Week 7 Story: Los Abandonados
Portfolio edition
Los Abandonados
Back in Colombia in the 1980s the drug war was just beginning to step up. The government had finally been taking a stance against the drug cartels. In Southern Colombia the police had begun to raid cartels and seize their land and break up their operations. Now, there was a cartel called "Los Abandonados" or "The Forsaken" and this was a family cartel. There were three sons who when their father died were fighting to be named the new family lead of the cartel. The three brothers while all had the same father, each had a different mother. Julio, the middle child, had a servant mother and he knew would never have the chance to take over the cartel so he always looked out for his younger brother Jose. The oldest, Pablo, was an erratic soul and would rather see one his brother die than lose the chance of running the family business.
Pablo heard that his father was favoring because his mother was his favorite and was his current wife. Pablo decided that he needed to kill his youngest brothers mother so he began to come up with a plan. He called up his first man, the captain, and told him that he is going to invite his youngest brother over and send the captain to his youngest brothers home and light it on fire with his wife there. When Jose received the invite he was worried because he hasn't heard from his older brother in over 3 months, so he called up Julio and asked him to come with.
Julio warned his brother to make sure his mother was safe before they went over their that night, because Pablo could be up to no good. Jose called his guards and ordered them to watch over the house and her tonight, and if anything happened to use the secret tunnel inside the house to get her out.
The two brothers hopped in their car and head over to the oldest brothers residence. When they got there and entered the house Jose noticed that the captain was gone and made a worried look at Julio. Pablo was confident now especially since he had both the brothers under his roof, and their would be no one to protect his youngest brothers mother.
Reading Notes-
Prince Vidura was always the wiser brother of the three but since his mother was a servant he was never thought to be worthy of sitting on the throne. He told his brother Brima about the plans of his other step brother Prince Duryodhana. They notice that all the furniture is soaked in oil, and they begin to fear that the king is planning on setting them on fire. Prince Vidura dug a tunnel out of the castle in case this happened, and covered it up well. The prince waited for a good night and set the castle on fire. It also caught fire of another palace. They thought they had succeeded but the queen escaped. There were two bodies that were discovered and they thought it was them but it was actually two lowly civilians. This story I wanted to use the three brothers relationship as the primary focus.
For my story I wanted to use something similar but also turn it into my own. I decided a drug cartel would be an interesting twist to the original story. I took the brothers from the original story and applied them with the same problem that faced them in the real story. However, the location changes and goes to something a little more exciting and dangerous.
Bibliography-
Hello Phillip,
ReplyDeleteI liked your story and thought the 'drug cartel' spin on the original was a creative idea! The characters and elements of the story matched really nicely with the original plot. To help the flow of the plot in the story, I would add more information about the brothers and their own mothers to help clear up some confusion. Maybe giving the moms more storyline and naming them to reduce redundancy.
Hi Phillip.
ReplyDeleteGreat job. I love the character descriptions. I found the original story intriguing, so I am happy that you chose it for your writing. For the end of this story maybe you could write in past tense. Like "After the incident, Jose was furious and swore he was going to kill Pablo." And you could add a dramatic description of what Jose does to Pablo. "Jose and Pablo were never on good terms afterwards." Or, "Jose and Pablo ended up getting into a fistfight, which ironically solved their conflict and they were cool afterwards." Idk, these are just some ideas. Your ending is not bad. It leaves the reader curious about what happens next. So if you want to leave the readers with that cliffhanger, ignore my ideas.
I enjoyed reading this story! Good luck with the rest of the semester.