tyrese tshabalala; d6

kousei ♚ Mentor 2,011 POSTS Pronouns: He/Him/His last seen May 7, 2022 17:23:18 GMT -5 now and forever	tyrese tshabalala; d6 Oct 2, 2021 12:04:20 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by kousei ♚ on Oct 2, 2021 12:04:20 GMT -5 Name: Tyrese 'Tee' Tshabalala Age: 18 District: 6 Gender: Male
	Last Edit: Oct 17, 2021 16:38:54 GMT -5 by kousei ♚

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now and forever

tyrese tshabalala; d6 Oct 2, 2021 14:06:52 GMT -5

Quote

Post by kousei ♚ on Oct 2, 2021 14:06:52 GMT -5

T E E

Poverty had shattered his moral compass and left him with nothing but broken glass - each shard a broken promise buried beneath his skin.

("One day, I'm gonna be a doctor.")

He'd failed school.

("I wanna help people.")

He wondered how many blunt blades he replaced.

("I wanna make my dad proud.")

They shot Dad when he was ten.

Every time he entered the graveyard to stand above his father's tombstone, he was chased out by ghosts. His mother went every day, without him of course because she wouldn't force him to go. If he was being honest, he was never home enough for her to force him to do anything. Every night he sat on the block with his set, smoking and watching his worries melt beneath his fingertips. It made life, full of contradictions and knots, seem simple; that was good enough for him.

Every peacekeeper recognized him, of course, he looked like his dad. They were both short, only standing at five-eight. But his father had been lean and built, in life, his clothes clung tightly to his muscles while Tee was skinny. Tee never bothered pretending to be something he wasn't; he wasn't strong. That's why he always carried a shank - his father's influence never went away.

Shit, he figured he had to stand out from the shadow of a dead man somehow. That's where the braids came in. He'd got that done when he was eleven, then he put white beads in them so they sat on the end. It invited the occasional joke.

"Y'know, when someone wants to smoke you it'll be light work to spot you thanks to your hair." One of the boys in his set told him when they sat on the block. Drinking and slinging dope to whoever needed it.

Fear was masked with a lazy grin as he motioned to the hilt of his knife. "Let 'em try it," he replied, cocky.

It was too easy to act like a big man when you held the power to maim and kill. Too many idiots died that way, shit, he would probably die that way. And he'd leave his mother behind, visiting his tombstone every Sunday before getting back to the house and throwing holy water around the rooms as she sang old songs in Zulu. Just like she does with his father. His mother taught him their mother tongue after his father died. So he could sing along when she sang in his memory.

His mother was a spiritual woman; Tee admired her for it. He figured it was just another coping mechanism for living in such a shithole. He had weed, others had morphling, some had drink, and so on. She'd given him his first beaded necklace when he was five. It was small, wooden, and painted black - she'd made it herself and told him it would bring him good luck.

He supposed it worked, he'd lost three friends from his set in the past year. He'd lost count of the number of friends he'd lost growing up. And he didn't always lose them because their blood got spilled into the pavement. Sometimes the Peacekeepers got them. Everyday he wondered who would get him - the boys in white or the boys from the other block - but no one ever did. He supposed that's what good luck meant.

Sometimes, he'd look at the sky and wonder where everything went wrong. How he went from wannabe doctor to killer; hands destined to hold a scalpel slowly became calloused and fashioned for holding knives and machetes.

He'd killed an opp when he was seventeen, someone from a rival set who was slinging in their block. He couldn't have been much older than them. Hungry for street cred and looking to mock them. "Nah, let's get him," Red, another boy from his set, told him.

In the heat of the moment, Tee agreed. Within an hour the two of them were armed and they were running at him. It was clumsy, uncoordinated, but he was too slow. By the time he'd pulled his own weapon out, Red had tackled him to the floor and was holding his arms behind his back.

"Fucking do it, Tee!"

He fucking did it.

Once in his gut, and his serrated blade disappeared up to the hilt. Tee pulled it out, then shoved it back in for good measure.

Bloody clothes burned, weapons put down the drain - no one wanted to fuck with them again.

Word got out in whispers, rumors quickly metamorphosed into legend. "Did you hear what Tee and Red did? They fucking killed Marco man."

Truth be told, he liked the respect.

"You lot gotta be more like Tee man, he's putting in fucking work and earning his keep."

A pat on the back, an uneasy smile - he figured it was worth it.

Life was a cycle, a wheel that kept turning as cyclical events repeated themselves but with different actors. The night he stabbed Marco, he smoked a joint beneath the stars and wondered how his Dad felt when he first killed someone. Did his hands shake the way Tee's did? Did he stumble as he ran from the scene of grief?

Tee knew a scarlet blood trail clung to his father's heels. He never understood the dichotomy, the man who tucked him into bed and wiped the tears from his eyes with one hand always held a gun in the other. But he'd seen him with his own eyes.

When his uncle died, he found his father strapped again. "Dad? He asked, his dad's eyes were red but he knew the shadow that fell over his eyes.

"I'll be back soon Ty, get to bed," he quickly put it in the pocket of his hoodie. "I just gotta deal with something."

"Why?

"Because if something happened to any of your brothers or sisters, I'd expect you to do the same."

And he never saw him again. Shot by the boys in white. Shot while he tried to run away.

Some bullshit.

Not all of his father's children went to the funeral. Some of their mothers wouldn't let them. Tee went, his mother went and six others went. He didn't know them all that well - just faces that looked like him. It was a bitter irony, for all his father's talk about avenging his flesh and blood, Tee wondered if his father even knew all his children. The older ones definitely didn't like him much, and their mothers hated him more.

He didn't talk to them much, growing up he didn't talk to anyone much. He was quiet and reserved. As a shy child, it meant he was the quiet kid in the back. As an eighteen-year-old killer, it meant he was intimidating. No one knew what he was thinking; he simply listened in cold silence. They never knew if he would shoot them or kiss them -- there was power in silence.

Power, money, respect; he lived an empty life for these three things.

elegant

Last Edit: Oct 17, 2021 16:38:16 GMT -5 by kousei ♚

kousei ♚ Mentor 2,011 POSTS Pronouns: He/Him/His last seen May 7, 2022 17:23:18 GMT -5 now and forever	tyrese tshabalala; d6 Oct 17, 2021 16:39:12 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by kousei ♚ on Oct 17, 2021 16:39:12 GMT -5 Done

Deleted 0 POSTS last seen Apr 30, 2024 10:37:34 GMT -5	tyrese tshabalala; d6 Oct 17, 2021 16:48:09 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2021 16:48:09 GMT -5 I feel like I'm accepting a future victor hgrpg gets another legend - welcome back dude!