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| The following is an exercise undertaken in a writing group. It deal with sensitive subject matter and contains some GRAPHIC CONTENT. The exercise was to write a piece of at least 1,000 words incorporating random lines from a poem, (author unknown.) The poetry excerpts are in capitals. | |||||||||
| The Madness of a Girl like Me... | |||||||||
| I was their first born and their only offspring. My first mistake was to be a female child. Each evening, before the nightmares start, I try to tell myself, they didn't mean it, they couldn't help themselves. It never works. | |||||||||
| My name is Inez, which means 'pure, chaste, untouchable virgin' It was my grandmothers name, on my mother's side. I never knew her. She committed suicide long before I was born, leaving her four children to fend for themselves. And so here am I, the untouchable virgin, named for a woman who killed herself by jumping off a bridge. | |||||||||
| 'Not my fault!' | |||||||||
| I scream those words as the cold blade cuts into my skin and, fascinated, I watch the flesh part. It's white at first and then the layers separate, revealing the inside of my arm, with its many shades of pink, white and yellow. The yellowish bits are fatty deposits. I have visible fat, even though I am quite thin. | |||||||||
| I'm surprised there is still no blood, although seconds later a thin red line appears. It's as if it takes that time for the flesh to realise it has been harmed and to send messages, via my brain to my blood, telling it to run for freedom, to make its escape. I watch the wound start to ooze and I hold my arm out rigidly in front of me, mesmerised as the thick redness runs along to my elbow before dripping onto the floor. As the blood flows, I exhale. The tension leaves my body like air from a balloon. | |||||||||
| All too soon, the flow slows to a mere trickle and I look to the puddle at my feet. I recognise it as 'enough', for now, and I move away to the sink to begin the clean up process. | |||||||||
| This is as much a part of my release ...and I run cold water into the sink and allow my blood to drip and stain it . I watch the swirls it makes in the water, red against the white porcelain of the wash basin. It looks like rust. | |||||||||
| This will never do. I must hurry now and I begin in earnest. The cold water stings my raw flesh and tears prickle my lashes. My teeth gouge deep ridges in my bottom lip as I bite down to prevent myself from crying out. And the pain begins. A prickling that grows until it becomes a throbbing crescendo of reassurance. To feel pain means I am still alive. | |||||||||
| It is getting dark. I don't like the night, the time when the memories come rushing in, crowding me with their persistent cries for attention. It was night when the terror first came to me. | |||||||||
| I was four years old when it stole my innocence with one thrust of its body against mine. I cried into the hand which was clamped across my mouth. His breath dulled the sounds of his voice as he rasped the words, too close to my ear for me to hear them clearly. I understood only one word. Secret. | |||||||||
| After that it was almost every night thatMax crept along the landing. I heard his footsteps long before my frightened eyes watched the handle slowly turn downwards as he let himself into my room. The floorboards protested at his weight as he made his way to my side. As he lowered himself towards my trembling body I heard her. Moments later, she too crept along and stood there in the doorway. The light from the window showed her clearly, The envy etched on her face as she stood witness to my shame. And to her shame, she did nothing to stop him. She watched as he tore into me. My screams fell on deaf ears as unblinking she watched from her vantage point, her eyes glazed. She always left at the sound of his triumphant cry, abandoning me yet again to his mercy. And when he was done he leant over and kissed my forehead and whispered 'SLEEP WELL, MY LOVE, SLEEP WELL' | |||||||||
| And I lay there wetly in the darkness and whispered my protective mantra. ...The Devil is just evil with a D for daddy. | |||||||||
| I remember when I was six, the night the axe came down. My parents had been edgy for days. They had run out of medication and had run off their happy high. We were entering dangerous territory. I knew all the signs but could do nothing. | |||||||||
| The axe woke me crashing through the bedroom walls as my father shouted for Satan to show himself. The plaster shattered, sending white particles and dust flying through the air, choking me. And all the while, my father continued to rant and rave, convinced Beelzebub lived behind the stud partition walls of our tiny house. My mother sat in the rocker in the corner of the kitchen clapping her hands and encouraging him by screaming 'Get thee out from behind me Satan' | |||||||||
| It was sheer madness. The neighbours must have heard the racket, but no-one dared complain. My father was a giant of a man, stood six feet five in his stockinged feet. His name was Max...Maximilian which means 'the greatest' | |||||||||
