Sho Ma

Sho Ma novel pt 2

At least “Live Action Robo Student” did not try by s****l means like Mr. Tatford, but by trying to prevent us from graduating by making us look bad in front of all of our teachers and counselors, and even our peers. But because me and my best friend were so similar, equipped with witty brains and sharp tongues, we always had a rebuttal to anyone that opposed us. So alone we were very formidable, but together, we were practically unstoppable! Nothing really surprised us or got past us, but it intrigued me to see my best friend so surprised that I told him that I saw an unrecognizable figure.

            “Yea man, the figure was like a distorted black ghostly man-thing. I don't know what it was. I couldn't tell you much about it, except the figure looked as if it could be that of a muscular grown man. But it was eerie, I tell ya man...!”

            “Well its cool bro, I just wish I could've seen it! I probably would have too, if Mr. Tatford didn't move my seat to the other side of the classroom. It sucks that we don't sit next to each other anymore. Well I know you have to get home ASAP so I won't hold you up. Just make sure you keep your eyes peeled for strange activity, after all it is a week from Halloween! And it is a known fact that strange happenings always happen in the month of October, especially the closer it is to Halloween. Well, see you tomorrow.”

            “Yea I hate that we don't sit next to each other anymore too, but yea I will stay alert and make sure that I'm always aware of my surroundings. But I gotta get going, see ya on the battlefield tomorrow, in the war to graduate this school and thwart Creepy Tatford's sick plans, proving to everyone that we will graduate!”

            My best friend gives me a fist bump and then we go our separate ways. He used to live on the east side of the city and I used to live on the west side. So I make my way home by walking because my parents did not want to pay for me to catch public transportation. They claimed that they was not able to afford it. Well time for my trot home, I think to myself as I begin walking home.

Chapter 2: Is it Really Possible for Someone to Sell Their                           Soul to the Devil?

            You know growing up, I always wondered was it possible for somebody to sell their inner self, their inner being, known as a soul, to Satan, also known as the devil. I don't know why I was so curious about this, maybe it was because I would see it in movies and television all of the time. Or maybe it was because I would often hear random people, and even some people I knew well, talk about it like it was possible. I knew one thing for sure, I did not, and was not planning on trying it firsthand. The thought of it being possible was so farfetched to me, but little did I know I was soon to find this out first hand. Nothing that I had in my arsenal of tricks that was getting me thru all of my trials into manhood, could prepare me for the evil event of a soul being sold to the Devil first hand...

            After I finally get up to my house from my hour and a half walk from school, annoyed and angry from just having to deal with walking home and the dangers it presented to me every journey, I finally get home to my place of peace; My base, my safeway... But although this was my place of rest, there would still sometimes be chaos caused by my family. Yeah, I may have been safe from the outside world because I lived in a big populated city, the city of Los Angeles. So I was always having to deal with the dangers of g**g activity inside and outside of my school. I was mostly safe from fights and bullets in my home for the most part but every time I wanted true peace it would still get disturbed by either one of my brothers or my parents. It's pretty crazy because my family never seemed to understand what true peace was.

            More About me, my name is Novell Tarand, I am seventeen right now soon about to turn eighteen at the end of my first semester. My birthday is in January, so I will be an adult for six months in Highschool. I am about five foot nine inches with brownish blondish hair and blue eyes. I hear my eyes change color sometimes but I don't too much care about that because I know my eye color. I love to have fun but things have been hard on me dealing with my family. I have three brothers, two big brothers and one little brother. My oldest brother left to the military and is still currently stationed away from us. So right now I live with my mother and two of my brothers. I share a room with my little brother, but he is seven years old and he still acts like a baby so he still sleeps with my mother. My other big brother had his own room as well. But back to my little brother, he is scared to sleep to in his own bed for some reason. He claims to have nightmares every time he sleeps in his own bed. He has a top bunk above my full sized bed. Honestly when my friends would come over for sleep overs, me or one of my friends would sleep in my little brother bed with no problem. So I find that pretty strange...

