So, I saw the topic by Jennabelle about the novel, and, as I am in the very early stages of writing one myself, decided it might be an idea to post what I have writte so far on here, just for a bit of feedback.
I already have the plot figured out, so I would ask if you dont make any plot suggestions unless they are particularly spellbounding. And no, it doesn't have a title yet. Here is what I have so far:
A typical dark afternoon in my poor excuse for living quarters. That's all it is to me. It isn't a house... only four walls and a cracked and crumbling ceiling. The doorframe sits idle in the middle of one wall, its hinges like outstretched arms, desperate to connect to a door lost long ago. Those few who walk past scowl; a house that doesn't belong. Does anyone live there? Yes. Me. And contrary to popular belief, I am not some crazy hermit with an eye patch; and I most certainly haven't got bodies strung up in my basement. I don't have a basement. It's the stigma we're given. I suppose it is our own fault; my own fault. But they will never understand me. They never have.
The night hung silently overhead and, as usual the faint aroma of burnt paper wafted around the room. The only noise outside was the wind. And, as always, I was awake. There I sat, wide-eyed and anxious. There was nobody around. There was never anybody around. But things were moving; things that shouldn't have been moving. The dark outside would seem, to others, to be at rest. To me, though, it was breathing, walking, moving. It poked its eerie nose into my business, and as the last strands of golden-red light were pulled back over the horizon, it drowned me. But what was I to do? Who was I to reject the bitter taste of nature? I took another breath.
My chest tickled and leapt. My lungs tried to force themselves out of my ribcage. I recalled watching a movie as teen, years before; something to do with odd creatures the shape of a gangly, gargantuan hand splitting out of torsos and latching onto the faces of unsuspecting victims. Maybe they were here, too. That was a worrying notion. My thoughts began to be too much to handle rationally, and I collapsed back onto the mattress. It seemed as if the world around me jumped and stomped upon a corrugated iron roof when I hit the springs. One dug into my back. Or maybe it was my leg. I'm not so sure; everything seemed somewhat backwards and topsy-turvy. It pierced me... probably. I'm not so sure of that either.
I didn't know one's eyes could bear such a heavy load. My lids struggled against my will. The former desired to feel their parallel replicas close against them; the latter felt the need to keep them apart, like star-crossed lovers; destined to be together forever in the end, but some would wish to keep them apart. I suddenly felt an odd, yet stabbing sense of guilt rush to the back of my mind. But it stayed there, at the back... It wasn't important enough to grab even a quarter of my attention. My focus was on everything else; everything& anything that could keep my eyes from the unnatural dark; to keep them apart. They can not be together. I saw a fracture in the ceiling, mouldy and leaking. A drop splashed small pools across my features. What if the drop continued to fall? Would I drown, only to drown again for eternity in the River Styx? No... No unholy boatswain would throw me to Hell.
I took but a few more breaths before I fell into unconsciousness. Was it sleep? I wasn't certain. I saw things; things that weren't where I was. But perhaps they were. Where was I? A room? My room? It didn't look like that which I chose to dwell in. Unseen mouths spoke out of darkness... into but another darkness. I was their hollow medium. Songs of sorrow, of pain, of burning and fire, fell upon the ears of my inner self. They lulled me to another place. It was completely dark. Was it sleep? It must have been. I wasn't so sure.
* * *
The sun made its presence known, even while my eyes were closed. A dim orange-pink shade filled my vision. It burnt. It burnt my eyes and my skin. I thought I could handle it, at first. It wasn't so bad. But after a minute it seemed the sun had turned its whole concentration on me, as if it had come to my front door and stood there, demanding entry. I scurried off the mattress as quickly as my body would take me. But I didn't open my eyes. I couldn't, for fear of it blinding me. Instead I used my hands. I felt my way to the wall, tumbling gracelessly off the mattress. I could still feel the intrusiveness of the fiery star on my back, melting into every exposed pore, filling my veins with liquid flame. My blood boiled inside me. I continued, desperately continued, to find some peace, some form of cool retreat. I had to open my eyes to find it& If the sun blinded me& well, I was no worse off than if I had my eyes closed for eternity. I opened my eyes and found to my delight a corner of darkness in my room of four walls. Four walls, eight corners, only four of which I could physically reach, and three of those had sunlight standing proudly in them. But that one corner, to the left of my door (of sorts), sat quietly cool. The anti-conformist corner, I thought. Appropriate that I would find my solace there. I stumbled madly across what seemed to be the surface of the sun itself to that wonderful black hole, that vacuum.
Outside the wind had gone away. It had taken the birds, the people and even the time with it and in their stead brought crickets and bats and a veil of sinister shadow. Ah, how I love the melody of the night. Screeching and clicking is far more me than birdsong. I'm a creature of the darkness, the person you always hope you don't meet in a dark alley or on the way to the bathroom at night. I'm the man underneath the bed. But I didn't choose to be there. I've been swept there, discarded by society as filth, as the socially unacceptable; the problem everyone knows is there, but would much rather ignore. I live a life of solitude. It's my choice in a world where your choice means so very little.
There was dirt compacted beneath my wildly unkempt nails. They were of a yellowish colouration. In fact, they were very much the same colour as my face, a pasty skin colour, long and jagged, shadowed at the ends by the grime of my choice of lifestyle. That was me; the muck under the nail of society, the pimple on its arse, the slow deathly cancer of its lungs. I am a cancer. Just as cancer does not just appear from nothing, neither did I. I was put here. I am the smoke that fills the lungs of the grizzled war veteran, who knew little of the effects of cigarettes when he started poisoning himself. While the government that ruled my homeland made the poor poorer and the rich richer, I would remain as the tumour. No choice.
