In the warmth of her blanket and with her head still fuzzy from the previous night out, Rose woke up in the darkness with a hundred thoughts and feelings still flowing through her mind.

Aware that it was still too early to get up yet also too late to stay up, she laid in her bed hugging her spare, often unused third pillow not daring to check what time it was. Her thoughts swirled around and whether they had been influenced from her already-vanished dreams or not, currently revolved only around herself: her own being, and of the people closest to this fragmented conceptual image of herself.

Her father and her sister, standing there next to the bed staring at her in the blacked-out apartment, their faces young and how she remembered them from her childhood. The looks on these faces brought a sense of calm over Rose as her fingers clamped the edges of that third pillow, sending a serene tickle through her palms and an overwhelmingly palpable sense of sadness to her chest as she lay there on her side.

Rose’’s breathing pattern slowed down in speed and increased in intensity, taking in the fresh early morning breeze whistling gently in from the small opened gap of her sliding balcony door of winter-chilled glass. The smell of settled rain entered her nostrils as her attention switched to yet another familiar face from her past; a best friend from high school who had also come for a long-awaited visit.

Mary, whose name nor face had not occupied her consciousness for so many years joined her immediate family, the three of them now suddenly present and watching over her as she lingered in this mock state of sleep. Mary’s long and wavy shiny brown hair dangled neatly down to her shoulders, and it surprised Rose to recall such a vividly beautiful detail which had always somehow failed to grasp her attention as a teenager; only coming to prominence now long into the future.  Rose remembered the conversations they shared and the support they provided for one another, wondering how and why she never kept in touch after she had to leave [TOWN] upon graduating from [INSTITUTION].

Uncomfortable with these guests coming for this uninvited visit at such an unsociable hour, Rose turned her body away from them so that she was now lying on her back, pulling her hair out from underneath her neck in order to feel the coolness of her favourite, main pillow pressed against the bump on the back of her neck. She placed her hands gently on top of her stomach, but not before quickly pinching Theo’s waist gently just to check that he was till there on her right. Sure enough he was, back turned to her and snoring ever so slightly that it would have been hard for anyone else to have noticed, not even Mary, Dad, or her little sister, persisting in their presence within such close proximity.

Shifting herself again so that she was now lying on the opposite side of which she awoke, Rose wrapped her left arm around Theo’s midriff, sliding her right hand up to the back of his neck as if she were holding onto a double bass. She felt like kissing him on the base of his hairline but could not find the energy nor the right angle to do so, imagining that kiss instead and even pouting her lips in the act. Reassured by his presence and feeling safe from her ghosts in his company, she managed to quietly mouth out a small, incorrect whisper, “Evan,” completely unaware that this name stopped Theo’s snoring and coaxed his eyes open as her mental visitors left the room and returned outside through the thin balcony door opening into the darkness of her solemn past.

Photo source

For background: Liar: A New Story Idea

And in particular, an article from NZHerald.co.nz – The colourful life and sad death of a fabulist

This will probably be the last little peek at the ‘Liar’ short story about Richmal Oates-Whitehead for a while before I go on and finish the whole story. Obviously what’s been pasted here is all still very young, rough, not fully developed. But it’s a direction and a foundation for the final product.

Questions to think about: details details! What was New Zealand fashion like for early 90’s University students? What was the social climate like for young people in the late teens and early twenties in the society, and how did dating fit into it all? Were funky cafes like the one described even in existence back then? What real life University would best fit the story in terms of location and mentality? What are some subtle little Kiwi phrases for when I take over as Richmal in the first person? “Blinklessly” is not a word, although it bloody well should be.

…..

Intro. Richmal: age 32. Fantasy.

Inspiration. I have begun work on a new fictional story project, tentatively titled “Liar”, involving a very real, very unique person. Richmal Oates-Whitehead was a medical writer-turned doctor who came to prominence during the London bombings in 2005 having been hailed as something of a saviour after assisting victims, however it was this fame that ultimately led to her downfall. It was later revealed that she was not really a doctor, that the stories she shared with colleagues (including details of her marriage and the death of her twins) were in fact all entirely fabricated and, tragically, Richmal passed away shortly afterwards from the adverse-effects of the bombings without ever being able to provide an explanation as to what motivated her actions.

