yea i wrote this today so its pretty rough. I would appreciate it if anyone could review and critique it. Help me out with punctuation and grammar errors. I appreciate pointers too. Right now its around 4000 words i need it to be 5000. What, and where can I add on detail. or should i add another scene (dont really want to ) but thanks if you could take the time to help me out. I realize that the main topic or ppurpose is not being directly translated into this chapter but i like it as an introduction so i can reveal more ahead. I also attached a word document if you like that better.
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Chapter 1
This was the first time I had gone to confession and I didn’t know what to say first. Thinking back I should have paid more attention in CCD class, so I would know how to begin one of these. I sat in the confessional waiting, ready to aggravate the Priest with my impious nature. Let’s just say I wasn’t looking forward to meeting him in what I deemed would be my final resting place. If I did happen to survive the Priest, than I knew I’d be massacred at home. I was scared if anything, there is nothing scarier than a Priest with the wrath of God in his eyes. There I sat unsteady, yearning for some relief and comfort within seconds of running. I’m not sure if it was my habit of forgetting to breath, but my mind was finally about to drift from the confessional en route to an alternate and much preferred destination. It stayed there until I heard Father Gibbon’s priestly footsteps enter to my immediate right. We were so close that I felt the whiplash of wind from his stole as he turned to sit down next to me. I jumped the gun, appearing too eager.
“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.”
“How have you sinned boy” his words seemed almost indecipherable to me, with his thick Irish brogue masking it . Not to mention the organ and bells bellowing in the background, it alerted me that we were not alone and I could only guess who would be in Church at this hour.
“I have lied Father.”
“To whom ?”
“To you Father, I’m not really here to confess Father Gibbons; I just wanted some one to discuss”…trying to think of a pretty way of putting it “My moral issues with”
I had gone through countless troubles just to reach here, yet Father Gibbons was more interested in hearing a youth spill every sordid confession. To myself I decided that he was the only one-if anyone- that was going to listen and I needed help.
“ It is you Daniel? ”
“Of course Father” I felt ashamed and relieved that he knew it was me, “Can you help me?” He pulled back the thin screen that had separated us from all contact. A breach of relationship, suddenly in that moment Father Gibbons became my confidant.
“ I welcome any adolescent who is conflicted.”
“Well sir…I mean Father, I’m actually seventeen.”
“ Sorry Son, but still the offer remains the same.”
With all hesitation, “Father there have been things troubling me” but then I decided at that moment to let go of self –censoring, “Father I’m lost. I don’t know where I am anymore. There is a path I want to take in life but its eclipsing me, because of how I am. Is it right to change who you are for your own dreams and satisfaction? I realize that God made me, but it can’t possibly stop there. ”
Father Gibbons tried to pick his words carefully; I could see it on his face. “You can’t go chasing dreams forever, it’s foolish. You have to realize and accept the way God made you. You are who God makes you and you can not change that boy.” With those words I felt crushed; the relationship we established was faltered. I could only compare those emotions with my first and only breakup with a girl I still love. How could I befriend a man who believes this? I held it to myself but I knew he was wrong. How could he regard me as foolish for believing, the hypocrisy was ostensible. He thought I was foolish, the only thing I am foolish of is thinking that he would any different from the other doubters. He shared the same view and character as everyone else in this town, that’s how I knew I was different. With the denial of my hopes and aspirations I lost my respect for the man in the cloth.
And then it happened, my mind drifted to just hours before when I evaded my parents and ran down the back country roads. One positive attribute about living in the back country is that it’s not hard to sneak away. There are neither street lights to be seen in nor many people roaming the streets but one thing you do learn is it sure does hurt. Your best chance is to run at a breakneck speed so your ankle can bounce back after a misplaced rock, an ankle trap or even a pothole. Not to mention crossing through thorns and thickets that mark each neighbors’ property line. The crackle of the dead autumn leaves littering the ground makes a loud enough noise to wake up a suspecting adult, and nearly impossible to avoid. Natural barriers poke out at the worst place possible, as if Chaos herself purposely place it there for you. You can’t be scared to get scrapes, sunken thorns, a thought-to-be dislocation, or even in need of stitches. Every step you take is marred by non-urbanization and disregard for safety. In my journey to the Church I tried to avoid pain and hurt but what I didn’t know was that I was running right to its epicenter.
