Chloe Webster

[Cassarole]

Chloe Evangeline Webster
Ex-Con, College Dropout, Ex-Personal Trainer, Ex-Amateur Boxer, Ex-MMA Fighter, Ex-Security Guard, Vigilante

The story of Chloe Webster is not the beginning of a fairytale; Fairytales have morals and lessons that can lull children to sleep and teach them to be good people with high aspirations. If her story is anything, it's a nightmare. But sometimes, life is like that; for reasons no one can explain. Pain and trial lend to something more, something overall. And even though it is a story planted in tragedy, what grows from it will survive. It has to.

After a fall such as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling downstairs! - Alice in Wonderland

[Cassarole]

There is little significance that occurs to Chloe in her early years. She was born to Jacob "Bud" and April Webster October 13th, 1985 and grew up on the East side of outer rim of Chicago for what we can call her childhood. She attended school on occasion with average grades and remained a very quiet, solitary, occasionally stoic child in public. Besides being a little taller than her classmates, Chloe would be remembered as the girl with the long dark braid who wore the same three or four outfits each season and never ate lunch. Occasionally scraped or bruised, it wouldn't be until middle school that suspicions would be raised that she did not possess a happy home life.

In Chloe's life there were simple rules about her duties, set by a simple person:
1. If you want to go to school, you must wake yourself. No one is going to get up to hold your hand through life.
2. If you do not attend school, they will call home and waste my valuable time in telling me it's my responsibility to make you attend.
3. If you do not want to take the public bus, you will have to walk. I'm not wasting gas to drive to an elementary school. You will not take rides from others.
4. If I have to be told that you are not attending school, you will be punished until I know you have learned.
5. If I have to take a phone call about you, you will be punished until I know you have learned.
6. If I have to sign a letter about you, you will be punished until I know you have learned.
7. If I have to take time out of my schedule to go and talk to a teacher about you, you will be punished until I know you have learned.
8. No school can teach you better than the back of my hand.
9. No school needs me to give you money when I already pay taxes.
10. Breakfast and Lunch are for people that work for a living, not for people that sit around and color shitty pictures all day. Dinner is a gift and you will be thankful for it.
11. If you are not thankful, you will be punished until I know you have learned.
12. No friends are to come over during the day to distract your mother from her work or to steal our things.
13. You are not allowed to go to another person's house that I don't know what you're doing. Other people do not raise their children right.
14. I will not get to know anyone that I don't choose to know.
15. Do not ask me for toys. Toys do not put food on the table.
16. When I say shut up, I mean it. You have no ground to talk back to me.
17. You will come straight home after school and work on your chores. I can't have you prostituting yourself around Chicago.
18. If you are not home right after school, you will be punished until I know you have learned.
19. You will not distract your mother from her work. If you do something, you had better fix it yourself before I find out.
20. If you tell them that I hit you or your mother, I will kill you. You are replaceable. No one would miss you. No one would care.

[Cassarole]

If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. - Alice in Wonderland

October 10th, 1997

Bud, now in his third month of being unemployed as a luggage loader at Chicago/O'Hare is probably the angriest son of a bitch in town. And that's saying something for Chicago. Fired, not only for drinking on the job, but allegedly trying to push another woman into a closet for sexual favors. Like he'd -ever- sleep with a nig-. . . well. . . that part of the story isn't important. All the savings draining away out the neck of a whiskey bottle would be. Bills piling up, and not a lot of jobs to go around. Same story, different decade. Ol' Bud's "gracious leniency" is now completely gone and holds little tolerance for even a glance his way.

April, recently sporting a sling for her possibly now broken arm, is trying simply to survive. Too afraid to ask for help, the best she can manage is to get in the way; to act as a barrier for her Chloe. This isn't the life she wished for a child, but this is the life they know. Whatever kindness there is in a place like this, Chloe saw from her mother. A few days now before her twelfth birthday, April has finished sewing an old curtain into a costume for her daughter's Halloween party at school coming up. It's nice that the school does things like that for children, you can't exactly go door to door in the slums. Not that Bud would allow it. The past few years, she didn't have a costume, but the teachers would always bring a spare or two for those that can't afford the luxury, or simply forgot. Three years in a sheet for a toga, April was determined to break the trend.'The more normal she is, the better' she figured.

Wrapped in newspaper, it sits on the end of Chloe's bed waiting for her to come home.

But Bud is wandering home early today. The bar's kicked him out barely as he scuffled in. They called him on his tab. No more drinking until that cash comes back in. Drunk and disoriented, he's expecting that hot meal on the table when he wanders in at three in the afternoon. God protect the woman who doesn't start cooking dinner til five.

[Cassarole]

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.' - Alice in Wonderland

Locker combination: 17Left, 28Right, 54 Left
Get bag. Get sweater. Lock.
Run. They let you out two minutes late.
Make ten minute walk in 7 minute run.
Four O'clock, on the dot.
Board the Eastbound Bus 17 sixteen stops.
Walk three blocks up.
Walk two blocks over.
Don't give that man the rest of your bus change.
Don't say a word when he yells at you.
Keep your head down.
Get to the house.
One more street til Melody Lane.
Blue House, Red shutters.
White house, Brown shutters.
Walk up the steps of third house. Brick house. Black roof.

Why is there screaming?

-------------------------------------------------------
Chicago Police Docket: 100989-A9
Social Worker: Karen Freedmont
Suspect:
Name: Webster, Chloe E.
Sex: F
DOB: 10/13/1985
Age: 11

Suspect's Statement Taken at Arrest: (Transcribed from audio)

Webster, Chloe E.: Mama's in the corner, huddled. Eye's swollen up again. Blood on her face. Bud's hovering over her. Fists clenched, saying all those words I'm not supposed to. He didn't even hear me come in. That's a blessing, Mama'd say.

Detective Marsh Nabler: Where did you get the gun, Chloe?

Webster: Bud says not to talk to cops. That you people don't help nobody.

Nabler: Do you know what cops do?

Webster: You kill people that cause trouble. Well Bud caused a lot of trouble and you ain't did nothing.

Nabler: Where did you get the gun, Chloe?

Webster: Bud's gun is in his nightstand. It's black and heavy and he wears it when he goes out. I seen it lotsa times. Sometimes he clicks at me and Mama. He'd load it, then put it to my head. Or Mama's head. His own head.

Nabler: Did you know it was loaded?

Webster: I loaded it. I knew how to load it. Bullets in the box in the back of it. I can pull it back. Click that Safety. I seen him do it lotsa times.

Nabler: Why did you want to shoot him, Chloe? You know guns are bad, don't you?

Webster: Cops have guns. And you're supposed to be the good guys. Bud's not a good guy. He had a gun. He didn't need one no more.

Nabler: Did you mean to shoot him?

Webster: Yes Sir.

Nabler: Why did you shoot him?

Webster: Because that's what the good guys do to bad guys.

Nabler: Why didn't you call in the police?

Webster: Phone's in the kitchen. I'm not allowed to use the phone.

Nabler: Why didn't you go get help?

Webster: I didn't need it. I was gonna help Mama.

Nabler: Chloe, shooting is wrong, you know that don't you?

Nabler: Chloe?

Nabler: I think we're done here.

Webster: (inaudible)

Nabler: What was that?

Webster: Did I kill him?

Nabler: (papers shuffling) You clipped his shoulder. Shattered a part of a bone. But your father will live.

Webster: Can I go home now?

Nabler: No, You're not going home.

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