Her story just got me thinking: what would compel somebody to create so many lies of such significance that not only are the lines between fantasy and reality not so much blurred but rather melded and fused together and existing as the one entity. So here I am now, attempting to fill in the gaps. It’s immensely interesting given the amount of fiction present in her own life and the fiction from my end colliding in an attempt to explain Richmal’s unique life; her childhood, her university years, her adulthood, so much of it unknown in a life which surely cannot be dismissed as simply being “crazy”. She lived multiple lives it seems and, in an ideal word, the richer she would have been for it.

And what better way to explore the mind of someone with multiple personality disorder than to purposely create her actual existence, as well as her fantasy, in my own head and experiment to see what happens?

I won’t give away details as to how I am exploring these personalities given that I could “blow my cover”, but I will say that it has so far involved the creation of a fictional character with her own web space and virtual reality presence through a blog site and a virtual online world, respectively. I will continue to work on The Secret Project of course, but I am also truly excited about the possibilities in taking on such a project and the benefits it could yield in terms of the expansion of writing style and ability and, most of all, quite literally getting into the head of different characters. Or should that be the other way around?

So here’s a very early and very rough look at a fictional Richmal, aged 10. In the meantime I will continue with the personality switches and take great care so as to not to let them overlap and overwrite my own sense of self. It’ll be a controlled state of psychosis and I’ll be fine, scout’s honour!

………………………………..

Richmal Age 10.

I lie sometimes, but don’t we all? It wasn’t until the end of term 3 of this year that I found out that lies happen all the time. Even mum and dad lie to me, but it’s okay.

Last winter when our 2 year old sheepdog Aihe jumped the fence in the backyard and went missing, mum and dad took me out in the car for three straight nights after dinnertime looking for her around the neighbourhood. Dad would drive around and around for hours, knocking on every door and asking everybody whether they’d seen her until I fell asleep in mum’s lap and dad would give up for the night and I heard him swear to himself softly and mum would “shhhh!” him because he would wake me up, but it was okay because it was only for a few seconds.

Then a few weeks later a policeman came to our house and dad called mum over to him while I was out refilling the bird seeds in the birdhouse in the backyard and when I put the packet of seeds down to go inside and listen to what they were talking about the policeman took off his hat and fell silent before mum turned to me, her face all red and her eyebrows pointed upwards like the roof of a house I once drew at school, and told me very gently and slowly to go back outside and finish feeding the birds. Dad put his arm around mum as she turned back towards the policeman and so I got worried that mum may have done something bad.

A little robin flew down and sat on the birdbath and whistled at me as I fed it the last handful of seeds when I heard the glass door slide open and mum and dad came out to see me and they both crouched down and put their arms around me. They looked like they were about to cry and they began to stutter a little as they spoke and they took a while to get ready and during all this I began to feel a little funny about it while the little robin whistled away, pecking at his food happily because he had got there first and there were no other birds around to snatch his seeds away. They told me Aihe wouldn’t be coming back home because she was now in heaven, and that God had decided to invite her up to his house in the sky so that she could play with all the other animals, and that up there every animal got along, even lions and zebras and cats and dogs, and they’d never fight. It suddenly made sense to me when they told me this that the sky was full of clouds but they weren’t really clouds; they were sheep that just looked like clouds because there were so many of them, and that Aihe would have the time of her life up there chasing them around because God had spent so much effort decorating his sky garden with sheep everywhere just for her because she had been such a good dog. I asked mum and dad if I could go up and play with Aihe and all the sheep, as well as the lions and zebras, but when I said this mum started crying so I lied to her and said I didn’t really mean it, even though I did.

