My Beautiful Madness
2003-04-27 - mp3's collection
I am currently writing a book called "My Beautiful Madness" but am slightly worried about the style I have chosen to write it in. The story concerns an 18 year old young man who cares for his family using immoral methods. He is also mentally unstable. I decided to write the book in the first person because when I tried to do it in the narrative it wasn't quite working as well as I wanted it to. Below is the prologue. I'd really appreciate it if anyone could give me feedback as to the style. It is only the first draft in the first person so it's obviously not publishing material yet - I'm just not sure whether it will be understood. Also, please note that my grammer is a lot better than what is depicted here - but the character isn't as grammatical, neither can he use conventional descriptives. Think of it as a diary of sorts - in that the character is relaying the events according to him.
Please be as brutally honest as you like - I can't get better if I don't recieve constructuive criticism. : )
PROLOGUE
He would come home at night and argue with mum and sometimes make her bruised. I used to think that she deserved it. Dad said that women were like dogs and they had to be tamed and belted when they did something wrong. I never had any reason to question that. Especially since I hated mum sometimes. She was always shouting at my dad and calling him a bastard. If anyone at school ever called me a bastard I punched them in the face. Why shouldn�t dad be the same with mum when she called him names?
I never understood why she was always getting at him. She once told me that dad was a shit head for having sex with Sharon Turner at number nineteen. But then dad told me that mum was frigid and men need to have sex or their privates swell up and burst.
One day dad came home and hit mum on the side of the head for spending all the benefit money on stocking the freezer up for Christmas when he didn�t have any cider. He said he was going to live with Sharon Turner in a flat nearer to the town centre because she never called him a bastard and gave him blow-jobs every time he wanted them and made sure there was enough money for cider.
Mum didn�t even try to stop him. She curled up like a baby in the corner, looking a bit like she was dying with all the blood running down her face, and cried quietly. My sisters were at school but I stayed at home to help mum bake the fairy cakes for Christmas Tea. I felt lucky that I was there to say goodbye.
He lifted me up, put his face against mine and wiped away my tears with his cheek. His face was unshaven and prickly and it hurt a bit but I didn�t really care. He kissed me on the forehead and said that I was the man of the house now and had to look after mum and my sisters, even though they were all older than me.
Men have responsibilities, he said, and that women were useless and wouldn�t be able to cope without a man to make sure they were alright.
I loved him more than ever. He had the most beautiful face I had ever seen. He was powerful and strong and rugged, but his eyes seemed boyish and sad. He let me cry on his shoulder for a minute, then put me down on the sofa. He left saying that he�d be back to see us on Christmas morning. He didn�t take anything with him but mum said later that�s because he�d taken all his best clothes to Sharon Turners� bit by bit.
Christmas was only a week away. My sisters came home from the last day of term and stood in the kitchen making mum laugh and calling dad words much worse than �bastard�. I sat on the sofa where he�d left me, hoping that he�d come back, saying that Sharon Turner was no substitute for his family, but he didn�t.
Me and all the women were awake at six on Christmas morning, opening our presents. There wasn�t much but everyone was happy. The girls were happy with their make-up kits and sparkly nail polish and selection boxes. Mum was happy with her huge bottle of perfume from Woolworths. I would have been happy with my felt tip pens and bumper writing pad if dad was there � but he wasn�t. I pretended I was happy because Dad told me that I had to be strong and look after the useless women. All morning mum was in the kitchen making Christmas dinner, smoking and laughing and being too glad that Dad wasn�t there. Neither did he come. I think mum was secretly upset because during the night I could hear her crying through the wall. I wondered why he didn�t want to see us, today of all days, but there were no proper answers.
A week later there was a rumour that Sharon Turner was pregnant and that her and my dad weren�t living near the town centre but had moved a really long way away where nobody could call my dad a bastard or Sharon Turner a slag.
I was eleven on the second of February. Dad had been gone for six weeks and no-one knew where he was. I laid in bed that night and knew he was never coming back. I thought about the responsibilities and if being the man of the house meant I had to be exactly like my dad. I thought whilst it got dark outside and the pretty fairies and the evil goblins began a bloody war on the ceiling.
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all words �NFH 2003
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