Hey! Long time since i've been on here. Haven't been writing in ages but I started again recently. This is just something I scribbled down in about half an hour, and I'm not too experienced in writing novels so I don't expect it is the best. But was wondering if you guys could let me know what you think! Sorry in advance for any spelling mistakes, it was written in wordpad as my new computer doesn't have MS word! here it is:
I had never really adapted to my new life in London. I was always telling myself it's just as good as Lisburn, but I have never beleived myself for a second. I made some great friends in London, but none as great as the friend's I left behind, and living without a family is never easy. I despised having to do my own ironing, washing up and cooking. Cooking was the worst part because not only was it incredibly messy and difficult, but nothing I ever cooked ever tasted half decent. It was always burnt, or undercooked, and from time to time it would be both. I started getting rather depressed, and after living in London for a few months I started seeing a Therapist. I told him of all my trivial problems, and how I was down because I had yet another essay due in and no time to do it in, and how my hoover broke and I can't afford a new one so i'm just letting the dirt build up. But as soon as I mentioned what happened with my brother, and the recurring dreams i'd been having since the very day I first arrived in London he knew that all my problems came from this source. He was write, my mum was a terrible cook but I never copmlianed, and she never bothered herself to do any cleaning. Not like dad's new girlfriend Cindy, her house is never anything less than immaculate. But my own mother never lifted a finger and I never once complained. My therapist, he told me the reason I tried to blame my problems on trivial things like that was because they are much easier to control, and if our problems are easy to control then we don't really have any problems to begin with. But what happened to my brother, what was causing my emotional state was so far from my control that it was unberable.
I can remember the night my brother went missing as clear as ever, even today. I was set to go to London the next day. I wanted to go a few months early so I could get set up and settle in, ready for university in October. My friends were doing similar things, and we knew that very shortly we would all be parting ways. So we planned a big night out together, just me, my three closest friends and my brother Joe. But I couldn't bare to leave my mother alone on my last night in Northern Ireland. I have never been keen on change, which was why I wanted to go to London early, so I could adapt to the change of scenary before I would have to adapt to university life. I caught my mum crying in her room, she had her face burried in her pillow so I wouldn't hear her. But I did hear her, and it upset me so much that I burst into tears, right after I'd finished doing my make up. I was an emotional wreck that night, and couldn't face going out. I decided to stay home with my mum and spend my last night in Northern Ireland with her, after all we were incredibly close and I'd known her longer than any of my friends. My brother went out anyway, he quite fancied my friend Michelle and was desperate to get talking to her that night, although knowing my brother i'm sure he was hoping for more than just a chat. I sat up all night with my mum, we talked for ages about how things change, and debated for hours over weather it was a good thing or not. I concluded that it wasn't, because if we are happy with our situation then why is there the need to change it? My mum concluded it was a good thing, because if nothing changed then we would get bored with our current situation, however sometimes things change a lot faster than we would like them to. The conversation then moved on to more optimistic things, like the fact she had 'borrowed' a few bottles of wine from her friend's house last night. We cracked them open and drank until the early hours of the next morning. I tried my best to stay as sober as possible, knowing I had to travel later that day, and travelling with a hangover is one of the most miserable things you can do. My mum, not having to catch a plane, and trying to cope with the fact her only daughter is leaving the country, drank as much as she could.
It wasn't until just before 3am when mum exclaimed "where the hell is your brother?" that I realized something was wrong. She was to tipsy to be properly concenred, but I knew something was up. They went to chesters, which closes at a quarter past one in the morning, why wouldn't he be home yet? I tried to calm myself by telling myself he'd probably just gone back to Michelle's house or something. So i lifted my mobile and dialed his number, his phone rang but he didn't pick up. After just less than a minute it went onto the answerphone. I nearly fainted, I was in a right panic. I phoned back three times, each time no answer. My mum phoned him from her phone, and the house phone and she too became very concerned. When I phoned Michelle I got a very bad feeling in my stomach, and almost threw up.