That’s why I think lies can be good sometimes. To make people feel better. We learnt one day in religion class about St Augustine and what he said about lies, and how lies that don’t harm anyone but save people aren’t really lies at all. So I didn’t mind when my parents lied to me. They used to lie to me and say that they were going to have a private talk in their bedroom with the door shut, but it wasn’t a lie because I could hear every little thing they said to one another because they’d talk really loud but I didn’t know why they called each other those mean names and made each other sad. So I’d lie back to them when they asked me whether I got along with all the other kids at school and I’d say yes when the truth was that most kids called me names except for my best friend Natasha, and that my pencils and erasers got stolen and my bag was thrown over the back fence behind the canteen and into the dark bushes where the teachers told us never to go. I told mum and dad that I left my bag on the bus and they’d get mad at me but not for long because soon they’d have more private chats with each other in the backyard with the glass door slid shut when I would pretend to watch TV but really I was watching their silhouettes in front of the purple evening sky dance around and slouch their shoulders and point out their fingertips so it looked like they were holding starfish in their hands. When they would come back in when the sports news was on they’d take turns taking me back to my room and speaking to me about how sorry they were. I didn’t want them to feel sorry because it was my fault that I left my bag on the bus, not theirs.

I’m 10 years old now but it was only when I was 9 that I found out that mum and dad had been lying to me. I was a bit upset about it then but not anymore because like St Augustine said, lies that don’t hurt can help. When dad told me he had to go away to another country for work and didn’t come home when he was meant to I was worried that he got lost and so I asked mum where he was and she told me he was overseas, so I asked her whether he caught a boat because I’d always wanted to go on a boat, but she told me she wasn’t sure. But then a few days later on shopping night we ran into him at the supermarket when I was deciding what flavour yoghurt I wanted and he had a lady friend with him and I was about to introduce myself but then mum got upset and then dad left quickly with his friend before I had a chance to talk and he gave me a real sad look with his eyes as he walked off. When I told Natasha at school about what happened she said my parents were going to get a divorce just like her parents and when I asked her what that meant she said that it was when your mum and dad decide to take turns every weekend to take you out to the carnival and the markets and you get to live in two houses, but ever since she said that I’ve only seen dad once and so I got upset with Natasha the other day because she’d lied to me too and I told her I didn’t want to be her friend anymore, but that was a lie as well because she’s my best friend and I’m not upset with her anymore.

When mum asked me yesterday when she dropped me off at school whether or not I missed dad, I stared at her face for a second and saw that she looked real sad, so I told her no, even though I did. I thought that saying that would make her smile but she just looked down at the middle of the steering wheel and so I looked too but there was nothing there apart from the car horn. I wondered if maybe it had stopped working and that was why mum was sad because in case she needed to honk the horn she wouldn’t be able to. I was about to ask her this when she kissed my cheek and gave me a hug and told me to have a nice day and so I grabbed the new bag she had bought for me to replace the one I had lost and waved her goodbye as she drove off.

I bumped into Natasha just in front of the red metal gates at school and said “Hi” and she said “Hi” and we walked together side by side while the other kids around us played and made as much noise as they could before the morning bell rang. As we walked it started to sprinkle and Natasha looked up at the sky and said there were lots of grey clouds and that there was going to be a storm. I got excited and told her that I knew what clouds were made of, and when she asked me to tell her I said “they’re made of lots of sheep that God put up there so that Aihe could chase them around all day and that’s why the clouds move,” which then made me wonder where the rain came from but Natasha stopped walking and just looked at me weirdly and called me a liar.

In this extract we find one of the main characters stuck in a dream/nightmare-like state. It was interesting writing this as I have not previously attempted writing horror or suspense, and so these events merely unfolded as I coaxed my heart to race in an artificial state of fear, if that makes any sense. By closing my eyes, breathing calmly, and then imagining the worst possible place I could be, it helped to prepare myself in the right mood in order to empathise with the character.

Unpublished Work © 2009 Will Ooi. All Rights Reserved

I lie flat on my back on top of the blue ragged sleeping bag which has seemingly shrivelled and shrunken in my absence. I don’t bother uncurling it properly as I wish nothing more right now than to force myself to sleep, trying to, with intense determination, think nothing of how an over-creased lump of so-called waterproof material has developed directly beneath the bones of my lower vertebrae – evidently not doing its job properly given how my rain-soaked clothes are causing the wooden floorboards to squeak softly with moisture as I wriggle myself into an acceptably comfortable position.

