Patrick_Bateman
10-27-2010, 06:06 PM
OK FIRST OF ALL THIS INITIAL DRAFT IS FOR AN ASSIGNMENT AND HAD TO BE KEPT TO 1,000 WORDS WHICH STRIPPED ME OF ANY CREATIVITY AND EXPANSION OR DEEPER CHARACTERISATION.
I WILL BE ELONGATING IT AND MAKING IT INTO A PROPER SHORT STORY ON MY TERMS IN MY RECREATION TIME.
BUT HERE IT IS IN IT'S HEAVILY ABRIDGED VERSION.
The conflagration has been raging for three hours. After nine tortuous months of war – a war without scruples, where unheard of atrocities were being committed against one’s fellow man - the Basque country was receiving no respite.
Our father had been killed when the loyalists entered the city back in the early days. He was a clergyman and therefore - in the eyes of those who wore the black and red of the FAI - a Fascist sympathiser and the reds had targeted him immediately. As the eldest I was compelled with duty to my family, especially my mother to keep us together through this unforgiving plague of ideology and military machismo. Those despicable ‘Whites’…their machinations and crimes against the Spanish Republic have made man a beast. But this does not mean I swear any allegiance to those Communist reptiles that left my father to hang from a Fagaceae like a Christmas ornament. Everywhere you look the Portuguese Oaks and Beech display their gruesome fruit – BOOM! BOOM! – “¡El diablo está tratando!” My mother shrieks as the bombs intermittently fall. When you’re under attack from the air it is not long until you can accurately predict where a bomb will fall, from the discordant whistle as it plummets to earth and delivers its explosive death howl. My younger brother and sister, Pablo and Celia were making a game of it. I’m just grateful they’re at that age of innocence that will help spare their souls from the full torment of this miserable existence.
Packed together like quadruplets in the safety of a mother’s womb, my family and I have been cowering in the dark, forlorn cellar with only a solitary, reassuring flame for comfort. The heat is becoming unbearable; the first wave began before supper and not long after the first incendiary bombs hit, the rapid increase in temperature from the raging inferno was palpable. In order to assuage my siblings’ distress from the noise and the sobs from mother I had gone back to the ground level of the house to retrieve a book of poetry by J.L Borges which father would read to them at bed time. My father revered the Argentine and other Spanish speaking poets so much and it had been a ritual of his to always sit with us kids and recite Neruda, Borges and Lorca. He was most upset upon hearing of the latter’s execution by a band of fascists. It is vile irony that the very villains who killed my father, did so, on the supposition that he was on the side of these fascist beasts whom he denounced with such disdain for murdering his hero. Upstairs was just a hum of yellow flames and aircraft engines, with the almost systematic crash of death and destruction separating each canto of the deafening hum. I only just had time to notice our family photo on the floor of the house covered in broken glass, father and Pablo had been singed by the heat, their heads blackened. That was over two hours ago but the bombing had become fragmentary now. I sensed we would be able to evacuate the loneliness of the cellar soon and so I broke open the book of poetry at a random page and began. I had the comforting feeling that through these words I was wrapping my family in a protective blanket which no sorrow or affliction could penetrate and suddenly I was my father’s son again.
“…some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.
There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that foun”
CRASH! – I was broken from my rhythm by a devastating tremble of the house which shook it to its very foundation.
“Mama, mama!” my dear sweet Celia was crying
Pablo had jolted to the other end of the cellar in a frightful panic and was wailing in the corner.
“Come over here mi angelito” mother beckoned to Pablo, but I could see the stiffness in his silhouette, he only broke shape when the ferocity of his terror caused a tiny paroxysm, jolting his head and shoulders like a vicious hiccup. I gave the book to mother so she could read aloud and calm herself and Celia down.
“Pablo, come back to mama where it’s safe. It will all be over soon” I entreated as I stepped carefully closer towards my brother. The cellar was so dark over in the corner where the lantern’s glow did not reach that only Pablo’s outline and movements were perceptible. The walls were so well hidden by the blackness that it was easy to believe they stretched to the Pyrenees. Pablo began to make his way back to our little tableau when I heard an almighty bang which had me involuntarily on one knee. I scrambled towards the far wall through a mist that was grey as the lantern’s eye flickered off the dust. Ceiling beams were protruding through the darkness and the din of my mother’s shrieks had my heart pounding feverishly in my mouth. I felt amongst the debris, hoping that five warm, dainty little fingers would find my hands when suddenly the lights came back on indicating the end of the relentless bombing. Without being able to recollect how it came to be, I was cradling my dead brother’s delicate body in my arms. Mother was in such despair that no notice was taken of my sister’s presence over the lifelessness of her brother. Her eyes had a pallid, empty glance within them; like the look of a battle hardened soldier who has grown indifferent to the horrors of war. I kissed my brother’s forehead, whispering a solemn prayer as tears streamed down my cheeks. The lights ominously cut out again. Under the glance of the lantern I picked up the book and finished the poem.