I came back to reality. Father Gibbons had left me, probably getting the notion that I was un-repairable. I was embarrassed, did he think I was crazy. I hope it hurt him that he had effortlessly tried to destroy my dreams. When I was restored to full mindedness I got the heck out of there. I wanted nothing to do with this institution. For a second, the faint notion of praying clicked, I was tempted to sit in the pew but I could see through the stain glass windows that it was getting late. As I was struggling to push back the wooden double sided doors I turned my head. As I attempted to turn my head back my eyes lingered at the sculpture of Jesus on the cross. Then the most frivolous and odd question popped into my head,’ Does God dream.’ Right there and then I concluded that he must, and that’s all I need to leave.
I can barely remember the sprint back home; I was inadvertently consumed simulating the myriad of the punishments I would certainly face. I knew if I got home and they were awake all hell would break loose. All I could remember is that I ran fast, faster than I have ever run. I do recall stopping in stride in the wintry and dry air. I stopped right in front of a tic-tac house, no different then the others, yet in this house I saw what can only be described as a fantasy. You see a fantasy is much different from a dream. A fantasy you yearn and desire for, nevertheless you know that it’s so unrealistic, hyperbolic that it would never come true. There I stood still for a solid three or five minutes watching through the open windows. I saw a family unscathed, sitting together and conversing freely as though it came naturally. There was nothing so beautiful in my eyes than to see family sitting together let alone talking with each other. For a second I didn’t care what punishment I would face, I just watched and stood in the silent night sky. Without alarm my eyes met with a twenty-something year old girl on a chair, her eyes told me that she understood. She wasn’t scared or frightened by my intrusive peering, but rather she understood why I was just standing there. I entered back in stride riding on the back of my many emotions. All the thoughts that popped into my head on that night run seemed meaningless, after seeing that display of love. I purposely tried to repress that memory so I would be able to convince myself that my life wasn’t that bad. With each bound I tried harder to go faster and make it home quicker. I felt visible for miles as my pale bleached body contrasted the night sky, yet I would remain unseen.
By the time I walked through the screen door it was around midnight yet my parents were still up. They obviously weren’t awake at this hour in concern for my safety; they hadn’t realized I had been gone until I blatantly walked through the front door. Despite the fact that they were brainless by nature, they were able to put the facts together. And as usual, were enraged at the sight of me. They started to go off on their daily tantrum. Their threats and commands were impersonal they didn’t even address me by name if they remembered it. All I heard was the volume and noise, not even a singular word; I couldn’t even tell if they were even admonishing me. With my false bravado, taking it like a man, I bypassed the children that had just sent me to bed. I ran to up the stairwell with the same quickness that delivered me home.
As I hurried to my bedroom, I was met by my six evil siblings. I knew if I didn’t hurry up the stairs quick enough than they would wake from their slumber. I knew what they had dreams of, they dreamt of ways to torture me . I presumed I hadn’t gone fast enough, in seeing six faces down the hallway each with a separate expression of disgust. As they headed toward me I had the urge to slip into room without scars and the last bit of self esteem. But I didn’t, I had to be a martyr, at least I would have my pride. So I faced their seething revulsion head on. I was crucified. Eric commanded my siblings to hold me down as they watched him pummel me with a clenched fist. He knew where to punch to make me feel the pain, as he has perfected his craft. Meanwhile, Eve and Adam shouted harsh profanity and unleashed a salvo of insensitive remarks that would have made any man cry. They held back nothing, desperately trying to reduce me to tears, were upon I would be further made fun of and beaten. Ryan followed in kicking me with her size two booties, no matter the size it still hurt. Mary and Rita constructed snide rumors, conversing just loud enough that I could hear. Persecuted I lay motionless accepting the heartless assaults delivered by the hands of my kin. I gave up. I gave up on caring, self respect, and even displaying my emotions. There was a breaking point when I was pinned, I became broken, my willingness to fight was dried up; no trace was left in my emotionless and immobile corpus. I stood there staring at my attackers with an empty look glazed over my eyes. The emotions I felt now were so profound that they were ineffable. I gave no struggle, they didn’t even need to hold me down, by this time I welcomed their brutality. Within this short period I became less than a human to my family and to myself. It may sound redundant but that was for the first time that my existence felt like it was pointless, I’m not sure if many people feel that. They made me feel as if I wasn’t human, I felt in that moment I transformed. With a sinister sneer I sat there as they striking repeatedly. In a twisted way it was humorous to me that there two separate fights under the same house. Divided and distinct, the only thing they had in common was me. Did I cause this trouble on my own? Even though these fights had become a reoccurring event recently, they hurt me equally. I kept telling myself that each barrage of harassment would be the last, I must have been naïve.
