Ok this is Ice cubes (the start anyway) you won't find the old version on here as I had to take it down because of interest in publishing. Anyway, I needed to get more of a background in the beginning, I still don't feel I have got it right, so crit's are hugellllly needed!
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Ice Cubes
I love the feeling of ice melting in my mouth. The cold on my tongue, sliding it round, it gives me a sense of false pleasure. What I like best is that eerie sound it makes when I slowly push my teeth through it. I remember when I was younger, gently sliding my finger tips down my empty glass, grasping the cube and popping it secretly into my mouth. I used to eat every bit of ice in everyone’s glass, until Mum would stop and slap my wrist, sending the ice skidding across the table, leaving a wet trail in its wake. I always used to whine, why leave the beautifully preserved water alone in the glass; letting it melt its sorry life away, when it could be melting its sorry life away in my mouth? “Its bad manners” she would hiss in my ear. I never cared too much for manners…not the extremes that she did. It was about the only thing Mum worried about.
Mums hair was always tied crudely back into a bun, crystallised nicely with an obscene amount of hairspray. The bun always looked so crackly; I used to lick my lips with anticipation of biting it. It was sure to have made the most satisfying crunch that you could possibly imagine. But after a few years and a few meaningless one night stands, Mum began to show her age, she didn’t tie her hair up anymore. The nights of me laying awake listening to her bedposts knocking against the wall turned into silence and petty pillow talk. Her eyes began to loose their colour; fleshy pockets settled themselves under her lashes. She was gormless, unfulfilled.
I guess her glamorous charade shattered that rainy day her heel broke in town. Her knee jolted suddenly, sending her spiralling to the pavement in a twirl of her colourful clothes. And there she lay, her tears intertwining with the salty rain as she sobbed. I stood in my shiny yellow rain mac with matching wellies, grimacing down at her. In utter confusion I began to laugh because I had lost all sense of what was happening. The same thing happened not two weeks later, but minus the heel braking and the rain. But his fist was added into the equation. He hit her so hard that tears erupted from her eyes before she even pounded to the ground. He turned to me after his actions and smiled
“You like ice don’t you? Well, why don’t you go outside and play in it?” I told him that its ice cubes I like, and that snow is very different from ice-cubes, but he grabbed my hair, telling me not to act smart, and threw me out into the back yard. This was our life though. I had seen Mom cry more than any child should ever see any person cry, but when you’re that young you don’t realise what’s going on around you. I liked to forget about the men Mum bought home every week. I liked to forget that Dad had walked out on us, leaving Mum to look after me in this squalor we liked to call home. I liked to play make believe in the garden by myself. My story is that of a simple child lost in confusion.
It was a tradition of ours that after the current man in Mum’s life had scurried away into the night she would take me to the beach. The beach was some kind of sanctuary to us, I loved it, and I never felt as close to her as I did when we were at the beach. On beach days Mum would pull her hair back into a bun again, wear tight little blue shorts and a bikini top, she would always finish off her outfit with a pair of cheap but designer looking sunglasses, the men would whistle at her as she treaded along the sand, I didn’t mind because she was my Mum and she was beautiful on beach days. I was proud of her. We used to collect shells, never stones, and we kept them on a dusty shelf in my bedroom. I think the beach was where my fascination with ice began. Mum bought me a Slush Puppy, a fruity drink made out of crushed up ice. I remember the tingling sensation it left on my tongue, the sudden chill erupting into my mouth, it was amazing. It was that same day she bought me a Slush Puppy that Mum nearly drowned in the sea.
After that day, Mum was released from the hospital. I was told to sleep at my neighbour’s house which was scarier than the fact that I nearly lost my Mum. Our neighbours were strangely obsessed with cats and dolls. I would sit in their living room, one million glassy doll eyes focused on me and a bear rug under my feet. It smelt of cat sick. When Mum got home she took me into the neighbour’s kitchen.
“Jamiy…” She stuttered as tears fell from her blue eyes.
