stratocaster86
06-12-2009, 10:49 AM
Here is a chapter from a novel I'm writing but reads just like a short story.
Appreciate feedback, especially negative.
Cheers.
The kids in the next room are too loud, but we're used to it.
The kid in the other bed talking to me through muffle and nose blockage tells me that he honestly thought it was leprosy, honest to god he’s seen pictures. Tree men, fish men, elephant, whatever you want to call it, it will have comparison.
Tells me that at first, he had a life, and then he mentioned something about god to one of the adults thinking that he was safe from eavesdroppers. Was he? A kid with an orange for a nose was curious and didn’t like where this kid came from, something about his accent you see.
He mentioned faith and words of which the orange for a nose kid didn’t know the meaning, but hated the sound.
The kids next door are hyenas pinning down a weak lion whose been searching for food for several weeks because he’s not the alpha male anymore. But these lions always keep their dignity till death; they are our model for bravery aren’t they? Or...
We’ve been moved here two weeks prior because the other place was getting overcrowded.
The kid tells me what a meadow should look like and how you should run through it when the sun is shining on you and your family. You can run through meadows? Your mother will swing you round if you have enough momentum on approach but your father will do much better.
He tells me that without that stranger who walked in the other day, he would be dead. Such nice people only drop by when you have faith, it must’ve worked for him he tells me. That kid with the orange for a nose was designing his own destiny he tells me.
He’d read about leprosy in a book one of those nice women gave him, enticed him, ideas were flowing because the fat kid had mentioned it purely for fun, but we’re all hypochondriacs.
Then he found out it was a bacterial disease, so he would not de****ingcay.
Is this a new ritual at all?
The lion is padding around in circles, watching his tail and his nose. They’ll come in a line and ignore the buffalo, take bites like a rubber band, firing.... letting go. And the lion will look at you as if he does not give a ****. You shave that big bearded sheath off and he’s a just female.
Tells me his mother used to call him beautiful. Father used to call him his favourite son.
Right there and then, he refers to his god, says it as if I wasn’t there in the room, didn’t have my head in the pillow, actually calls him up like your main directory enquires but the guy isn’t there.
He can’t see right now because his face is a bandage. A quilt that protects him from looking at orange face and any other peculiar looking kid. A mesh is what binds his head together, breathing through sieve-like passages stitched by fast machines and tiny stitchmen.
And should I be worried?
The rubber bands eating at you are now making bigger, wirey holes in your side and you wonder what you’ll resort to. The buffalos are watching their young calves trying to stay out of the way as these docile, drunk things make easy sandwich meat. They’ll eat you alive, they don’t give a ****.
They’re not laughing yet though.
You just stare at this kid because he can’t stare back. He’s been here every hour possible, just stays quiet until confessions with nobody. He’s dissolving into his bed, the bandage blending with pale yellow of the sheets.
So I ask him where his god is.....Where?
He tells me that he is definitely not next door and that he left him back on that operating table.
The man paid £2000 for the kid’s skin graft. They had no choice but to take it from the kid’s ***. It’s so perfect down there, not marked or anything.
From now on, the half assed kid will be blessed with names ranging from whatever to whatever because he won’t be listening. When he finally listens he’ll be on the verge because through that mask is an irreparable, spoilt little soul that can only handle things through life’s ambitious methods.
I hope things work out. I cringe.
The lion is barking like a dog...... like the hyenas, not laughing. He’s exhausted from checking waterholes that are thirty miles apart, because he lies around most days digesting only protein.
He continues still to stare at the hyenas until they back off.
The kids are making some noise.
The man tells him that this place is not suffice, and asks the kid whether **** like this goes down often. He tells the man that he doesn’t give two ****s about them, only himself and ‘take me’ he pleads. Jealousy would kill several kids off, would cripple their little hearts like slaughtering pigs with hammer guns. Drop to the ground around the women’s knees, arms like jelly flopping at their dresses, soaking their skirts with salt drops. Some kids would be happy.
The skin was dying a slow death so the man saved him on the bridge, he wasn’t lucky at all. Paths involve no luck whatsoever, you wander off and you might get some, you do that and you'll lose some.
Every time he sits down it has to be soft, a cushion; a bed he tells me. The new shape means that you slant at the dinner table so one of your hips builds more muscle to counter the weakened side. It means that horrible feeling you get when you land on a muscle and it swings round to the other side of your bone. That gristle feeling you get, the picture in your head, the detailed muscle diagram in that book you studied, drawn perfectly.
Where is he now?
