Dave the diary - Extract 1

A/N: Thanks for clicking on my story – this is an extract from the start of the story, my character writes as diary entries, it is a little long so apologies! Hope you enjoy and if you leave a little review I’ll be sure to return the favour!

1st January – 03.42AM, My Bedroom.

New Year, new me. That’s how the saying goes, isn’t it? I hope so or I’ll look a right dick if the first thing I’ve written in this stupid diary is wrong. Anyway, the New Year has started off surprisingly positively so I am hoping that the new me can be equally as positively surprising and actually keep one of her New Year’s resolutions.

Now in this space, I would like to write that I have decided completely of my own accord to start writing a diary. I would like to say that I have so many complex and meaningful thoughts that I am desperate for a place to store them all to prevent my extremely intelligent brain from overflowing with wisdom.

I fear you may have already caught on that this is far from the truth.

So I’ll start as I mean to go on and share with you that I have decided to put pen to paper today, purely to make good on a promise I made to Paul the counsellor. Paul the counsellor thinks that if I start to write things down then it might ‘help me make sense of my world.’ Now, you seem like a fairly smart diary so I will assume you have already sussed out that Paul the counsellor is a massive prick.

Paul the prick is full of cheesy counselling lines like that. Can you believe that people happily hand over their hard-earned money to sit there listening to some guy wearing clear lensed glasses read out googles most inspirational quotes? He carries around his own little diary that he strategically places in front of his face, you can only see his beady eyes peeking out over the tops of his fake glasses. I am sure he does it so you can’t see him laughing at you for paying him to say “and how does that make you feel” every few minutes. And I mean, on the fake glasses topic, is there some sort of secret shop you get taken to when you qualify as a counsellor? Shitty Counsellors R US or something? Because seriously, they all look the same, cheap pinstripe suits, fake glasses, bald heads…it can’t be coincidence. I’m sure they all get together Friday nights and have a right good old laugh at how much you can get people to dish out if you concentrate your efforts into being a crap Paul McKenna lookalike.

Even so, you can’t blame them for making a living out of the dull-witted. There will always be people like my parents falling hook, line, and sinker for every fake pair of glasses they spot, it’s good business. I mean they happily agreed to chuck him 500 quid, so confident were they that he could ‘get me back on track.’ You see, since I told them I did not intend on going to university they have taken to brightening my life with these sweet daily reminders that I am destined to end up a homeless, crackhead prostitute if I do not further my education. And whilst these titbits of heartfelt parental advice are lovely and all, I could really breathe a little easier without them being yelled at me whenever I leave my bedroom. I had my tactics to avoid them of course. Pretending to be on the phone, singing at the top of my voice around the house to ensure I couldn’t hear them, channelling my inner James Bond and stealthily sneaking about the place. But after a while of me ignoring their homemade nagging, they decided to bring in a professional nagger to nag me in weekly hour long nag sessions.

Oh the joy.

Long story short, Paul the prick is being paid 100 quid an hour to nag me into submission. He comes up with all these fantastic ideas to help. He suggests breathing (always handy I find), walking (another pearl of wisdom) and, his favourite, doing annoying things like writing diaries. Every session so far has consisted of me sitting across from him using every ounce of my willpower to not roll my eyes at every other word that comes out of his mouth. So I sit there and force myself to nod along, make the occasional ‘mhmm’ noise and ignore everything he says. If my parents want to waste money on this guy telling me to breathe, walk and sleep then who am I to question them? The only problem is that being a professional nagger means that you have this knack for being able to annoy a person to the point where they will agree to do whatever you say just to shut you up.

God, if I ever hear that guy utter the word diary again I may shove his own stupid diary up his fat arse.

I am sorry diary, I’m sure you’re a lovely guy and nothing like Paul the prick’s smug book. If I said any of this to him I am sure he would laugh me right off of his smug pages. I’d obviously never treat you in such a way.

Talking to my diary aside, I am fairly certain I am mentally stable enough to not warrant weekly dates with Paul the prick. However, I have recently been informed that until I make an effort to take on board Paul’ suggestions, we will have to keep up our Wednesday rendezvous. This is not a part of my Wednesday I wish to continue indefinitely. And apparently pointing out that you have been doing excellent work breathing and walking won’t end your counselling sessions any sooner.

So here I am, writing in a diary.

I feel a bit sorry for you to be honest diary. I mean there you were, minding your own business on an unspectacular WHSmith shelf and then all of a sudden you were snatched from comfort, thrust into my basket and into my life. I can’t help thinking that maybe diaries don’t even want to be written in. Maybe, just once, they want to concentrate on their own lives and problems instead of being continuously bombarded with every detail of someone else’s. I am sorry if that is the case diary. I am sorry for dragging you away from your fellow hot pink diary family last Thursday, I promise you I will treat you with respect and not abandon you on a train or drop you in the bath or anything. We can be pals if ya fancy?

What do you say?

Sounds like fun right?

?

Right?

. . .

No, I don’t blame you for not wanting to be my pal.

I’m not sure I would want to be pals with someone who is capable of writing such shit.

I don’t think this is what Paul the prick meant when he told me to write down my life either.

Turns out this writing a diary business is pretty tricky.

Nope.

Don’t think it’s for me.

Can’t say I didn’t give it my best shot though.

1st January – 03.58, Still My Bedroom

…

Well this is awkward…

I apologise for my rash decision there to never write in you again diary. Especially as it turns out I neglected to mention the whole reason I had finally chosen to write in you at all. I understand you’re hurt and confused, but hang in there, I have got a point.