            Now my dad, he does not live with us but he comes and takes us out on family outings. He doesn't live with us because he owns his own home with his siblings that was inherited to them from their parents. But dad takes us from places like fancy restaurants and fast food places, to news stands places where my dad buys us books or magazines to read. My dad takes us to a lot of fun places, sometimes he even takes us go cart racing and to the arcades to play video games. My dad is pretty cool but he decides against living with us now because my mother has serious issues. She like to moan and complain about everything. My mother has always been weird, but she didn't used to be like when me and my brothers were younger... Well not this bad at least. My dad cannot tolerate my mother most times, but I totally get him. I can relate, my mother is out of control most of the time. But my dad is only hanging on because of us, his kids... My dad is a great man, but my mother brings out the worse in him. In fact, she brings out the worse in a lot of people.

            So the reason why my mother wanted me to come straight home today was because she was getting paid today and she had the night off of work. She had a lot of errands to run, and she asked my dad to take her to do them. My mother would get happy a lot of the time when my dad would take us out on family outings. My mother and father had the rest of the day planned out. 

            Although I am upon my house, I walk up to the porch and get my keys out, and open the front door. I walk in the door in the living room, to see my mom in the kitchen. The way my house was built, as soon as you walk into it, you would be in the living room. Then to the left of the living room was the kitchen. There was nothing to the right of the living room but a wall. Then straight away from the door was a hallway that led to the rooms. At the front of the hallway was another hallway that led to one of the bathrooms, and on the right side of the bathroom was my big brother's room. Now at the back of the first hallway that connected to the living room, was my mother's room on the right, and my room on the left. This is the way our three bedroom house was set up. As soon as I got in the house, my mother greets me.

            “Hi Novell, How was school?”

            “Hey mom, it was fine...”

            “Are you sure? Because your Physics teaching called me a little while ago and told me that you were acting up in class, and that you threw a pencil at him. He said that the pencil didn't hit him, but what were you thinking? Are you out of your mind!?”

            “No mom, it's just Creepy Tatford is a very weird and rude teacher. He...”

            “He nothing Novell! That man is your elder, so you are to respect him no matter what! He is your superior, so you are to listen to him and respect him! I was thinking about letting him keep you after class for misbehaving, but I decided against it because your dad is coming to pick us up shortly. Actually he should be here any minute now. So, I better not hear of you acting up in class or you are going to let him keep you for detention. And then when you get home, I am going to give you a s******g!”

            To think, I am seventeen years old, and here is my mother still treating me like a child trying to give me spankings. I haven't had a s******g in awhile because I mean c'mon, who s****s their kids at the age seventeen!? My crazy mom that's who... To make matters worse, not only do she treats me like a child, but she thinks and believes in her head that I have the mind of a child. Like I don't understand right from wrong. That is the reason why she tells me to respect Mr. Tatford, because she believes that adults knows best! Not realizing that I will soon be an adult myself. I really wanted to tell her what Mr. Tatford's intentions were with keeping me after school, but I know that she would not have ever believed me. So I just went along with her delusional mind and just nodded my head in confirmation.

            “Yes mom, I will respect Mr. Tatford...” I reply.

            As if! I will not respect any adult that doesn't respect me, I tell myself.

            “Okay Novell, start cleaning up the house until your daddy comes! I don't want any junk laying around.”

            “Yes mom.”

            After my mom gives me instructions, she retreats to her room. My mother stays in her room and doesn't like to come out of it. She only comes out of it when she needs too, like to go the kitchen. She has a bathroom in her room, so she doesn't have to come out for that.

            I begin cleaning the living room. Picking up all of the junk laying around and sweep the floor. I clean good, so this only took me about forty minutes, plus our living room was not that big either. So by the time I finish sweeping the floor. I hear a familiar car sound. And that car sound can only mean one thing, my dad is here. My mother hears the car sound all the way from the room, so she comes running out of her room jumping for joy.

            “Hey Novell, you cleaned the living room! About time this place is sorta clean... But that sounds like your dad, go outside and check and see if that is him!” My mother commands.

