five or ten minutes or so, the policemen or the tall man occasionally chipping in with shouts of their own.
Then, without warning, and in a manner I must say was quite unlike Mrs. Pauley, she hit the tall man squarely in the face. With that, the policemen grabbed both her arms, pulling them behind her body, and bundled her into the back of their car. They were very rough with her as they did so, and she didn’t stop shouting for all of it. It was horrible.
I remember I sat there for quite some time, in a kind of disgusted awe at what had transpired outside Mrs. Pauley’s house, and I remember not feeling quite sure of myself. I remember thinking about all the bad things that adults do, how they shout and do mean things to one another, without ever stopping and thinking about the person they’re doing these mean things to. Mrs Pauley had been there for as long as I can remember, and then longer still. She had given my mother a box of things for when her first child came, after her own six sons had long since left home. She had taught my father to play the piano, something that he enjoyed very much. She had given every Sunday she had to volunteer at the church down the road. And now she was gone.
It was horrible, I remember thinking, very horrible.
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