The Candy House by Joshua Pierre
This story was inspired by my time working in an apartment complex where there was a woman named Miss James. She was about 300 pounds and late on her rent every week for no reason. She had the money. She ran the “candy house” where all the little kids went to purchase candy, chips, soda, snacks, etc. but she also ran the drug trade in the complex where all the young teenagers (including her sons) were selling on the opposite ends of the complex. Now mind you, this was not a good place to be at after dark. Trust. Shit was turnt up on Gadsden Ave. But I wanted to tweak this story into something more dramatic and nuts:
A young man attempts to leave his mother’s home in the hood, without telling anyone in his family as the power structure shifts as his mother’s drug dealing increases, his half-siblings begin vying for power in the neighborhood, and the sexual relationships with the children and their mother begin to determine who is going to run the business as she tries to recruit more and more kids in the neighborhood. Our protagonist finds himself wanting to make friends outside of the hood and wants to create art. His siblings support this decision but don’t trust that he won’t snitch on the family because of his distaste for his mother and his refusal to sleep with her anymore. The mother also starts to put him in difficult situations forcing him to participate in the current war against a rival gang (a couple blocks away). It doesn’t help that the protagonist has made friends (beginning to fall for) with another boy in the rival gang. The family is worried he is going to fight against them and use him to get to the rival gang.
It’s hard to tell exactly what’s supposed to happen without ruining the story. Essentially the story originated as a part one of three that leads to the protagonist becoming a cop, going undercover, etc. but I found that the stories that were related to this one could stand on their own and would be unnecessary to connect. The only connection that would roll through the stories is once they are all books where this gang is a major gang in the overarching universe that will compete and battle against other characters from other stories. As a standalone screenplay, this story is contained to itself.
The role that matters the most in this story is the mother. She is a bad person (the real person was really sweet) but the complexity of her character is her ability to physically, emotionally, and mentally manipulate the people around her and those who rely on her. She’s a smiling face to anyone that doesn’t know her. But he is the true villain hiding in plain sight willing to kill and take anyone that stands in her way. Her kids look to her approval based on the way she raised them. Her only kid that looks outside of her approval is the protagonist, which is why his siblings don’t like him and he’s singled out most of the time (his mother singled him out the most to sleep with her whenever she’s lonely).
I can think of a few more things worth.saying at this point but I want to actually save it for the screenplay, so this is the treatment for The Candy House. Not too shabby for a crime drama huh?