            I put away the broom and then walk outside on my porch to see if the cars sounds was my dad, and sure enough, it was. I wait for him to park and walk up to me. As soon as he gets close I greet him.

            “Hi Dad! How are ya!?” I say joyously.

            “I'm fine son. It's good to see you. Are you ready to go?”

            “Yup, I sure am!”

            I then lead my dad into the house and my mom awaits him on the living room couch. My dad hugs my mom and then says,

            “Okay Novell, go finish getting ready while talk to your mother.”

            “Cool! Okay dad...”

            I take off and dead head to my room. I couldn't wait to get to my room because my room was my place of inner peace. Well when my little brother wasn't in there bothering me. I usually go straight to my room as soon as I get home as well, but my mother intercepted me before I could get there today! She was so on guard because of Creepy Tatford calling her. But now I finally got to my room, and I was inside feeling safer than I possible could. I was in my world now.

            I kept my room very neat so it was always just the way it was I left it before school. Clean everywhere, except I had a serious ant problem. I don't know where these ants are coming from! They seemed to appear out of nowhere! These ants keep coming back in huge numbers. It is like they have an infinite ant fleets. 

            It all started about a week ago. These ants started coming in my rooms in small numbers, but then a few days later, they started coming in large numbers. They would travel from my window, behind my bed, to the back of the television. They would travel three walls to just kinda stop there and do who knows what. I have killed hoards and hoards of these ants, but no matter how many I kill, they will not cease their assault on trying to take over my room. I know ants love sweet foods and they will do anything to get to it, but my room appeared to be unblemished. I get angry at them being there, so I grab the bug spray it over the line of ants behind my television. Once the ants are hit by the bug spray, they die almost instant. After I spray the line of ants and watch them die a toxic death, I see my deodorant fall off of my dresser to the ground and make a loud thump, out of the corner of my eye.

            Then a few seconds later, a huge manlike shadowy figure appear right in front of my dresser. This looked like the same figure that I saw on the Quad at my school. I wanted to inspect the figure further, but something deep in my gut told me not to. So I dart to my bedroom door, and before I exit my room I turn towards my dresser to see if the figure is still there, and sure enough, it was. I then change my sprint into a trot and continue down the hallway to the living room. I chose not to run into the living room because I did not want none of my family to question me on why I was running out of my room. My family has experienced paranormal events and happenings, but no matter what they would experience, they always seemed to discount, and be disbelievers of paranormal activity and what they experienced. They always shrugged off anything that did not seemed normal to them. Anyway, after a short quick trot, I was upon my mom and dad.

            “Hey Novell, are you ready to go?” My dad asks.

            “Yea I am dad.”

            “Novell what's wrong, you look like you just saw a ghost!”

            “Huh!? Oh nothing dad... I am fine. We can go now if my brothers are ready. Where are they anyway?”

            “Oh your little brother is in my room, and your big brother is not here. He still hasn't gotten home from work yet, but I talked to him and he said that he is tired and to leave without him. So we can go anytime. I will go grab your little brother and then we can head out.” My mother says sounding so happy. She is usually in good spirits when my dad takes us out.

            My mother goes in the room and gets my little brother. She appears in the living room with him almost as fast as she left. She nods in confirmation for us to leave. She walks out of the front door and me and my dad follows.  We all walk over to my dad's car and I sit in the back of the car with my little brother while my dad and mother gets in the front of the car.

            My dad loves classic cars, so he has an old model, clunker of a car he calls the Green Hornet. The entire time he has owned this car, I never really knew why he picked such a name for a car. Maybe it was of the fact the car was green, but no one knows for sure. But one thing I knew about my dad naming this car this car, was the fact that I knew that eventually one day I'd grow up and name my cars as well. Out of the blue, suddenly and randomly, I feel a slap to my left cheek from my little brother. 

            “Timothy! What is your problem!? I yell at my little brother.

            “Don't yell at him!” my mother says.

            “But mom, Timothy sla...”

            “Novell, don't talk back to your mother! Listen to what she is telling you! We don't want you yelling at him! You don't have to yell at Timothy to get him to do what you want. You can and will talk to him in plain English in a calm voice. Do you understand Novell?!” My dad says angrily.

