The OLD Manas Short Story

I was so scared that my father would come back for another blow up. I then heard the stairs getting louder like my mother was step in down the old wooden steps. My mother walked over to me sat on the window seat with me and held me tight, she was started tell gn me riddles to get my mind off of my father, several long hours later my father walked up to us crying and sobbing over what had happened he said,”I'm sorry about this incident, I've just been so stressed with work and home that I don't know who I am anymore,” I told my father I loved him and forgive him. Ever since this day it has been drilled in my memory and hurts me every time I remember. “ see kid”, said the stranger, I've had some tough times in this house and you are going to go through tough times just like me. After the tour of the house the man had thanked the family for letting him remorse from the house. The father had shut the door and locked it. I thought

I know that he’s always watching me now. I was living life just as normally as the other 10 year old. That was until my grandpa had been acting up in the following weeks of my 11th birthday, he was not being his normal self. He underwent a CT scan in early December, and it revealed a tumor on his brain. He underwent surgery to remove the tumor and lost his beautiful, prized hair. Not many men could grow hair like he could. He was recovering well from surgery, and according to the doctors, he would have 6-12 months to live. All was well I was until I was in Fort Wayne, Indiana for a hockey tournament with my PeeWee A team 6 weeks later. My father had received a call from my mother, who was my grandpa’s daughter. She told him that a tumor had regrown behind one of his eyes, and it was the size of a softball. They had no choice but to put him on life support because the tumor rendered him brain dead, and let everyone say their goodbyes. “Feed the good wolf,” was something he would always say to us kids. He loved that saying. He lived by it. I lost the man I wanted (and still strive to) be like. He was the perfect grandfather, and although his life was taken from him at the age of 63 by some horrible disease, he lived a full life. On the dark, candle lit night of January 14th, 2012, I realized how precious life is, and I chose to “Live Like Larry.”

When the men finally made their way over to us, one man, tall, skin in size, about a quarter of the muscle tone of my pa’pa pushed him into the wall, while another, shorter in stature, with bright blue eyes, the color of sapphire, hit my father from behind. My father fell to the ground, blood dripping down his face, looking hopeless and feeble. I felt so discouraged, the only thing I could do was weep. My father, on the ground, turned to us and told us to run and we did. Half the way to the house, all I could think about was how hopeless I was and how much I wanted to help, but could not. After all that was my father back there, my friend, my protector, my pa’pa. When we finally made it to the porch of our house, we were out of air and I was about ready to collapse. My brother finally mustered up the energy to tell my mother and uncle what happen.

I never really knew my grandpa as well as I would have liked. He was already an old, old man by the time I started high school, and my own memories of him are mostly of a man confined by age and ailing health. So I'm not really going to talk about my memories of him. Instead, I'm going to try to share his memories and the memories of those that knew him.

It was a late summer afternoon in Crenshaw Los Angles. The sun is setting and I was sitting at the stairs of the two apartment building I lived at. I was waiting for my dad to return from work. Down in the street gust of wind blew torn paper into spirals. The sun was shining through the bright blue empty sky making it hard to see through the distance as the light shines through my eyes. My father was walking towards me with the harsh light of the sun outlining his body. As my father began to come closer to me the sun began to set even more. Light fading away as soon as my father stood in front of me. As he stood in front of me I was able to smell the fresh paint that was stained on his pants all the way up to his neck. He then squats down in

Hal had dared not contradict his Princess, for though she was right in that Fort Mana had never fallen, neither had it been assaulted with this new invention. Blasting powder was a new discovery and its' destructive force was unlike anything before, save for the deepest and most forbidden of magiks. Those sorts of arcane powers came with prices all their own, and the backlash from wielding such power was often enough to maim or kill. Blasting powder, though the same, was much safer for the every day common man to use, though it still had to be handled with care.