| My mother was named Trista, which means 'sorrowful'. She died some years ago , rotted away as the cancer ate her from the inside. My mother died before she had ever lived, but while she was alive, my mother hated me. She was jealous and wore her envy like a mantle. She shunned me, pushed me away, refused my kisses, ignoring my pleas for attention. She used to watch him looking at me and the fire of her hatred and jealousy could light up any room with its ferocity. Her eyes would bore into me, through my clothes, through my skin if I were naked , and she would sneer, her nostrils flared and crinkling at the edges somehow, as though offended by a bad smell. | |||||||||
| In our house lust was paramount and fear ruled. Max equalled fear. My weakling of a mother was entranced by him. She believed him so strong,. A real man, her protector. She couldn't see the insane monster behind those cold grey eyes, even when she watched him take me by force. She believed him when he told her I was the devil's child. He told us both that daughters were sent by Satan to tempt fathers. She nodded her head in agreement. It was madness. | |||||||||
| I wipe the last traces of blood from my arm with a paper towel. I wrap the bandage tightly across the wound, the pressure refreshes the burn of the pain and I smile as it reminds me how good it feels to be alive. I throw all the trash into the bin and I turn off the light. I think of Max. I like to keep him near me, keep him where I can see him. I glance towards the rucksack on the floor, in the corner by the door. This is where I keep Max, what's left of him. He is long dead. May he rot in peace. | |||||||||
| In better days he would be kind. He would call us 'his girls' and he would tickle us until we cried. We would go to the beach and walk along the sand with our arms linked and we would sing above the crashing of the waves. And afterwards we would eat chips from the paper, all greasy and covered in salt. I used to love those times...few as they were. But for the most part, growing up, the corners of our house were filled with VIOLENCE . | |||||||||
| LIKE A BUG-INFESTED RAG nobody wanted to touch it lay festering, never acknowledged, as we ignored the evil living in our own home. We were united, too scared to admit, even to ourselves, the horrors of our reality. While we watched the news , tut-tutting along with the rest of the nation and cursing the depravity that caused human cruelty, Max would get mad. He would start to shout and she would try to hold him and stroke his face and hum to him like he was her baby. He would rave on into the night and all through THE LONG DAYS. | |||||||||
| ANGER PANTS inside him like a dog on a summers day. He is a lion, hear him roar. The King of her jungle. It was madness. | |||||||||
| The parties were the worst times. They would invite their friends and they would all get drunk really quickly. The music would get louder and louder and the dancing more frenzied. After a few parties, I gave up trying to slip away. It was futile, they always called for me. If I had the stomach for it, I would have tried getting drunk too, but alcohol only made me sick, and it couldn't blot out the horror of one of Max's party nights. I don't know where these friends of theirs came from? I never saw them at any other time. There were always plenty of girls. Mostly young, blonde and skinny, wearing too much make-up and too little skirt. Poor little good time gals. | |||||||||
| I was sixteen before I could escape the madness and by that time I had been swallowed by it. It didn't let me sleep and my heavy eyes were too scared to close for fear of the dreams that would surely follow me on my road to hell. | |||||||||
| I took a job as a maid in a house on the other side of town. I hoped that I wouldn't have to see either of them again and at the same time I was scared that I never would. The madness continued flowing through my life as the blood flowed through and from my veins. It was in the big house that I began to cut. | |||||||||
| I don't really know how it started? What would make a person even think of cutting through their own flesh with a knife? Desperation. That's what did it. Unable to stop the nightmares or the waking panic, desperate for some means of control, some form of release. I don't know how I came to be standing in the attic bathroom with a knife in my hand. Or how I came to apply the blade to the soft flesh of my inner arm...but I did it. And as the blood flowed from the wound, so the tension left my body and I breathed easy for the first time in a thousand years. | |||||||||
| Afterwards, when I had cleaned up all the mess, I stood at the tiny rooftop window and peered down into the streets below. The sounds of the traffic were dulled by distance and I watched the POLICE CARS COCKROACH THROUGH THE TUNNEL STREETS below, their lights flashing like a million fireflies dancing in the dark. It was safe up there, away from all the madness . I had my pain to reassure me I was still alive. | |||||||||
| You may think it is strange to need pain to feel alive. That has been my life. A prisoner of my genes, daughter of the devil. Supposedly I'm free now, although that's not really true. I will never be free, the damage is already done. Think of me sometimes and remember me...My name is Inez, which means 'pure, chaste, the untouchable virgin'. A strange choice of a name for a girl like me. | |||||||||
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