He takes his hand to his face and rubs the not so big side.
The hyenas howl but still don’t laugh and you’re about to be killed by a set of scum, a set of robbing socialites that rob you through the magazine you’re reading or the television set you’re watching. They smile back at you completely off their heads on baking powder, they laugh at you and you love them for it; you adore them for it. Then they take your bank account details when you’re not looking and chop up your credit cards but you still drop flowers at their funeral.
Honest to god leprosy...but no....
He tells me that on his third day here, it all happened due to the orange kid.
He could hear them say they’d never done it before, never tried. You’re the lab rat in the twelve inch cube of perspex. When they pin you down they use a thin pillow case as binding. They spit in your eyes. The orange rat sits further away from the rest; half pretending he’s sorry so that he doesn’t have to look you in the eyes. Rich kid is the new meat sandwich.
When the operator takes his razor blade out you never really know because you’re blindfolded; you think it’s all slap and tickle. I’ll have my bags packing into tomorrow you think, a brief few hours of annoyance you think.
Someone visits the bathroom and displays an air freshener. The phenol is enough to do the trick.
So slit by slit one side of your face is paper cuts and the other is capillary ridden. They pour you in some, you absorb naturally because it smells nice and it’s cool on skin. The blindfold becomes white with sunlight so it isn’t all that bad.
Holding you down, they let ten minutes go.
You walk away and the nurses say nothing at all.
From that day on, you’re allergic to fragrances of any sort through contact.
So I go next door.
I take stupid fat kids’ acoustic guitar with me and I make myself heard.
The buffalo finally feel sorry for you; they take up charge when a stray one starts at a calf. The buffalo are not your friends yet. You watch two dozen well fed travellers swell in slow motion in front of your face. The cameramen are startled and start their engine.
When it finishes, you have no one to thank because you still find that calf appetizing. You’re wounded but you’ll live, you second chanced your way out of a dignified death.
When I fill the room with moving pockets of air I finally get some peace. I stare at the little boy in front of me, blindfold still attached.
This is how I met my apprentice.
I’d known him for five years but never gotten a word out of him.
He was fine until we moved here.
Never spoke a word.
I told him to get up because he needed to wash that **** out, still crying.
I drag him up, I clean him.
He sits next to me for the next eleven years.
He walks in my shadow round the clock.
Not one rich man was needed.
I got my second friend in seven years.
Appreciate feedback, especially negative.
Cheers.
The kids in the next room are too loud, but we're used to it.
The kid in the other bed talking to me through muffle and nose blockage tells me that he honestly thought it was leprosy, honest to god he’s seen pictures. Tree men, fish men, elephant, whatever you want to call it, it will have comparison.
Tells me that at first, he had a life, and then he mentioned something about god to one of the adults thinking that he was safe from eavesdroppers. Was he? A kid with an orange for a nose was curious and didn’t like where this kid came from, something about his accent you see.
He mentioned faith and words of which the orange for a nose kid didn’t know the meaning, but hated the sound.
The kids next door are hyenas pinning down a weak lion whose been searching for food for several weeks because he’s not the alpha male anymore. But these lions always keep their dignity till death; they are our model for bravery aren’t they? Or...
We’ve been moved here two weeks prior because the other place was getting overcrowded.
The kid tells me what a meadow should look like and how you should run through it when the sun is shining on you and your family. You can run through meadows? Your mother will swing you round if you have enough momentum on approach but your father will do much better.
He tells me that without that stranger who walked in the other day, he would be dead. Such nice people only drop by when you have faith, it must’ve worked for him he tells me. That kid with the orange for a nose was designing his own destiny he tells me.
He’d read about leprosy in a book one of those nice women gave him, enticed him, ideas were flowing because the fat kid had mentioned it purely for fun, but we’re all hypochondriacs.
Then he found out it was a bacterial disease, so he would not de****ingcay.
Is this a new ritual at all?
The lion is padding around in circles, watching his tail and his nose. They’ll come in a line and ignore the buffalo, take bites like a rubber band, firing.... letting go. And the lion will look at you as if he does not give a ****. You shave that big bearded sheath off and he’s a just female.
Tells me his mother used to call him beautiful. Father used to call him his favourite son.
Right there and then, he refers to his god, says it as if I wasn’t there in the room, didn’t have my head in the pillow, actually calls him up like your main directory enquires but the guy isn’t there.
He can’t see right now because his face is a bandage. A quilt that protects him from looking at orange face and any other peculiar looking kid. A mesh is what binds his head together, breathing through sieve-like passages stitched by fast machines and tiny stitchmen.
