Tales from the Darkness

Lots of Changes

Erin, Mandy, and Sloane were now living with Erin's parents again. Sometimes, Sloane would stay with his dad since he only lived a couple blocks away.

After the near death experience, Erin wouldn't allow Sloane to ride steers or horses anymore, so she helped Sloane find a new outlet. She decided to coach soccer and have him join the team and also signed him up for baseball. The soccer didn't last long because Erin really knew nothing about soccer, and Sloane got injured in his knee really bad during one of the games. However, after playing baseball for a while, Sloane really enjoyed it and stuck with it.

After about a year, Erin took Mandy and moved to another city, leaving Sloane to live with mostly his papaw and grandma, and then at times with Sean. Sloane continued to play baseball and tried to live a somewhat normal life despite the chaos his life was.

The next summer, Mandy came back to live with Sloane and their grandparents again. Mandy didn't really get along well with Sloane she always antagonized Sloane until he would lash out and get in trouble. Over the summer, they were together she managed to get him in trouble many times, but each time, Sloane was the one that ended up hurt but still was the one in trouble.

She once taunted him to the point that he tried to jump the fence to go after her, but he tore his hand at one of the sharp points on the fence. Another time she kept hitting him until he pushed her and made her fall and while he was all bruised up from continously enduring her hitting him he still was the one to get his a.ss spanked for pushing her. Nothing in his life was easy. If he wasn't being bullied at school, he was having issues at home.

Finally, at the end of the summer, Erin came and got Sloane and Mandy and took them to live with her. Sloane felt hopeful that things would start to get better or more normal, although at this point, he really wasn't sure what normal looked like. One thing he never expected was that his mom turned to a wild party life. He would wake up to a bunch of naked bodies everywhere and have to tiptoe his way around them just to get to the bathroom in the mornings.

One day, to try and find some normality in his life, he went outside to try and find someone to play with. A couple of kids who lived on the other side of the apartment complex saw him walking around and started walking towards Sloane. They had a motorcycle with them, and when they got close enough for Sloane to hear them, they asked, " Do you want to ride a motorcycle?" Seeing the motorcycle, Sloane was very excited and interested in trying it out. It was something new, so Sloane excitedly replied, "Sure!" Sloane hopped on the motorcycle and started going a lot faster than he had anticipated going. He saw he was headed for the outside AC units and knew he needed to slow down. One of the other boys even shouted, "Brake, use the brake!" but Sloane not using a motorcycle before froze up, not sure what to do, and ended up plowing into the AC units. He jumped up and realized he had scraped himself up and looked at the AC units and noticed they were dented. Without saying a word to the other boys, he ran as fast as he could back to his apartment.

Sloane didn't say anything about his injuries to anyone he just went and started cleaning himself up to try and seem like nothing had happened. He feared he would get in trouble if anyone found out, and then while cleaning his injuries, he was reminded of what happened 5 years ago.

*Flashback to 5 years ago*

Sloane was outside playing with a hatchet swinging it around his mom saw him through the back window and went out and shouted, "Put that up right now, Sloane, you have no business playing around with that!" Sloane acted like he was going to put it away, but as soon as he saw his mom go back inside, he started swinging it around again. Suddenly, when he was swinging it, the weight of it got to him, and it slipped and went right into his foot. He was more scared that he would get in trouble for not listening to his mom, so he quickly ran inside to try to clean up his foot. Unexpectedly, his mom was in the kitchen, so he couldn't slip past her. He stood by the back door and put his good foot on top of his chopped one. His mom turned and asked, "What's wrong? why are you standing funny?" unsure of what to say without giving anything away Sloane calmly replied, "no reason just decided to come in." Erin noticed there was blood pooling by Sloane's feet, and she requested, " Let me see your foot." Knowing it was no longer avoidable, Sloane lifted his other foot, and Erin freaked out and started rushing him out the door, but his grandma stopped Erin and said, "What's going on" Erin showed her Sloane's foot she said, "Just get me the iodine and something to wrap it up with. You don't have to take him to the doctor."

*End of Flashback *

So Sloane figured if he had severed a tendon back then and nearly chopped his foot in half, then all the scrapes he had received from crashing the motorcycle would be just fine if he just cleaned them himself even if they were pretty bad because his grandma had said he didn't need a doctor back then.

While cleaning and bandaging himself, there was a knock on the front door. Since Sloane was occupied, Mandy answered the door. She called for Sloane and said, "The police and apartment manager are at the door for you!" Sloane was shocked and thought I didn't think I would be in this much trouble over the AC units. Regardless of his hesitation, he made his way towards the front door. Immediately, the cops started relentlessly asking about a stolen motorcycle and who had stolen it. Shocked to the core, Sloane took a couple of minutes to pull his thoughts together he never suspected it to be stolen. He calmly told the cops, "Look, I didn't know it was stolen." The cops still unconvinced that Sloane knew nothing questioned him again, "You rode it though, right? Who were your buddies who gave it to you?" Sloane growing frustrated with their questions replied, "I just moved here. I don't know anyone. I don't know who stole the motorcycle. I don't have any names that I can give you." Hearing this from Sloane, the apartment manager got angry and said, "Then how are we supposed to settle this?" The cops looked at the manager and said, "I guess we'll have to continue our investigation elsewhere the kid clearly has no information for us." This didn't appease the manager at all, but hearing what the cops said she had no choice but to leave the apartment.

After this incident, Sloane decided to start boxing to fill his time so he could just lay low and not get into any more trouble. However, they only stayed in the apartment for another year. His sister Mandy got molested by a neighbor kid, so to get her away from there, Erin made the choice to move her and the kids back to her parents' house yet again. Sloane wasn't sure what life had for him next, but he decided that he needed to try and make the best of whatever life threw his way.