Sunday, September 7, 2008

The End to Abuse by Chris A

David, get out of this house your worthless and no one loves you,” screamed David’s mother, as she chased him out of the house with a baseball bat.

David limped away for his leg was severely bruised from being pushed down the stairs. He left “home” and hopped on a shuttle flight out to the battle training school. There he planned to meet his friend Ender who he had met in school. They had only known each other for a year when Ender got the chip removed from his head, and he was called to go to the battle training school.

When David arrived at the training school he went to the battle simulator where he found Ender about to enter a battle with the rest of his team. He called out to Ender.

“Hey Ender,” and Ender turned around quickly, and saw David walking towards him.
“I’ll be in in a minute,” Ender said to his team captain. Who glanced back and signaled that was alright.
He ran up to David and was about to give him a big hug when he realized he didn’t want to get made fun of by the older boys. He stopped in front of David, and shook his hand.

“Hello,” Ender said.

“Hello,” said David.

“How have things at home been?” asked Ender.

“There not the best, the abuse has still been going on but school is good and I like my teacher, Ms. Snicker-doodle, and how are things here at the battle training school going?” asked David.

“They are going pretty good,” replied Ender, “I’ve already been boosted up to the next army, right now I am in salamander army,” replied Ender.

As They were talking David glanced around at the room he was in, it was a long hallway with different colored light strips all over the floor, some of which were going the same direction while other turned and went down a separate hall way.

“You’re not really supposed to be here,” Ender said.
“I’ll quickly go back to my room and grab you my spare battle suit.” said Ender.

David pulled on the battle suit and they both quickly ran into the battle room just as the battle was starting.

David had never been in a battle room before so he wasn’t really sure what to do. After a few minutes he realized that he needed to shoot the other team. They had run in so quickly that David had not noticed the shape of the battle area; it was like being inside a big ball. The best part was he was floating. They were all wearing what looked to be blue jumpsuits with weird shaped helmets. David started shooting away and he fired off twelve shots before he finally hit someone, and by that time one arm and one leg were already frozen.
Ender came floating over to him and they hid behind a wall for a little while and talked about what had gone on since the last time they had seen each other. Ender talked about what his experience at battle training school had been like and how much better he had gotten at battle training than he had been when he first started.

“Its really hard not having seen my family in over a year now,” said Ender

“Sometimes I dream about my sister and my mother,” Ender said gloomily.

David started talking about how the abuse at home was still the same and how much he needed to leave that place. He also explained why he had come.

“I decided to leave my house after the last incident, I was at home doing my math homework when my mother got a phone call from my teacher, before she even found out the reason she was calling, she immediately thought I got in trouble, she came over to me slapped me and brought me to the top of the stairs where she called me names and then pushed me making me fall down the stairs,” said David with his head down. Ender was shocked the expression on his face showed that he felt much sorrow for David. “I couldn’t take it anymore so I left and I didn’t really have any place to go so I came to see you,” said David.
“I don’t want you to go back there,” Ender said. “I’m going to go to the commander of the training school and ask him if you can stay.”
After the battle Ender went to the head of the battle training school and pleaded for the commander to let David stay. The commander finally gave in when Ender mentioned how much abuse David had gone through. David was relieved that he wouldn’t have to go back to his home, and was glad he could help in the fight in the future war against the buggers.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My reaction to the story was I was surprised. I thought at first ender was going to try and have his family take him in. then I realized he was going to try and have him to stay there. After reading it I felt there could have been more to the details and more to the dialogue with ender and David, and with the commander. I could kind of picture the big ball, but I didn’t know if there was anything else in it, or the floating thing I couldn’t really picture. The story made me think of how weird it was for David would just leave.

The dialogue was authentic because they were longtime friends and they were just catching up. And the dialogue with the commander was authentic because he was begging to let David stay so he had to add in the abuse even though he just met David.
“David, get out of this house your worthless and no one loves you,” screamed David’s mother, as she chased him out of the house with a baseball bat. This was my favorite line because it pushed David over the edge. It did seem odd that she would chase him out the front door with the bat because neighbors would have seen what was going on and would have known about the abuse. Other than that it was a good line and an important one too.
One thing that confused me was the ball arena thing. How could they float? And was there anything else in there. Another was the rank thing, the salamander thing. What are all of the different levels for them? And is the salamander level good? And back to the chased out thing, it confused me as to why it was out the front door where everybody could have seen it, rather than in the back door where nobody would have seen it.
One piece of advice is to put more detail in the dialogue. Make the conversations longer and add more important sentences. Also add some more detail to the arena ball, I was so confused when he talked about that because I could picture it, but I also couldn’t picture it.