Father Thomas is already asleep and, even with my own confused morals, I know better than to trouble him at this late hour for a towel, waking him while covered from head to toe in rain water, blood, and blotches of unidentifiable yet unquestionably rancid garbage dumpster residue. “Have some respect for a man of the cloth,” I think to myself, licking my dried and cracked metallic tasting lips.

My eyes closed and with both my hands behind my head, I know it’s going to be difficult to simply ‘drift off’. The undersides of my eyelids are still gravelly-red and black in colour and warmth as a soul-consuming combination of full moonlight and street lamps from outside the chapel beams in through the stained glass windows of Saints and heroes, and the slow-burning circular tablets of people’s prayers occupy the air with the bleeding black fragrance of wax.

I remove my right hand from its slowly numbing position under the small weak follicles that divide the hair on the back of my head from my neck and bring it up over my face as a shield over my disturbed and all-seeing shut eyes.

The redness beneath my eyelids disappears, replaced only with an artificial darkness of shadow puppet biblical proportions as the now-missing foundation of my makeshift pillow lowers my head, tilted, onto the floor’s late-night chill, sending a rush of cold feedback straight into the back of my skull. My right hand fails to move quickly enough to wrap the unwanted sources of light poking through the thin flaps of my eyelids – resulting in a return to the ghostly silent loneliness of the insomniac. This isn’t working.

I let out a sigh as I re-open my eyes, weakly giving in to the temptation of staring miserably at the criss-crossed supporting beams of the ceiling; the rafters gliding symmetrically into a tiny little square at the very tip, forming the building’s spire.

I swallow a gulp of saliva and feel it struggle its way down my mucous-lined sore throat as it becomes apparent that I am getting a cold; the mere thought of it brings out the hypochondriac within me – eliciting a cold feverish sweat to trickle down my suddenly very warm and very throbbing left temple. I can mentally track the trail of this single bead of sweat, oozing a path like an early sunrise snail crawling over the garden moss of my growing facial hair before it decides to evaporate on the sharp edge of jaw and earlobe. I angrily smack this part of my face more in spite than with any actual intention of self-cleanliness, knowing full well that the drop of perspiration, just like my chances of getting a decent night’s worth of sleep, is long gone.

Giving it one last shot, I turn my body so that I am lying on my left side; my ribs taking my weight and both my legs tucked on top of each other, bent and conflicting, so that I am now partaking in my own amateurish rendition of the foetal position. Sick of my tiredness, sick of my upcoming illness, I angle my eyebrows downwards to make a furrowed V-sign and slam shut my eyes, vowing to, under no circumstances, open them again until the sun is up and illuminating St. Michael and his colourful puzzle-pieced robes. I force myself to travel, anywhere, in my mind, and in doing so I feel pathetic in that my last refuge from the madness of the waking is to transport myself into the lunacy of coerced fantasy. But fuck, I need the rest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mercifully, I ride on an initial wave of a floating sensation as the crumpled useless blue sleeping bag becomes smooth on my damp exposed flesh. The muscles of my jagged elbows begin to relax as the warmth of the veiny pulse on my temple envelopes first my face, followed soon after by my chest. I feel the heat of my boiling fever collapse down into the rest of my upper torso before spreading out into my limbs, my heart rate slowing down as I breathe in and out through my mouth. The air is no longer laced with the streaming thin waves of black candle smoke, and my taste buds enjoy a sweet wisp of clean undiluted oxygen so fresh it seems like I am on a different planet altogether.

Now I am in true darkness. Lying on a soft bed I try to decipher piece by piece the other details of these new surroundings of mine. The acceptance that I am 15 years old or thereabouts permeates my mind, my eyes spinning as they follow the motions of a slow rotating brown dust embellished ceiling fan that now replaces the square icon tip of the church’s spire, providing me with a cool room temperature and making redundant the puffy white feather down blanket neatly folded to my side.

I glance to my left with my eyes shut and am able to see the wall next to my bed; the small specks of blue painted stone protruding out in intricacy before disappearing under the thin lines of black shadow beneath large posters, held up by slightly hidden pieces of grey blu-tack on their corners. Footballers and rock bands and lead pencil sketches of dinosaurs.

