La Dispute: A Short Story

It was around 5 o’clock in the evening when I arrived home one day. I walked in my room and proceeded to taking off that itchy shirt and those restrictive skinny jeans. I then decided to put on the laziest articles of clothing I could find. Making my way towards the bed, I grabbed my I-pod, put in the earphones in and put my I-pod to play random songs with every intention of them soothing me to sleep. As I sprawled out on my bed hoping to sleep till the next century, a song came on that I had yet to hear. As I looked to the title of the song I saw it was titled King Park by the band La Dispute. I thought nothing of it, till I heard the lyrics. The lyrics to this song convey a tragic story in which the words sung emote a strong message that

The song identifies where the killer had escaped to and who he was in the lyrics by saying, “Not far away the shooter holed up in a hotel near to the highway with a friend and the gun. That same gun. He’d fled immediately but was identified by the witnesses, his picture on TV. Only twenty years old, they called him “Grandpa.” He was older than the others by a year, maybe two.” At this point in the story, I thought that it was going to end up like every other drive by story, he was going to be caught by the cops and then arrested. The story then, to my dismay, took a turn for the unexpected. It turned out that the killer was filled with remorse and was having an inner battle with himself as he was hiding away in that hotel room. The guilt eventually got to him and at the end of the song it ends with the killer screaming, “Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself. Can I ever be forgiven cuz I killed that kid? It was an accident I swear it wasn’t meant for him! And If I turn it on me, if I even it out, can I still get in or will they send me to hell? Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?” The song then ends shortly after that. Although it never mentions in the song if the killer actually does kill himself, it is implied that he

At first I just thought it was a song, but when I found out this song was based on an actually event, it just made it even more impacting. The lyrics of the song, like the ones mentioned, made me realize that life of person could easily be taken away just for being at the wrong place, at the wrong time. It also shed light on the opposite side of the barrel. It displays the deep remorse the killer felt because he killed that innocent kid, which it drove him to suicide. The most impacting line of the song to me was, “There is always a chance to rectify what you’ve taken, make your peace in the world.” It taught me that no matter what we have done, or however much remorse we might feel, there shall always be a consequence that we will have to pay in order to balance out our