            “Yes I do. But you and mom has yelled at me and big brothers all of our life!” I say, feeling appalled by the reality that my parents would even dare say such a thing to me.

            “That may be true Novell, but Timothy is the youngest and last child, so we have decided to do things differently with this one. My mother says smiling back at me, letting Timothy get victory over me again.

            “Okay...” I say back, feeling defeated as usual...

            The Audacity of my parents always letting my little brother bully me! I swear, ever since my little brother has been born, he has seemed like the baby from Hell. He has been very difficult to deal with! And don't get me started on the fact that I have to always watch him and deal with his crap all on my own. My little brother is 5 about to turn 6, and the older he gets, things just gets worse and worse between me and him. Mostly because my parents always gives him his way because he is the youngest child in my immediate family. And in our family, the youngest always gets his way. I remember when I was the youngest, my dad used to always give me my way. I kinda miss those times, but all my parent's attention was on me all of the time, so when I did good, my parents praised me which was the good part. But when I did bad, these were the times I hated because they were just too much. My parents would over exaggerate something I did and I'd get the worse punishments. So I started to wish and pray that my parents had another baby, but as they say be careful what you wish for. Or maybe I should've wished for a good little brother and not a little brother...

            Suddenly I feel a tingling on my neck, so I rub my neck and see that it was an ant crawling on my neck. I instantly kill the ant and take out a napkin out of my pocket, wrap it up and toss the tissue out of the window next to me.

            “Novell! Did you toss something out of the window!? My dad says.

            My mother turns around and gives me the meanest glare she could muster. My mother's felt as if she could look at you and turn you into stone.

            “No dad, I didn't...”

            My mother turns back and faces forwards.

            “Okay Novell, maybe I was seeing things.”

            I always used to throw things out of the window when I sat behind my dad and I'm sure he saw me some actually throw something, but didn't want to get me in trouble with my mother. I used to love throwing things out of the window and my dad knew it, so some times he would let me slide, but this time he decided to say something about it. So I look at my dad through the side mirror, as I gaze into the mirror I see my dad staring back at me. My dad smiles at me, so I smile back at him. Then out of nowhere, my dad's reflection turns into a black shadowy figure. In fact, his reflection turns into the same square head of the shadowy figure I saw on the Quad at my school. The shadowy figure square head had these deep, eerie, piercing, red eyes that were unmistakable. I bump the back of my dad's seat nearly jumping out of my skin. My dad, pulls up to a red light, stops, then asks...

            “Novell, are you okay back there!?”

Bumping the back of my dad's seat course made me take my eyes off of the side mirror. So before I even dared spoke or uttered a word, answering my father back, I had to re-look at the side mirror. I ease my eyes and vision slowly to my left side and look upon the side mirror of my dad's car, and see my dad's reflection peering back.

            “Novell, did you hear me!? I asked, are you okay back there?” my dad says excitedly again.

            “Yes dad, I'm fine...”

            “What's wrong Novell?”

            “Nothing dad...”

            “Well I hope so...”

             My dad loves to mess with me. He doesn't take much attention off of me except when he is giving my brothers or my mother attention.

            My dad also loves to take me, my brothers, and my mother out to fancy or fun places every weekend. In my dad's mind, the weekends are family time. So my dad tries to take us out every weekend and he keeps up this family tradition almost every week. Some weekends we don't go anywhere because my dad doesn't have money, or rather he chooses not to spend any money, and I’m not certain which one it is... Or maybe my dad just doesn't want go out. No matter the case, he still takes us somewhere almost every weekend which I think makes him a great dad. But on this day, he decided to take us to a special restaurant. It was in a way nicer city than what we lived in, because we lived in a very rowdy area.

            So the rest of way of my dad driving us to this restaurant nothing else unusual happened, just the norm, my little brother picking, hitting me, making  faces at me, spraying raspberries with his tongue at me, l*****g his hand and rubbing his dirty moist hand on me, and well, you get the picture. My little brother would do anything he could to annoy me severely. But when my dad finally pulls up to the restaurant and parks, I try to jump out of the car as fast as I can to get away from my little brother. But before I could fully get out of the car, my mom tells me,

            “Get your little brother and bring him inside.”