“Mum,” I said “This house smells can we please leave?” She sobbed painfully at this and took my chubby hand into hers. I could feel the coldness of her dry skin upon mine; it made me want to be sick, just like that bear rug did.
“I can’t keep you at home with me anymore Jamiy, they…they won‘t let me anymore.” Another sob escaped from her throat.
“Why?” I protested “My room is at home, where can I put my collection of shells if I can’t have them there?” She didn’t say anything else, just cried and cried. Eventually the neighbour came in and held Mum in her arms. I felt completely useless, bewildered, ashamed of what was happening. But most of all I feared that would be the last time I would ever see her.
It’s a horrible feeling. Being alone. Yvette, that was her name, she was my ‘care worker’, she said that I wouldn’t feel alone when I met my new foster family. But I had never felt more alone in my entire life. The foster family chose me, like I was some piece of electrical equipment in an Argos catalogue. I just found myself standing there at this families door, with Yvette’s firm grip around my wrist. I was in a whirlwind, it was all happening so fast that I simply couldn’t analyse it all in my head. It seemed that they had this family all prepared for me, as if they were waiting for my Mother’s downfall. Just waiting to snatch me away. I decided to just go along with it, not to argue, not to ask questions.
Yvette used to smell of peppermint.
“Having a boy here with us has always been our dream!” The lady standing on the other side of the door beamed at me. They had even bought me a wooden plaque for my new bedroom; it had my name ‘Jamiy’ printed in a sick yellow colour across it.
“Do you like it?” He asked me, his hot breath ticking the tip of my ear. Yes I did like it, but it made me want to scream at them both for putting my name onto a plaque without my permission. I nodded but I didn’t smile, they had not earned my smile yet. The woman looked to her husband and took his hand.
“My name is Clarice Keaton, and this is Rob Keaton. Feel free to make yourself at home sweetie, oh, we are so happy to have you here.” Clarice patted my head softly. Yvette came into the house with me, I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, it was thumping so hard I was almost positive that it was going to crack my ribs. It didn’t. They took me on a ‘tour’ around their house. I felt like this was some kind of strange doll’s house, that I was not meant to touch anything, to keep quiet and blend in with the white wash walls. Rob and Clarice actually had a daughter of their own; her name was Rebecca, but wanted to be called Becca apparently. Becca was a year older than me and she had black hair that was thick with grease. Clarice told Becca to take me to my new bedroom, so I cautiously followed her up the stairs. Never before had I walked behind someone so painfully thin as their daughter, her clothes shifted heavily as she climbed the stairs, like someone running out of breath as they run a race. Her clothes were running a race: they were trying to run away from her lanky body.
“This is your room.” as she spoke I could see the light spit particles come from her mouth and dance into the air, her teeth were too big for her face to put it bluntly.
“Thanks.” there was no hook on the door so I placed the name plaque just to the side of the frame onto the mauve carpet. I felt her eyes on me the whole time.
“How old are you?” She spat again.
“Eleven, your twelve Clarice told me.” I said stubbornly back to her.
“Just so you know, they are my parents not yours. So don’t take them away from me or I will stand on your fingers and pull your hair. Don’t come into my room or I will tell on you, this is my house your just here because you’re not wanted by your own parents.” She stormed off.
Becca never spoke to me unless her parents were there. Clarice smiled at me a lot, she reminded me of one of those perfect housewives that you see on washing up adverts, it was disgusting, the way she beamed at her little family, made pancakes for breakfast, meat for dinner. Just plain disgusting. Rob however let me watch the football matches with him on the television. It was a real treat because the TV was rarely on because Clarice believed it was not good for the brain. I could understand her reasons for thinking this; the only thing that was ever on TV was football. I never told Rob that I actually found football a mind numbing experience that was simply dull to the core of existence, it simply uninterested me, ever since I was young I was determined not to become one of those boy‘s that become obsessed with football, I feared turning into a football yob, getting fat and bald was one of the side effects of watching football in my books. But once again, I was sitting next to him on the white couch, listening to him shout obscenities at the screen and casually drinking his beer.