Today wasn’t even that bad in my eyes, but I knew that the battering wasn’t over and the paranoia of what would come terrified me. Back when- I must have been around eleven- I left work to go out to see a local girl. This was my first “date” so I had to pick her up on time, and I was willing to take the chance in leaving work. It was the world to me, but we only went out for ice cream, I was back by 9:30 the latest. When I got back my Dad was expecting me; I came to the conclusion that my siblings tattled on me, as I could hear their laughter from the stairwell. That day my Dad threw a glass cup in my face, he threw it without any consideration of my safety, my first hint that he didn’t truly love me. My Grandmother bandaged me up as best she could; I had some deep cuts that more than likely needed stitches; as soon as she was done my Dad resumed. He took me by the arm and escorted me to the bathroom. From there he proceeded to lash me with his thick leather belt adding a couple open-handed slaps to the face to keep it interesting for him. These were the memories I had of my childhood. I had no iconic image of a family vacation or a game night ingrained in my brain to represent the high jinks that was suppose to encompass my childhood. The memories of my whippings, misfortunes, and nightmares occupied that space. How anyone could be expected to be raised in an environment like that? Do they not get I am who I am because they deprived me? They deprived me of my childhood. My childhood only ever consisted of work and the beatings I took. Eventually after those horrific floggings I abstained from coming out of the shadows, I was deficient that way, I never was urged to stand up and fight for myself. I merely accepted that I was destined not to be brave enough. That’s where my father and siblings found there power. Later on, I established that my life was nothing more than these fights. They were all I had ever known.
Nothing made me shy away from life more than my crumbling family. My family was full of disappointments, no matter what I was a disappointment to my parents and they were a disappointment to me and my Grandmother. The ones I called my parents birthed seven children. None better than the next, they were dastardly children, uncontrollable and volatile. I was the only one of the bunch to dare attend school. Within the seven of us there were three boys and four girls; no gender relatively more behaved or civilized than the other. I was the oldest, next came Rita who was less than a year younger than me but completely opposite of who I was. You could conclude that my parents were disappointed of me since my birth that they decided to have another to make up for their loss. Rita was by far not better than me; not to sound crude but she couldn’t read, wasn’t that pretty, and couldn’t work longer for thirty minutes without stopping but she was popular and that appearance was all they cared about.
Then my parents had twins, Eve and Adam, they were, by far, the most mischievous in the rag-tag crew. They purposely went out of their way to be disobedient towards the law and superiors. I never could get along with Eve or Adam, before I would even get the chance converse with them, they would make a malicious comments with the other one whipping another back in my face before I had the chance to retaliate. Next out of the womb was Mary, or Maggie as most of the townspeople called her. She was by far the loudest, an achievement tough to attain with this group of misfits. There wasn’t an hour in the day that Mary did not complain. More times than none it would be about the most menial and insignificant thing you could think off. I don’t know how anyone could find her appealing, even though many High Schoolers did. She was the pretty one out of the bunch, certainly not smart but pretty. She would always be out with boys doing God knows what; did I care, no, did my parents care, definitely not. After Maggie was Eric.
Eric was a prepubescent boy at the time that had an anger problem. Eric couldn’t stand not being in control; he always wanted to be seen as the strongest. I figured that he targeted me because I was a threat to his power. Whenever he lost control which was practically like clockwork everyday, he would throw items and punches typically assaulting me. He was the tyrant of the group, young but willing to fight. The most recent addition to our family- a family that shouldn’t be allowed to procreate- is Ryan. You may think at first conclusion Ryan was a boy, but she was not. I can’t critique much on Ryan seeing she is only three years old, but she has been exhibiting signs of bad behavior that must obviously be a dominant trait in my family’s gene pool. It mystified me that my parents loved all these perverse children more than they loved me, and I was clueless of why. Those were the type of people I was forced to live with. I honestly believed that the only functioning members of my family were my Grandmother and I. She was the remnant hope I had for this loveless and dysfunctional family.