            Although my little brother was seven going eight years old and still acting like a baby, he acted almost as if he was helpless. He still needed to dressed, so of course he still needed someone to unbuckle his seatbelt and help him out of the car. So my mom and dad hops out of the car, walk up to each other, hugs and kisses each other, then they walk in the restaurant leaving me to get my brother. Oh, the pain of it all... first I try talking to my little brother.

            “C'mon Timothy, let's go get something to eat.”

            I tried to unbuckle my little brother's seatbelt but he pushes my hand away.

            “No! Leave me alone!”

            “Timothy, mom and dad told me to get you and take you in the restaurant. So come on!”

            “No!”

             I get angry and unbuckle Timothy's seatbelt by grabbing his hand when he tries to push mine away. Once I unbuckle Timothy's seatbelt he starts pretending to cry, starts yelling, opens up the car door and gets out of car. I lock the car up, get out, and grab my little brother's hand. My little brother immediately pulls away from me and snatches his hand away from me.

            “No, leave me alone! I hate you!”

            My little brother kicks me in the shin and runs inside the restaurant. I get even angrier, rub my leg, walk into to the restaurant and meet up with my parents and my little brother. As I get close to them, I hear my mother asking my little brother what is the matter with him, which could only mean one thing for me, trouble.

            “Timothy, what is wrong baby?”

            Timothy points to me still pretending to cry.

            “Novell, didn't we tell you to get him?!”

            “I did...”

            “If you did get him, why did he run in the restaurant crying?!”

            I wanted to answer my mother back, but I was certain no matter what I said, it was sure to make my mother get angry and yell at me. And since we were in a restaurant, I didn't feel like getting embarrassed. So I just remained silent to my mother's question.

            “Oh, you have nothing to say?” My mother says.

            I look at my dad and he just stands behind my mother shaking his head from left to right.

            “Fine, I'll just ask Timothy. Timothy, what did he do to you?”

            “He tried to scare me and yank me out of the car!    Timothy lies.

            “He did!? Don't worry Novell, I will deal with you once we get home!”

            “But mom!”

            “No buts! Come on here and let's find us a seat!”

            My mother takes my little brother and walks to the seating area. Then my dad walks up to me.

            “I don't know what it is you got against your little brother, but it has gotta stop. Your little brother could have gotten hurt on his way into the restaurant by himself. You need to stop being mean to your little brother because he will get older and might beat you up one day, ya know...?”

            “Okay dad.”

            “Okay Novell, let's go grab a seat and order some grub!”

            I wanted to tell my dad what my little brother did to me but he wouldn't have believed me. I just feel like sometimes my life is a horror story, and also I am not petty... Me and my dad walk over to the table me and my mother and little brother is sitting there waiting for me and my dad to sit down. As I slide in the seating booth next to my little brother, my mother just stares at me with a mean expression on her face. Her eyes follow me until I position myself comfy in the booth. Then my mother's facial expression changes into one of pure love and bliss as she gapes at my dad as he slides and sits next to her in the booth. My mother immediately hugs and kiss my dad as soon as he sits. My dad immediately picks up a menu and begins looking inside it.

            “So what is everyone in the mood for!? I think I will get me a salad.”

            My dad turns and looks at my mother, then at me and my little brother.

            “I will get me some chicken strips and I'll get Timothy a Jr. Cheeseburger meal.”

            “And what about you Novell!?”

            “Uh, I'll have a Spicy Burger meal.”

            As soon as I tell my dad what I want, the server comes right over and ask for our food order. My dad then starts putting order in as the server writes it down. He leaves for a few moments then comes back with our drinks.

            “Thank you!” My mom says to the server, pretending to be nice...

            My mother always pretended to be nicer than she actually was when she was in more company than just her family. To outsiders she made herself appear to be the sweetest woman in the world. But behind closed doors, she would show her true colors revealing how mean and short tempered she actually was. Or maybe