Wandering through the graveyard it felt like something was watching me. Every step I took I could feel a chill run down my spine. The flowers in my hand are already dying. I look down at each gravestone, and finally saw the words Anna Ayers. I sat down next to it and prayed. I cried the whole time. I let the emptiness fill up inside of me, until I saw something colorful. It was a person. I thought it was just the person who watches the cemetery at night. I said that I would leave any minute. He stood there and then made a creepy laugh, almost like…

Right off the bat, Marci had a rough go of it learning about Managua, particularly that most of the city lacked addresses. Managua was an entire city, known by locations and directions on how to get to a particular point by referencing another well known point. Sort of the way Americans once said, “It’s down just past the big red barn, the road just past the white mailbox will take you up there.” That’s how everything was found in Managua.

I recognized the man before me. He had hair that was as black as the night sky, slicked back so that no one hair would be out of place. His eyes were cold and his voice would send chills down your spine. He had been to my house before and when he arrived my dad yelled at me to go to my room and not come out. I peeped out from behind my door long enough to hear him and my dad yelling at one another. He said “I had better get my money in the next 2 days or you'll regret ever contacting me in the first place.” I started to wonder if I was taken because my dad couldn't

My siblings and I had been woken up from my dog Blacky barking at my grandpas door and one Paloma tugging on my sister Anabel’s hair. We saw that there was a lot of gray smoky clouds coming from the top of his door, we ran over to open the door and my grandpa had been trying to put out the fire with water and had told us to run across the street to get our neighbors help because he was getting very ill and couldn't get the fire out and did not want to leave until he himself had the fire out. The man who lived next door, Gilbert had rushed over to help my grandpa get out of the house along with his son who was my brothers friend, Thomas while my sister and I stayed at our neighbor's house with Gilbert’s wife, Leetha who is very tall and pale with

As I rose and proceeded to the stand, I noticed someone that looked odd. The type of person you knew that they didn't belong. I said a couple of words about how Grandpa loved

Two and a half years ago my grandpa sat in this very chair; the chair on the front porch. It was black and had a small diamond looking shapes in the design with a maroon cushion in the seat. Every time my grandpa would visit I would sit with him on the front porch all the time. It was surrounded by woods, the trees so many; in the season he was here they blossomed. He came to visit to get his “truck fixed” but he knew it was his time. He spent his last two months with me that spring.

“Dad can we go see grandpa J.C. today.” Sure, after we eat he said as he drove out of my church parking lot. When we got to where my grandpa was staying I ran inside and gave my grandpa a big hug and said to him. “Are you feeling better today.” “I'm getting better he said.” I went and sat down beside of him and we all started talking. After a few hours we had to leave to go home. My grandpa said “Come back soon”. I told him I would then i gave him a hug and me and my dad started walking out the door. When we got to the car I asked my dad “When is grandpa going to get better”. “I don't know” he said. The next day I was at my after school and we were making little flags for veterans that served in the army. I asked my teacher if I could make

I spent a lot of time with Grandpa Ron, Isaac and I both did. When Isaac and I attended Jacobs Primary school, he dropped us off at the bus stop for our first day of 1st and 2nd grade. He waited in the what is now the Prestige, Painting & General Contracting parking lot until we had gotten on the bus and he’d wave at us until we couldn't see him anymore. Every day he would ask me how I was doing in school, me being a 1st grader I always had very important things to tell him, I told him all my struggles and at the end of the day the only thing that he seemed to remember was how I was behind in my “letters packet”. At the end of the school day he would be in the line of cars with his big red pick-up truck to pick us up from school. We would go back to his house and immediately sit down at the counter because we knew exactly what time it was, snack time.

When we were together we were invincible, us against the world. I’d look up to him, not only because he was 6’4, but because he was my grandpa. I have clear memories of him picking me up from school, playing old school reggae music during our adventurous car rides. We’d always sing along to our favorites, sometimes turn the music up so loud the people in the cars next to us could hear it. When I would visit his apartment, the familiar smell of drywall and pennies would fill the air. It was my hideaway, my home away from home. My grandpa collected pennies in water jugs. He would say that one day they’d be worth more than just pennies. I loved it there, not only because he had a freezer filled with many flavors of ice cream to which he would often say to me “you can have all you can eat” but because it was our time to bond. For five years it was my mom, my dad, and my grandpa helping me to grow. Those are my favorite people, my role models. Being around my grandpa brought me such comfort and joy.