My Story: The First Chapter

this started out as a waste of time. trying to see if it can turn into a bigger waste of time.

               I remember my father as a very cold man; his being dead probably had something to do with that. My mother kept his body on the left side of the bed. I guess she didn’t keep him there as much as she never bothered to move him after he died. Her being a corpse probably had something to do with that as well. So by now you’re probably wondering how two dead parents could raise a child, especially this day in age. I guess I’ll get to that part later.

                My parents weren’t always dead. As a matter of fact they used to be very much alive. Some folks who knew them might even say they were overflowing with life, but I’ve disregarded that as stupid. Seriously, how can somebody, let alone two people, have an excess amount of life. It doesn’t really seem fair now does it? I mean, if some people are given more life than they need, why don’t they give it to other less fortunate people who may not have as much instead of just letting it curdle up like sour milk? That’s one of those questions I’ve always asked and no one’s been able to really give me an answer. This one guy who used to deliver my mail was close, though.

                People who knew my father say he was a real jerk, so maybe it’s good I only remember him as a decaying pile of flesh with maggots crawling out of his eye sockets and what not. The few photographs I’ve seen of him lend some credence to that theory. In one he’s drop kicking some poor cat over a flaming trash can, and in another one, he’s being handed an award for lifetime achievement with a banner that says “Jerk Convention” hanging behind him. I would rather make up my own opinions, and as my mother probably would have always said, if she wasn’t dead and all, “If you can’t say something nice about somebody, just smile like an idiot.”

                There’s nothing I really remember about my old man, seeing as my memory is pretty much a hodgepodge of old cartoons from the 80’s redubbed with dialogue from B-movies. Thank you very much, internet. Anything I told you I remembered about him would probably be a lie. In fact, most of this book is a lie, but there are facts I’ve been able to piece together from old newspaper clippings. I’m not going to tell you which parts are which. We can make it a kind of game. So when you get done reading this book just send me your answer on a 5” by 7” postcard, and if you are correct, I’ll send you a prize! I guess I’m not the most reliable person to be telling this story then if I don’t really recollect everything that happened. My English teacher in high school used to warn me about people like me, but I guess I showed her!

                Since I’ve told all I can about my father, I guess I should write about my mother now. In many ways she was the exact opposite of my father. You see where he was a man, she was a woman. That’s like a complete 180 degree turn right there. They even had different bathing suit parts because my friend Tommy checked it out once and told me so. Other than that, there’s not much I can say about her. The random people I meet in life and ask them about my parents usually say they don’t know who I am, so why would they know my parents? I used to give those people these little Superior Logic ribbons when they said something like that, but it got to be a little expensive.

                Now that I’ve got you caught up on who my parents were, I should probably use some time to talk about myself and how I came to be in this situation and all. I’m usually against talking about myself because I don’t want to be seen as egotistical, but if this book is going to be about me, I should probably talk about myself at some point. I asked one publisher if it could just be a recipe for lemon squares repeated indefinitely.

                So I spent my first few days around my dead parents. I’m not too exact on when they died. Social services said they knew about if for a while, but they were understaffed at the time. Plus they said there were a lot of forms to get filled out, stamped, and signed…things like that, you know. My first friends I remember were rats who had made a nest in my mother’s wig. I remember this big white one with tiny pink eyes who I used to call Sinatra which wasn’t too fitting because he had blue eyes. However, he was part of the Rat Pack, so I guess that’s where it came from.

                Eventually, I was taken to live with my wicked Aunt Evila. Most of the time, the people in those situations usually develop a strong inner beauty and pluckiness from being kept down, yet their spirit is still free. My aunt must have known those stories too because she was aware that the evil foster parent usually got their come-uppance at the end. That’s why she made this special cage that kept my spirit trapped too. It got to be really depressing seeing my enslaved spirit withering away in that cage. I finally got so disheartened by the sight of the poor devil that I just put an old blanket over the cage.

                Just because I was a child slave didn’t mean I couldn’t have just as pleasant a childhood as that blonde kid next door who got a new puppy every year for Christmas. Some days my aunt couldn’t beat me very hard because she’d used up all her strength beating me the day before. I used to call those “weakdays” and thought it was the cleverest thing I’d ever thought of. I asked my aunt if she would send it into Reader’s Digest for me, but she had another idea. She’d caught on to the gleeful grin I’d have on my face during her short periods of muscle recovery and invented a mechanical beating machine. For a woman with no formal education outside of those public service announcements they used to show at the end of old cartoon shows, she had constructed a pretty efficient torture device. In the fifteen years I lived there, it only broke down once, but on second thought, it might have just taking a little longer to start up in the cold weather that day. Also, it was powered by my tears, and the machine soon found out the harder it beat me, the more fuel it would have.

So that all happened. I think my spirit eventually died, and I had to flush him down the toilet. I asked my aunt if I could bury him in an old shoebox in the backyard, but she retorted I’d need a pair of shoes in order to do that. I suggested we could try to buy just the box; however, the beating machine made a good counterpoint. Looking back, though, I guess I wouldn’t have found my path to fame and fortune if none of it had happened.

               

Author's Note

feel free to offer comments and whatever. just trying to see if it's anything worth pursuing.

Reviews

[Acropolix]

The tone, perspective and style is so different to what I am used to read here. Though I was captivated by the dark, cynical humor and the bizarre opening scene. I must say the story intrigues me and develops into a grand story just by these few lines. I am more than certain that you have talent for writing and strongly encourage you to keep writing! The way you describe the parents is not something for the weak-hearted and the tone is rather bitter. Yet, the last the line leave a thin beam of light still alive. It's worth pursuing!