This set of writings are just certain inputs into my percieved book... there is no structure to it as yet but im hoping that as i go along i can find some structure...
-------------------------------------x--------------------------------
Chapter 1
Huffing and puffing and blowing and breathing, he awoke to the dimmly lit confines of his kitchen. It took him a minute to realise where he was.. and how he got there.. but soon it sturck him.
This is where he stayed.
He looked down at his folded t-shirt which he used as his pillow, and it was drenched with a combination of his sweat and spit and evidently he had wet his bed again. He knew he was going to get beaten in the morning by his grandmother...
He could already hear her voice, "Shame on you! All of 7 years and still wetting your bed... When will you learn and grow up! How many times have I told you to go to the loo before you sleep... God save us from this useless child.. hope we dont have to clean up after you till your 20..." and on and on and on... intermingled with some slaps and abuses he didnt understand, but yet used in school...
He rubbed his eyes, wiped his mouth, wrapped up the blanket he used as a bed and stood there wondering what to do. He then tiptoed past the one other room in his small one roomed house and went to the bathroom, locked the door. Hoping that nobody woke up, he starts washing the blanket being as soft and subtle as he can.
He had been having similar dreams of late, ones of pain and sadness and remorse.
Ones that didnt allow him to sleep... and most times he was too scared to wake up...
THese dreams had people... places... histories... and tragedies...
He could remember these dreams clearly.. as if he was awake through them... experiencing them as his own...
All the pain was his... all the people were him...
Today's dream was different...
todays dream was more real...
He suddenly closed his eyes and tried to remember the dream... not wanting to.. but not being able to resist...
He saw a man...
Deeply pained...
Always drunk..
In society maligned...
He fought with his wife...
And threw a vessel at her face..
It missed her by miles...
but thats all she could take...
She walked out the door...
She took away her five year old child...
She was at her neighbours house..
When she heard a loud noise...
They all ran out...
and they all ran in...
There he lay on the ground...
Under the roof he was pinned...
A rope around his neck...
The other end on the beam..
It didnt take his weight...
THis he didnt forsee...
She felt unhappyness...
She felt relief...
She sat down and held her child close...
She felt she was free...
He could somehow feel many different emotions. HE had felt the pain of the man.. he had felt the anger of the woman... he could also feel the confusion of the child...
This was new... he generally could only feel one emotion at a time... He didnt know what was happening to him...
HE slowly opened his eyes.. he felt some wetness on his cheeks... he wiped his face with his arm and gets back to washing his blanket...
Suddenly he hears the building rooster crowing... he looks at the bathroom window and realises that morning is near.. it must have been around 5 am.. he needed to get back to the kitchen before his mother wakes up in 15 minutes... so he quickly wrings the blanket... and wrings it again... once he is convinced of enough dryness... he quickly tiptoes back to the kitchen... lays out his blanket and pretends to be back in bed...
Sure enough his mother wakes up within a few minutes of his little act... he softly smiles to himself, to the thought of him having gotten away with the entire charade... and the fact that his grandmother will not have a chance to beat or scold him since the evidence was washed away...
and within minutes he is back to being fast asleep.. with a big grin on his face...
What he didnt know was that as he closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, his grandmother went to the loo... slipped on the water and had a gaping open wound on her head..
She couldnt be revived before the ambulance reached...
She was rushed to the hospital... doctors declared that she was in a coma...
She died 2 days later.
--------------------------------------x--------------------------------