You see it’s all very well writing in a diary but what do you do if you don’t actually have anything to say? You can’t open up your little book and fill it with “Today I brushed my teeth, went for 5 wees and ate risotto for dinner” can you? I mean, if anything, that’s going to depress you more! No, I have been pretty set on the fact that so few events of interest happen in my life that there is nothing to write down.

Until tonight!

By the way, just so you’re aware diary. It’s my birthday today, my 18th actually, so quite a big deal. Not that I expected you to know or anything, of course not, I just feel like you should know that detail because I think it adds to the whole excitement of tonight’s events.

Tonight’s events. Oh my giddy god.

Let’s just say it has been a wonderful birthday so far.

So to start with let me take you back to this day a year ago. I was in the same place I am now, sitting on my bed, head spinning with everything that had happened in the previous hours.

In theory, New Year’s Eve should be a great night for me. It should be a great night for everyone, granted. But not everyone gets the whole world counting down the seconds until their birthday, that part is pretty cool. And New Year’s always was so cool.

Emphasis on the word was.

The coolness ended 2 years ago when my mum changed job to a new law firm. Ever since, our family was doomed to be dragged along to the worst NYE party you could possibly imagine.

I use the word ‘party’ very loosely. All it really is is a bunch of uppity twats standing around fake laughing and trying to out-posh each other. Painful to endure and even more so when you spend the first few hours of your birthday surrounded by aforementioned uppity twats.

The first year I was optimistic. Can’t be that bad, you’d think millionaires would put on a good show. Right?

Wrong.

So wrong.

The first year I took up residence near the food table and managed to get more than a little tipsy on champagne. Sounds great! However, the bollocking I got from my parents when word went around that their 17 year old daughter was found slumped over a toilet vomiting up all the champagne and sausage rolls she had scoffed was not so great.

The following year I returned with my head hung in shame. I was right to be embarrassed, no one had forgotten my antics from the year before and no one was making any effort to pretend like they had either. Naturally, my mother had banned me from champagne and sausage rolls which made my time there all the more painful. I had no choice but to wander around aimlessly trying to find somebody who wasn’t looking at me as though I had murdered their dog. To no avail.

Eventually, I managed to escape my mother’s stern gaze after and found a secluded spot on the fourth floor on a sofa in a hallway of some kind. I wondered why posh people insisted on having such uncomfortable sofas. I mean this one didn’t even look finished, it was the most half arsed attempt at a sofa I had ever seen.

Well that’s the super-rich for you, so lazy that they can’t even be bothered to finish a sofa.

So there I was, minding my own business, not a sausage roll or glass of champagne in sight, wondering how on Earth I was going to pass the time in total seclusion until midnight.

On the bright side, total seclusion meant no one was around to disapprove of my existence. I was free to do whatever the hell I felt like. There was no limit to potential activities on the half sofa. I could fart loudly…no one would know. I could sing or shout or just stretch out like Kate Winslet in Titanic, I’m sure it was a half sofa she was on in that scene, wasn’t it?

“Paint me like one of your French girls.”

Ha, turns out I do a decent Kate Winslet impression.

I won’t lie, it did cross my mind that I could even just whip my tits out like Kate Winslet; no one was around to see. Liberating, really. Having such freedom and privacy in the middle of a snobbish soirée.

The thought of my mother finding out I was lying nude on some rich fuckers half sofa made me laugh out loud. Didn’t matter though, no one was around to hear me snort laugh at my own joke.

Or so I thought.

Cos I had stopped laughing. But the laughing sound hadn’t stopped. My first thought was that the mansion was haunted and I was about to meet my end being killed by a ghost. I could picture it, my lifeless body splayed out across the half sofa. Would be just my luck.

I sat bolt upright and scanned the room to see if any apparitions had it out for me. There was a dark figure stood in a doorway to my left. Too scared to move, I squinted my eyes to get a glimpse of my ghostly foe.

To my horror, the dark figure moved towards me slowly, shoes clicking on the marble floor. I decided there and then that if I was going to die like this, I was going to try my absolute hardest to not crap my pants. The glamorous body draped over the half sofa picture would be slightly spoilt by the smell of shit.

It was all I could do to continue staring until the figure was a few feet away from me. I didn’t know if this was a normal reaction to have, but damn this ghost was hot...and kind of familiar.

He was taller than I expected. Not that I had many expectations when it came to ghosts but I had expected more pale, floatiness I suppose. What I had in front of me was...not that.

This is no exaggeration diary. I had seen attractive people before but this guy in front of me was simply gorgeous. His eyes were focused on me, I’ve never used the word intense to describe eyes before, but it seems quite fitting here. I was feeling fairly confused regarding the feelings I was experiencing towards a man I wasn’t sure was even alive. I looked him up and down, purely for the purpose of seeing if he was breathing or not, but it was hard to think about something as trivial as breathing when I was in the presence of such gorgeousness.

Alive or not.

My eyes lingered too long on his defined jaw, his lips curled up at the sides in a smirk, his dark hair that drifted into light eyes. He moved his hand to push his hair back, I wished it were my hands in his hair and fuck did he have beautiful hands. Not that I can articulate what made his hands beautiful of course, I just know that I have never seen hands that could compare. He just was beautiful okay?! Words don’t do him justice and I’ve never pretended to be great at describing men who look like Greek gods.

Oh god he was opening his mouth.