Okay, I know I said I was hesitant to post my work online for fear of my ideas being stolen. Well, I came up with a story I could post. Why? Because the idea has already been stolen! For one of my workshops we had to read a short story called “The Hit Man” I don’t know who wrote it because I sold the book back years ago.
The plot was this: You follow a hit man through his life. His birth, his first memory, his first child, who becomes a killer too, etc. And that’s basically it. The assignment for the class was to pick a different character and do the same thing, follow it through its life. Someone did a watermelon, another did an ant. I think there was a nurse too, but I’m not sure. I wrote about the ice cream man. I didn’t take the assignment that seriously. The last part references “The Hit Man.” Anyway, here it is:
The Ice Cream Man
By Lauren Correy
First Memory
When the electricity goes out in the Ice Cream Man’s home, he runs to the freezer to eat all the ice cream before it melts. His parents laugh and join in.
Childhood
The Ice Cream Man rides his bike around the neighborhood after the ice cream truck basking in the music.
School Fundraiser
The Ice Cream Man’s class sells the most magazines and they all get little ice cream cups as a reward. The Ice Cream Man hands them out, asking which flavor each student would like although there is only flavor: vanilla.
First Job
He sets up his own ice cream stand. It is the middle of winter and nobody comes so he eats it all.
Girlfriend
Dulcia Helado is standing at the counter in a ice cream shop. She and the Ice Cream Man get into a conversation about ice cream flavors. They buy their first place within a week.
Death of Parents
During the great snowstorm of the century, the Ice Cream Man goes outside with Dulcia and makes snow cones with syrup, soda, and snow. Then they go inside to cuddle and tell stories.
Meanwhile, the roof caves in in the house of the Ice Cream Mans parents. When they are found, they most closely resemble popsicles.
Second Job
The Ice Cream Man uses the inheritance money from his parents to buy a brand new ice cream truck. He starts his first route at six in the morning but is mobbed by sleepy looking parents with raw eggs. He waits until nine to continue working.
Work
Every day kids flock to the sound of his truck, a modern version of the pied piper. Sometimes he wouldn’t have the kind of ice cream a kid wanted and they would cry. That’s life, he would tell the parents.
The Gun
Some kids spray paint the ice cream truck. The Ice Cream Man buys a pistol so he can scare them off it they come back. Dulcia objects to the gun but the Ice Cream Man tells her he never plans on actually using it.
Problems
The Ice Cream Man cuts his finger on a shard of ice. In his truck the freezer is breaking down and he only has two songs to play “Popsicle Parade” and the “Sprinkle Twinkle”.
The doctor says that the Ice Cream Man needs to lose a lot of weight. Less ice cream and more exercise.
Dulcia doesn’t want to get married and doesn’t want to have kids. He thinks she stays with him because she likes the free ice cream.
Monopoly
The Ice Cream Man realizes driving an ice cream truck is a lot like a game of Monopoly. The same circular route day after day, only he never passes go. He never collects two-hundred dollars. But he collects an amazing amount of candy wrappers.
Revenge
The Ice Cream Man takes Jerry around with him in his truck and shows him some tricks of the trade. Jerry gets his own truck and steals part of the Ice Cream Man ’s route. The Ice Cream Man slashes Jerry’s tires while he is working in his truck. The Ice Cream Man has to go to court and pay a six-hundred dollar fine.
Games
He drives repeatedly around the schools when class is in session and leaves during the kid’s lunch time.
The Ice Cream Man drives down every other street in a neighborhood, and then comes back along the streets that he missed. He wonders if the music of his truck drives any parents crazy or if the kids become frantic when they hear the truck everywhere around them and don’t see it.
Sometimes the Ice Cream Man stops, waits for the kids to appear and get close, then drives ten more feet, stops, drives twelve more feet, stops…
Songs of Death
Dulcia sits on the couch and hums “Popsicle Parade.” The Ice Cream Man asks her to stop. She doesn’t. He needs the song to stop so he gets the pistol and points it at her yelling at her to stop. She refuses. The Hit Man’s kid hops in the window, takes the gun from the Ice Cream Man, and wastes him.
Lesson
Don’t drive around the Hit man’s kid’s school in the ice cream truck all day, make him run after the it, and then not have his favorite flavor.
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