I WILL BE ELONGATING IT AND MAKING IT INTO A PROPER SHORT STORY ON MY TERMS IN MY RECREATION TIME.
BUT HERE IT IS IN IT'S HEAVILY ABRIDGED VERSION.
The conflagration has been raging for three hours. After nine tortuous months of war – a war without scruples, where unheard of atrocities were being committed against one’s fellow man - the Basque country was receiving no respite.
Our father had been killed when the loyalists entered the city back in the early days. He was a clergyman and therefore - in the eyes of those who wore the black and red of the FAI - a Fascist sympathiser and the reds had targeted him immediately. As the eldest I was compelled with duty to my family, especially my mother to keep us together through this unforgiving plague of ideology and military machismo. Those despicable ‘Whites’…their machinations and crimes against the Spanish Republic have made man a beast. But this does not mean I swear any allegiance to those Communist reptiles that left my father to hang from a Fagaceae like a Christmas ornament. Everywhere you look the Portuguese Oaks and Beech display their gruesome fruit – BOOM! BOOM! – “¡El diablo está tratando!” My mother shrieks as the bombs intermittently fall. When you’re under attack from the air it is not long until you can accurately predict where a bomb will fall, from the discordant whistle as it plummets to earth and delivers its explosive death howl. My younger brother and sister, Pablo and Celia were making a game of it. I’m just grateful they’re at that age of innocence that will help spare their souls from the full torment of this miserable existence.
Packed together like quadruplets in the safety of a mother’s womb, my family and I have been cowering in the dark, forlorn cellar with only a solitary, reassuring flame for comfort. The heat is becoming unbearable; the first wave began before supper and not long after the first incendiary bombs hit, the rapid increase in temperature from the raging inferno was palpable. In order to assuage my siblings’ distress from the noise and the sobs from mother I had gone back to the ground level of the house to retrieve a book of poetry by J.L Borges which father would read to them at bed time. My father revered the Argentine and other Spanish speaking poets so much and it had been a ritual of his to always sit with us kids and recite Neruda, Borges and Lorca. He was most upset upon hearing of the latter’s execution by a band of fascists. It is vile irony that the very villains who killed my father, did so, on the supposition that he was on the side of these fascist beasts whom he denounced with such disdain for murdering his hero. Upstairs was just a hum of yellow flames and aircraft engines, with the almost systematic crash of death and destruction separating each canto of the deafening hum. I only just had time to notice our family photo on the floor of the house covered in broken glass, father and Pablo had been singed by the heat, their heads blackened. That was over two hours ago but the bombing had become fragmentary now. I sensed we would be able to evacuate the loneliness of the cellar soon and so I broke open the book of poetry at a random page and began. I had the comforting feeling that through these words I was wrapping my family in a protective blanket which no sorrow or affliction could penetrate and suddenly I was my father’s son again.
“…some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.
There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that foun”
CRASH! – I was broken from my rhythm by a devastating tremble of the house which shook it to its very foundation.
“Mama, mama!” my dear sweet Celia was crying
Pablo had jolted to the other end of the cellar in a frightful panic and was wailing in the corner.
“Come over here mi angelito” mother beckoned to Pablo, but I could see the stiffness in his silhouette, he only broke shape when the ferocity of his terror caused a tiny paroxysm, jolting his head and shoulders like a vicious hiccup. I gave the book to mother so she could read aloud and calm herself and Celia down.
“Pablo, come back to mama where it’s safe. It will all be over soon” I entreated as I stepped carefully closer towards my brother. The cellar was so dark over in the corner where the lantern’s glow did not reach that only Pablo’s outline and movements were perceptible. The walls were so well hidden by the blackness that it was easy to believe they stretched to the Pyrenees. Pablo began to make his way back to our little tableau when I heard an almighty bang which had me involuntarily on one knee. I scrambled towards the far wall through a mist that was grey as the lantern’s eye flickered off the dust. Ceiling beams were protruding through the darkness and the din of my mother’s shrieks had my heart pounding feverishly in my mouth. I felt amongst the debris, hoping that five warm, dainty little fingers would find my hands when suddenly the lights came back on indicating the end of the relentless bombing. Without being able to recollect how it came to be, I was cradling my dead brother’s delicate body in my arms. Mother was in such despair that no notice was taken of my sister’s presence over the lifelessness of her brother. Her eyes had a pallid, empty glance within them; like the look of a battle hardened soldier who has grown indifferent to the horrors of war. I kissed my brother’s forehead, whispering a solemn prayer as tears streamed down my cheeks. The lights ominously cut out again. Under the glance of the lantern I picked up the book and finished the poem.