I had the smallest room of all my brothers and sisters but I didn’t care too much about that. In fact I embraced it, having a small room further symbolized my separation from the family that I dreaded. The best part of having the small room was that no one thought about bothering me. My room was my haven. After the beating I took I retreated to my room. Not only did I retreat to my room but also my dreams that I demanded. Upon collapsing on my rickety bed I would lay with my eyes open staring absently at the plain off-white ceiling cove above my reclined head. I was fully awake, but I was dreaming of a future, far apart and distinct from then. There was a relationship between my dreams, amid my necessary adulation of them, overpowering reality. I held the strong conviction that more people needed to mix dreams into their reality. It would do the world good if more people were dreamers. I honestly believed that, it may have been my only belief or virtue. It was the testament which I lived my life. As a teenage boy in a world I lived, there were few things that I could depend on, but dreaming was reliable.
With my room directly above the kitchen I had no choice to listen to the sounds coming from the thin faux wood floors; deciphering the meaningless quarrel between my parents and my Grandmother. I’m guessing my Grandmother suddenly awoke from her sleep after she heard all the squabbling. She hastened down the stairwell to register what the commotion was before she would join in. In this situation as most, my Grandmother had my back. More times than I can remember I owed her for saving me from a beating. I respected my Grandmother, that’s more than I can say about my own parents. Although quite, she was sharp and witty by birth; it played to her advantage in their matches. My parents often times relied upon yelling and shouting as their crutch while my Grandmother found her caustic remarks to be more potent and lingering. At least I knew someone cared enough to have my back, even if it was a thinning but well-aged eighty-seven year old lady. Granted, she was strong and intelligent I still felt sick to my stomach every time she would have to cover for me, I felt embarrassed that my Grandmother had to fight my battles Her love made my miserable life tolerable for the time being, I admit that I was malcontent with my life’s current state. A break in the intermezzo led me to hear the harping cries by my Dad accentuated by his country drawl. “He’s Worthless, there not a doubt in my mind that he’s worthless.”
My Mom chimed in “ I don’t got a penny to my name, so I know what’s worthless and he is.”
“The only thing that is worthless in this world is you two” my Grandmother punched back.
“Ah to hell with your mother” added my Father in disrespect.
Quick to point out, my grandmother quipped “You better watch your tongue and be nice to that boy. He’s the only decent thing you own. Why don’t you get off your inebriated bum and find a job so I can stop supportin’ you. The only damn reason I’m supportin’ you is because of that boy” And she was right we really did owe her for paying the bills, raising me and feeding the children. We were dirt poor yet she found a way to put a roof over our head and I was grateful. I think that’s why she liked me so much, I was grateful.
“If that boy don’t show me respect soon, he’s dead…you hear me, dead” his drunkenness was audible and evident to even his wife.
With that the volume of the screams raised and I had trouble holding back tears. The bickering made it harder than before to concentrate on my dreams. I could only think of that girl in the window with her family. The sad part is even though I’m a dreamer by heart; I’m enough of a realist that I couldn’t even fathom having a stable and caring family. I looked out of the single window in the room to see the shadows of my parents and Grandmother animated on the back lawn, highlighted by the strong kitchen lights. There gestures indicated that I would not be able to escape punishment and I would have to face in the morning. My imagination went on a tangent; would I get a beating- if so a hand or a belt- would I get yelled at, would I have to do more work, but my personal favorite-born out of my own ingenuity- would they disown me forever? I actually preferred the last option; at least I would never see them again. Always I wondered why I had these parents who instigated pain and sadness. Looking outside watching the shadows replicate the fight I felt not only pity and sadness but an innate emotion of anger, ride over face as it took control of my emotions and hijacked my dreams.
Before, I dreamt of tranquility and capturing my life’s desires but somehow they found a way to spoil what I thought was untouchable; they turned my dreams into dreams of revenge. I used to have dreams of accomplishments, proving that I was worthy. I used to have dreams that I would experience life and make up for what I have lost. In my dreams I felt no pain, nor pressure, nor any suffering of the kind; I just felt satisfaction. My dreams were my way of transcending my life, until my parents single handedly soiled it. The anger inside of me tried to consume me in getting back at them, but I promised myself I wouldn’t. I convinced myself long ago that the suffering they afflicted was to keep me strong. But I was done mending my feelings to compensate for their inability to love me. I was done hiding in the shadows.
With the mounting rush of emotions the fighting got louder and louder, now apparent to the town, so I emptied my tears and covered my ears. My dreams sang me a sweet melodious tune to offset reality. Finally I was drawn into the silence.