“You know what James, I’m gonna take you to a real football match one
day.” He didn’t look at me when he spoke to me: Nottingham went in for a goal but missed.
“My name's Jamiy,” He nodded with a smile “Aren’t I too small to go to a football match?”
“Too small? I went to my first match when I was what, half your age.”
“Oh…I see…can‘t we just go out for a coke?” I felt immediately bad after saying that, he looked straight at me.
“There is coke in the house.”
“Its flat, Becca left it open…and there is no ice.” Rob looked positively bewildered at my statement.
“Well, I will take you out for some coke and ice then, the whole family can come, it will be nice, come to think of it…we haven’t been out for a family meal yet, we should do that at the weekend.” He stood abruptly as if this was the best idea he had ever came up with, he marched out of the living room to propose his idea to Clarice. I was left on my own, with the football faintly singing on the television set.
Dinner out with the Keaton’s was something that I had never witnessed before, I had never been taken out to a restaurant before, it seemed wrong being there without my Mum. Rob leaned over to me, slipping the laminated menu into my fingers.
“Have whatever you want.” Whatever I wanted. Mum had never said that to me. But I didn’t understand, I was just a guest to this family it didn’t seem normal for them to want to spend their money on me.
“A small cola please.” Rob laughed; as he did faint lines appeared around his brown eyes.
“You can have something to eat, how about the chicken, its real good.”
“Ok.” I smiled at him. I liked Rob, I had been living with them for a week and Rob was clearly my favourite. Becca kicked me under the table, her shiny black shoe dug into my shin. I glanced over at her as she stuck her tongue out at me. Clarice and Rob didn’t seem to notice so I decided that I would not notice either. Rebecca repulsed me in a way that she made me want to be physically sick. Her shiny shoes, greasy hair and buck teeth had nothing to do with it. It was the fact that Rob and Clarice had produced such a foul offspring. But then again, a lot of things to do with this family made me want to be sick.
The house that we lived in was immaculately clean, not like the house me and Mum used to share. Mum was all about the glamour and the men, like she said, she had no time for cleaning floors that were already clean. They weren’t clean in the slightest, grubby, food smashed into the carpets. It was a drastic change at the Keaton’s. Clarice took pride in her home, the curtains matched her brown suede cushions, and her carpets were always clean. She had even painted my room a light shade of blue, purchased matching blue bedcovers and curtains, a light blue woollen rug and even blue cupboards and a wardrobe.
My first thought of my room was, well, I was disgusted to say the least. I had never seen such a grotesque amount of blue in my life, and I was sure that it wasn’t possible to see that amount of blue again. But I smiled happily at her, told her it was the best room I had ever seen. The truth being was that I much preferred my old bedroom, shelves’ filling with dust between the many shells that I had collected. Brown bed covers and a hard wooden floor just added to the quirkiness of it. It resembled me. The blue room resembled failed dreams of having a boy of their own.
Clarice scared me with her obsessive cleanliness, I had told her numerous amounts of times that I could keep my room clean, I managed at home with Mum so I could manage here. Yet she would not believe me, and she would enter my room to dust until there was nothing left to find a spec of dirt on. It was just plain scary. Over the weeks that I had stayed with them I noticed that she began to dust and hoover more than usual. She hovered the hallway carpet so much I was sure that she had sucked out the colour. When I suggested this to her, she got mad, and I had never seen her mad before. It was almost as if her eyes were bulging out of her head and well, that was even scarier than the obsessive cleaning. She also put on weight, especially around her hips. She still had her thin waist and small breasts but her hips were huge. She looked extremely strange and well…ill. I didn’t dare say to her “Hey Clarice your hips are gigantic, are you feeling ok?” She would probably have killed me if I had of said that.
But there was no ending? Nothing was resolved by the end. Jamiy doesn't find peace, he doesn't resolve that he might never find peace, he isn't on his own, isn't back with his mom, etc. It made me wonder if there's another chapter? If so, you should break it up a little more; I'd say a thousand or so words a part/chapter [currently this logs 2,651 words] and label it as part of a series.