Someone said once, "No choice but what me make for ourselves." They hadn't lived. It was the creation of a mind not warped by poverty.
* * *
It was time again. Reality became too depressing for my mind to want to deal with. Scarcity of life, of self esteem, of dignity was not a thing I believed I should live with. I had not done a thing worthy of having a burden of this magnitude forced on my back. It was heavy. Burden; the only thing without physical form that can weigh more than a planet. But even the heaviest of packs have straps to be loosened. I didn't have to struggle forever. Instead, I would alter my perceptions. I would strip away the walls, the ceiling, and the floor beneath me. I would dig the dirt from my feet and soar into a space of Oblivion. I liked it there. Nothing quite mattered. Consequences seemed to be non-existent. It was a place of harmonic chaos, where evil was taken hand in hand with purity.
It fell on my tongue; I took it deep into my mouth and swallowed. One. It pierced my skin, and filled my veins, like the sun had, but without the harshness. Two. I rolled my sleeve down, looking at my hands. The lines that stretched as a labyrinth of crossroads, usually rather content with the position they had been given, seemed restless. Perhaps my skin was not as comfortable as it once was. Some grew, some shrank and some stretched or twisted. I smiled, though only for a moment. A frost ran up my spine, but my body didn't react. I didn't jolt forward in a shiver. My mind was working independently; working, pushing onwards, exploring itself. Its depths had only been chartered on the smallest of scales. A shipwreck was rumoured to lurk deep underneath the surface. It was a luxury liner. It was me; a younger me. What iceberg had it struck? Poverty seemed right. But was it? It must be.
I was a diver, covered head to toe in a thick black skin that was not my own, my face enclosed by another more mechanical one. There was metal on my back. I still had feet, but they seemed different also. Flippers, I thought, is what they are. I was a seal. I was to some. A tasty five star meal, served with just the right amount of fear and anxiety, but not so much that it drowned out the flavour. The meat was the best part. And still I fell. I fell with a twisting rhythm. Some would call it swimming. I had never learnt to swim. So what was I doing? I was swimming, of course. Who was I? I couldn't possibly be me. I had never learnt to swim. Not for lack of trying. Wait... it was. He had thrown me into the water; just once. There I tried. I thrashed at anything I could. My thrashing propelled me then, as it did now. But it was now a precise thrashing, and as I darted through the black, a shade of something other than nothingness crept into sight. It was a rusty metal look, like that of a sunken ship, long forgotten to the depths of the ocean. But no... this ship had been suppressed, forced down. Another would have wanted nothing more than to uncover the secrets of this vessel. Not I. I knew what ventured there; memory and an aching sense of failure. But I did not stop. Why? I was guided, possessed, to enter. The urge was welcomed. But it wasn't by me. Some other presence had domination. Was it someone else? Was it me? It was strange. If it was I who had swum, and I who had invited a feeling I otherwise would have rejected, then who was I? Peculiar.
I drifted, lifeless as myself, but interested and excited as this other. There was a hole in the stern not designed or intended to appear originally. It seemed alien to the rest of the ship. It didn't belong. Three fish, tightly packed into formation, quickly popped out. They seemed distressed. My curiosity overwhelmed me. I had always been a curious one. I suddenly felt lucky not to be of the feline family. They had been known to have bad experiences with such desire... not to mention the water. As I got nearer the gaping wound in the steel, I felt a tugging companion, unseen and unknown. Whoever he was, he was inside. I secretly wished for an old sea captain, and a tale of seven seas, a voluptuous maiden and scurvy ways. He would have an eye patch, and a beard that reached his feet, but never hindered his walking. I felt like a child again. Childish fascination with the unknown is unmistakable. Some never outlive it. I'd had mine stripped away, like the clothing of some cheap whore; discarded as it was only there for decoration. I swiftly vowed to remain clothed as often as possible, though what difference it would make was unclear to me. At best, the illusion, the empty assurance that my childhood was pleasant, that my innocence had not been drowned in pity and sorrow, was enough to keep a smile on the edge of my lips. I'd forgotten the wide, toothy grin of unbridled joy. All the girls, including the woman who was my mother once upon a time, said I had a smile that melted hearts. I hope that wasn't the case. The melting of one's organs, especially the heart, must be rather distasteful. But, not to fear, even if that was the case, no hearts would melt again in this lifetime. Happiness is so easily suffocated by discontent and the burning fury that was the yearning for revenge.
My attention was brought back to my surroundings in an instant as my body began to stiffen. The very warmth of my soul seemed stole away as I unwillingly made the transition from external to internal. But as soon as I passed the jagged edges of the broken steel, as soon as I was consumed by the skeletal abyss of the vessel, I was greeted with a gentle whisper of comfort, and suddenly I felt at ease. The water around my body, which once invaded all personal space I possessed, now swirled about my being in something of a cocoon. It washed over the alien second skin that covered me, but I could still feel the delicate caress it provided, as if I were unclothed and revealed to the depths of this unknown sanctuary. At that very moment, the impious presence of nothingness seemed to evaporate, and a placid luminosity took its place. The frozen, comatose walls that stretched away into the bowels of the construct on either side of me began to glow, though only faintly, as the spirit of their apparent former beauty made a timid homecoming. Even the drenched and musty carpet I stood on became vibrant, boasting its skilful design and elegance with earthen colours; deep, brooding shades of crimson off-set by a golden desert colour, thickly lined with a rather ominous black strip, though each shade seemed to compliment the overall outcome.
