At the suggestion of a new member, I looked at the tips they give at GTAForums for writing short stories, and came up with my own. We don't have the new section yet, so I am posting it here for now.
The Stone FaceBy Bill GillockJohn was sitting at the stoplight, waiting for the light to turn green. He looked up and saw a homeless man on the corner holding a sign. The sign was written on a piece of cardboard. He didn't notice what the sign said, but he did notice the look on the man's face. It was the look of fear.
Looking in his console, John found some spare change. He rolled down his window and got the man's attention. The homeless man approached his car and held out his hand to receive the offering. The man smiled and John felt a warm feeling in his heart as he looked up to see the light had turned green during the exchange.
The cars on his right had already gone through the intersection and were on their way when John re-inserted himself back into his own world and accelerated through the green light. The road he was on turned into a 2 lane road and people who were on his right had merged into his lane ahead of him. John looked out into the fields on either side and admired the green fields against the blue sky and floating puffy white clouds. Something caught his eye as it flew from a vehicle two cars in front of him. The object was then pushed into his lane by oncoming traffic, but he could not avoid hitting the object. The object punctured is right rear tire, forcing John to pull off on the shoulder of the road.
John got out of the car and stood in the ditch looking at his flat tire. While getting himself ready to change the tire, John took a moment to turnaround and admire the green field he was just recently speeding past. That is the moment when John saw something just on the other side of the fence in the field. It looked like just a normal rock, but something was strange about it. It looked like it had something carved in it. John reached down under the barbed wire fence and grabbed the rock. It was partly covered in dirt, so he rubbed it off. This revealed more of the carving. John thought it looked like something, but wasn't sure. He rotated it until he saw a face carved in the stone.
The expression on the face looked familiar, and it cause him to feel a little ill. Then he realized the expression was the same as the man he just gave some spare change too. As he looked into the eyes of the face carved in stone, he started to hear a voice. The voice said:
I discarded the stone face you are now holding because bad things were happening to me. No matter what I did, everything that happened to me was very disheartening. I began to feel like everything I had was gradually being taken away from me. I was on a wagon train heading to Colorado on the search for gold. I found this stone face in an old indian burial chamber. I found it very curious and put it in my bag right away. Not long after this, my wife was captured by Indians and killed. My wagon was then burned leaving only me, my horse and my pack containing this stone face and some other possessions. In my despair I started to look through the things I had left and actually started to look at this stone face. The face looked like the face of my wife as she was dragged away by the Indians. That is when I heard a voice in my head, and this is what it said:
I buried this stone face with my brother who died not long ago. I carved the stone to reveal the expression I saw on my brother before he was killed by a large Black Bear. Our tribe had seen many killed by the Black Bear. Being taken by a Black Bear was considered an honor. It was our sacrifice to Mother Earth for all the things she had given us. To be chosen by the Black Bear was an honor. But this was not the case for my brother. My brother loved his tribe and was always smiling when he came back from a hunt with a bounty for the tribe. But my brother was a little different than other men in the tribe, he would not share all of his kill evenly with the rest of the tribe. He would keep a little aside for his family. We all told him that it was not right, but he insisted. We did not say anything because the elders would not approve and we did not want our brother killed.
One day when I was on a hunt with my brother, we ran into a Black Bear. My brother started to run and the Black Bear chased him. The look of fear on his face as he ran off is the last I saw of my brother alive. We had a burial of what was left of his body and I carved his face of fear in this stone as I grieved his death.
I immediately cast the stone aside when I realized taking the stone face from the burial chamber put the stone in my possession and was the source of bad things happening.
John stood there on the side of the road looking into the stone face as the voice stopped. He dropped the stone and looked out to the field and the sky. John then realized the view of Mother Earth he was looking at was a gift and that it could not be possessed by anyone. He then thought of his own possessions. He remembered the money he just gave to the homeless person. His gift of spare change was no different than the bounty the Indians shared evenly with their tribe.
John looked up from the ditch at the flat tire on his car. He then realized the flat tire was his sacrifice for the gift of the beautiful view of the field.
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