"Michelle, have you seen Joe?" I asked in a panic, she was slightly tipsy and so I couldn't make out a word of her response. "Michelle, listen to me. Have you seen Joe?"
"Joe? Joe isn't here, I haven't seen Joe" she said. She wasn't tipsy. She sounded as if she was about to be sick.
"Did he go out with you tonight Michelle?" I asked, getting incredibly worried. She didn't speak, and a few seconds later I heard another voice on the phone.
"Hello?" It was the voice of my friend Sandra, who doesn't drink.
"Sandra thank god. Is Joe with you?"
"No he didn't show up at the house so we left without him. Thought he wasn't coming since you were staying home. ... Hello? Is everything all right?"
I was so worried that I couldn't speak, I just hung up the phone and looked at mum in horror, she looked back with a similar expression. It seemed that worst had come to worst.
We phoned everyone we knew, and everyone that Joe knew that night, desperate to track him down. My mum constantly phoned him on his mobile, but by 5am we had still had no luck and decided to phone the police. I didn't go to London after all, I stayed home and tried desperatly to help find my brother, but three months later he was still nowhere to be seen. It was the most peculiar thing, both him and his car had dissapeared of the face of the planet, there wasn't even a single clue as to where he might be. I spent months at home doing nothing but lying in bed crying, occasionally venturing downstairs to eat. I found a way to assign guilt to myself, as I tend to do with most things. If only I had been there, I could have protected him. I blamed myself for staying in, it took me years to realize that even if I had gone there would have been little I could have done. I don't even know what happened. Mum has always been hopeful that one day we will find him, but I was never as optimistic. Within the first 12 hours of him being gone I was almost certain I would never see him again.
One day at the beggining of september I remember coming downstairs to get some cereal. My mum was sitting downstairs reading the paper, and she so casually said to me "I suppose you'll be thinking of heading to London soon? you've less than a month before university starts". I felt another sickness in my stomach, and I started to shake. The idea of going to London now wasn't appealing at all, but I was very aware of the fact that I had no choice. If I didn't go, I would have nothing to do for a whole year, and as I had all ready been on a gap year I couldn't really afford to waste any more time in my life. I sat down and I told my mum I wasn't going, because I couldn't bare to leave her alone. But she was so insistant. Later that day I booked my flight, and left only three days later. Before my brother went missing, despite being incredibly upset for things having to change, I was slightly excited about London. There did seem to be some hope in it, but now it seemed gray and miserable. It offered now hope or optimisim, it was nothing more than an other stage in my life. A stage I didn't expect I would want to remember. My mum told me not to worry, I'm only feeling this now but after I have some more time I will come to terms with the idea of life without Joe, and I will be able to live my life once more. I was hopeful that things would turn out that way but they never did, almost six months after I was as miserable as I had ever been.
The first night I arrived in London, I had the most terrible dream. It has reccured at least once a week ever since that first night, and I still have it occasionally even now. The details of the dream differed slightly every time, but the basic frame of the dream would be my brother on a beach. I would be behind some trees, watching him from a distant as he walks along the beach. Almost 100% of the time the sea was wroth and it would be raining heavily. I remember however, on joe's birthday I dreamt that it was sunny, and he didn't die that time. Everyother time, he dies. Sometimes he get's shot from the distance, but I never see who is holding the gun. Sometimes he drowns himself, and sometimes he just dies. Falls over and doesn't get back up. The most disturbing dreams however, are the ones in which I am his cause of death. Sometimes I dream that all of a sudden I just start walking towards him, then I strangle him, and sometimes I drown him, and sometimes I mutilate him with a knife. My therapist says these dreams are my mind trying to offer an explanation as to what might have happened to him. Was he murdered? Did he kill himself? or did he die naturally? In the dreams where I kill him, my therapist says this is a result of me blaming myself for his death.
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