Gangster

Hey! I just wanted to understand why people join gangs - and what lengths people go to to prove their loyalty... I know people in gangs, but I hope I made this realistic enough!

Please comment, or like, or criticise - whichever, because it'll all be helpful to me in the long run :)

1

"You get one deep cut, maim him for life. Geddit?" Juanita said, smacking a piece of gum loudly.

Jodie wondered how it was possible for someone with practically only one tooth to chew so viciously. Juanita Carlos had lost so many teeth in so many fights that the enamel was scared to grow back. Jodie figured her teeth had gone on strike, resulting in Juanita, or The One, as she liked to be called, resembling a cartoonish one-toothed baby.

With a glare.

And a tattoo on her cheek.

Some baby.

"A deep cut WHERE?" Jodie didn't mean to raise her voice, but honestly, this was getting ridiculous. Juanita was crazy. Everyone knew that.

"On the forehead, like in Inglorious Basterds. Ever seen it?" Juanita asked, almost genially, which was weird considering the squeamish situation.

Jodie nodded. "But only the first five minutes. After that, it was gross."

Juanita's eyes steeled. "And you wanna be a Scar? You got bad dreams watching Brad Pitt cut people and I had sweet and romantic ones." She poked her. "Do the math."

"I... I really want to be a Scar," Jodie whispered, reaching for the blade Juanita proffered.

"Then prove it, honey." Juanita's eyes were challenging her.

Jodie looked down at the blue-eyed girl squirming under Juanita's weight on the muddy Rose Park grass; the same girl that had stolen Juanita's boyfriend. . .

The girl that wouldn't be able to recognize her Freddy Kruger face when Jodie was done with her.

2

They called him Panther; even his own mother did. His eyes were a deep set, coal-black, with slivers of honey-gold in them, and his hair fell to his shoulders like an inky black curtain of silk.

When Panther got mad, you knew. When Panther got mad, he got you.

All the Scars knew that. It was their motto, their mantra, what kept them in line. You screw with Panther and you might as well be six feet under already. Panther didn't take nonsense from anybody, even The One was afraid of him. He had an aura, a tangible presence. You felt him before you saw him enter a room.

And boy, did Jodie feel him. He scared her to death but had the sex appeal of a temple of Greek Adonises.

"Jodie." Her name rolled off his tongue like a decadent sweet. "Juanita says you've got potential."

It wasn't a compliment. It was an unemotional statement. He might as well have been telling her that the sky was partly cloudy for all the emotion he showed.

Jodie kept quiet, a trickle of sweat slowly making its way down her neck. Panther scared her. Even now, laid back on a tattered sofa in his biking boots and black suit, he managed to intimidate her.

That was another thing about the Panther: He always wore a black suit and boots. It didn't matter that he was nineteen and it certainly didn't matter that the closest he'd gotten to an office was Microsoft Office Word. The suit was his little idiosyncrasy.

"I have something for you."

Panther's voice snapped Jodie out of her thoughts. She looked into his soulless eyes.

"What is it?" Jodie croaked, hating herself for sounding so childish. Why couldn't she impress this man, this being?

"I have a name for you. Your next hit, you could call it."

It took Jodie a while to realize that he'd left the couch and was currently standing right before her. Goosebumps pimpled her arms.

Panther's eyes were trained on hers. He was so close that she could see the tiny black dots of peach fuzz growing back on his jaw; the small scar along his eyebrow, and the miniscule tat of a panther underneath his right ear.

He leaned in and whispered into her ear, sending a shiver down a spine.

3

Colin Jackson whistled a tune as he exited The Extra Listen music store, locking up after himself. It was pitch black outside and he could just make out the hourglass silhouettes of the hookers that peppered the streets at this time.

He wasn't in the mood for any of them because for the first in his life, he felt good, normal; human. He wasn't a gangbanger anymore. He wasn't in and out of prison like a weird Groundhog Day. He had a life. His mother could smile at him again.

And it was all because of Nicole Fuentes - Nicky to her friends. She'd completely changed his life because she'd seen something in him. And now he was going to marry her, bring her home to see his family.

He smiled to himself as he waited for the late bus home. Nicky was his dream girl, and soon she'd be the mother of his kids. He couldn't wait.

Colin's sixth sense was awakened by a sudden movement to his left. He clenched his fist, hoping it wasn't a schoolboy ruffian wanting to steal the little cash he had on him.

He felt a sharp pain in his chest, the familiar tingle of a bullet making contact with his body - the only difference was that this was a fatal wound.

Falling down to his knees, he tried to identify the person that did this, the person that had ended his life with one pull of a trigger. His eyes searched and searched as the blood ran freely from the gaping wound.

He heard voices; a man's... and a girl's.

"You've proved your worth, Jo," the man's rumbling voice said - but the girl... she was crying. Colin wanted to know why. Did she care?

Colin didn't recognize the man, but his eyes were shutting anyway...

Jodie Jackson cried her eyes out. What had she just done?

She was a Scar.

But at what price?

THE END