And should I be worried?
The rubber bands eating at you are now making bigger, wirey holes in your side and you wonder what you’ll resort to. The buffalos are watching their young calves trying to stay out of the way as these docile, drunk things make easy sandwich meat. They’ll eat you alive, they don’t give a ****.
They’re not laughing yet though.
You just stare at this kid because he can’t stare back. He’s been here every hour possible, just stays quiet until confessions with nobody. He’s dissolving into his bed, the bandage blending with pale yellow of the sheets.
So I ask him where his god is.....Where?
He tells me that he is definitely not next door and that he left him back on that operating table.
The man paid £2000 for the kid’s skin graft. They had no choice but to take it from the kid’s ***. It’s so perfect down there, not marked or anything.
From now on, the half assed kid will be blessed with names ranging from whatever to whatever because he won’t be listening. When he finally listens he’ll be on the verge because through that mask is an irreparable, spoilt little soul that can only handle things through life’s ambitious methods.
I hope things work out. I cringe.
The lion is barking like a dog...... like the hyenas, not laughing. He’s exhausted from checking waterholes that are thirty miles apart, because he lies around most days digesting only protein.
He continues still to stare at the hyenas until they back off.
The kids are making some noise.
The man tells him that this place is not suffice, and asks the kid whether **** like this goes down often. He tells the man that he doesn’t give two ****s about them, only himself and ‘take me’ he pleads. Jealousy would kill several kids off, would cripple their little hearts like slaughtering pigs with hammer guns. Drop to the ground around the women’s knees, arms like jelly flopping at their dresses, soaking their skirts with salt drops. Some kids would be happy.
The skin was dying a slow death so the man saved him on the bridge, he wasn’t lucky at all. Paths involve no luck whatsoever, you wander off and you might get some, you do that and you'll lose some.
Every time he sits down it has to be soft, a cushion; a bed he tells me. The new shape means that you slant at the dinner table so one of your hips builds more muscle to counter the weakened side. It means that horrible feeling you get when you land on a muscle and it swings round to the other side of your bone. That gristle feeling you get, the picture in your head, the detailed muscle diagram in that book you studied, drawn perfectly.
Where is he now?
He takes his hand to his face and rubs the not so big side.
The hyenas howl but still don’t laugh and you’re about to be killed by a set of scum, a set of robbing socialites that rob you through the magazine you’re reading or the television set you’re watching. They smile back at you completely off their heads on baking powder, they laugh at you and you love them for it; you adore them for it. Then they take your bank account details when you’re not looking and chop up your credit cards but you still drop flowers at their funeral.
Honest to god leprosy...but no....
He tells me that on his third day here, it all happened due to the orange kid.
He could hear them say they’d never done it before, never tried. You’re the lab rat in the twelve inch cube of perspex. When they pin you down they use a thin pillow case as binding. They spit in your eyes. The orange rat sits further away from the rest; half pretending he’s sorry so that he doesn’t have to look you in the eyes. Rich kid is the new meat sandwich.
When the operator takes his razor blade out you never really know because you’re blindfolded; you think it’s all slap and tickle. I’ll have my bags packing into tomorrow you think, a brief few hours of annoyance you think.
Someone visits the bathroom and displays an air freshener. The phenol is enough to do the trick.
So slit by slit one side of your face is paper cuts and the other is capillary ridden. They pour you in some, you absorb naturally because it smells nice and it’s cool on skin. The blindfold becomes white with sunlight so it isn’t all that bad.
Holding you down, they let ten minutes go.
You walk away and the nurses say nothing at all.
From that day on, you’re allergic to fragrances of any sort through contact.
So I go next door.
I take stupid fat kids’ acoustic guitar with me and I make myself heard.
The buffalo finally feel sorry for you; they take up charge when a stray one starts at a calf. The buffalo are not your friends yet. You watch two dozen well fed travellers swell in slow motion in front of your face. The cameramen are startled and start their engine.
When it finishes, you have no one to thank because you still find that calf appetizing. You’re wounded but you’ll live, you second chanced your way out of a dignified death.
When I fill the room with moving pockets of air I finally get some peace. I stare at the little boy in front of me, blindfold still attached.
This is how I met my apprentice.
I’d known him for five years but never gotten a word out of him.
He was fine until we moved here.
Never spoke a word.
I told him to get up because he needed to wash that **** out, still crying.
I drag him up, I clean him.
He sits next to me for the next eleven years.
He walks in my shadow round the clock.
Not one rich man was needed.
I got my second friend in seven years.