In front of my feet stands a pale wooden bookshelf positioned a metre away from the corner to its left where the locked door to this room marks the end of the stuck-on shiny images. The roof of the bookshelf holds an unwanted cream-coloured lamp with a stained shade, and I know that it is missing a bulb, along with a few metres’ worth of tangled up telephone wire propping over the top edge an gently touching the roof of the top shelf.  The remainder of the bookshelf is filled with books and magazines of varying thicknesses, organised neatly and lovingly despite the barely visible layer of accumulated dust powdering the top side of their pages.

A long blue and white folded-up umbrella with a thin wooden grip-contoured handle sits in perfect precision and spacing in between the bookshelf and its neighbouring wardrobe, the latter of which props up its own corner and is yellowy-brown in colour and covered with unwanted and unremovable paper white torn remnants of ripped-off stickers. The doors of the wardrobe are shut, but I know that within it lies the in-descript long and short sleeve selections of a generic school uniform, sports label branded t-shirts, loose fitting faded jeans with torn stringy hems, and neatly folded running shorts and leather shoes with worn-out soles and animal-chewed laces.

To my and the wardrobe’s right is a desk covered with assorted stationary and organised piles of scrap pieces of paper with drawings and writings, and exercise books with dog-eared purple and black striped covers. The desk has two small drawers on its right beneath the main bench, both are shut but the top drawers hangs out slightly over the bottom, over-filled. Above the desk is a large window with drawn up horizontal lines of wind-crackling plastic blinds, through which I can make out a front garden with plenty of flowers I do not know the names of.

Right next to my face and further to the right of the desk where the window ends is a black fake wooden computer desk with a large black swivel chair obscuring the whites of the keyboard and the bottom of the obtuse monitor looking at me with its blackened bulgy reflective eye.  The swivel chair’s back support leans against the end of the wall, and my closed eyes are then redirected back to the ever-spinning ceiling fan and its three wing-like arms.

I hear the barking of two dogs from outside this room, one large and one small, increasing ever slightly in volume as I feel concern begin to build within me, rousing me slightly from my relaxed state. The barks are of distress and they drown out what sounds like the loud distant whispers of human shouting. The barks turn to whimpers as it becomes clear that the human voices belong to a man and a woman. A woman that is precious to me.

My feelings of slumber and peacefulness are now shrouded by a clenching fist of familiar dread as my chest starts to heave and I feel the rumblings of my lungs trying to cry out were it not for my overwhelming desire to remain in my own private silence and darkness.

Then I see it through my eyelids again. The fleshy red gravel and internal black flickering of light from an outside source. I dare not open my eyes now as the shouting gets louder and louder and I hear my name being called. Being screamed. “XXXX !!!”

The sinister colours on the insides of my lids now present themselves behind the blinded window, almost as if the terrifying fear I feel from outside the left hand door of the room is now forcing its way in through the right side. The sounds of footsteps somewhere between human feet and horse hooves are stomping closer from both sides as the lock on the doorknob begins to screw itself out and the windows slowly slide open with an unrelenting thunder shaking the blinds so hard they are straining to remain shut.

The single bead of sweat from my temple has returned, and I dare not open my eyes.

In my darkness I hear the doors of the wardrobe and the handles of the desk drawers and the flittering of the posters and the swivelling of the computer chair threaten and quake, and it is then that they rush out.

An army of cockroaches swarm from underneath all the shadows and crevices of the room; I see their feelers and black striped brown bodies tear through the blue painted walls, exploding out with the little pieces of crooked stone and powder. They pile on top of each other from behind the books on the shelf, from within the folded blue and white umbrella, from the pockets of the hung-up pairs of faded jeans, from the drawers of the desk and from underneath the soft white pillows propping up my heavy head. I feel their legs scupper on the hairs of my toes and the back of my ears and the undersides of my upper arms as the booming shouts from outside tear into my eardrums.

I topple over the side of the bed and onto the floor. I slam down on it hard and feel the cold wet wooden floor boards splinter my palms and kneecaps, but before the pain even sets in I feel them. They are stacking up on top of me, numbering in their thousands, baby ones and middle aged ones and old huge ones all mixed as one whole thriving mass of rapid motion.  The broken and shattered blue walls are sinking in their bodies and the ceiling fan merely sends more of them flying onto the back of my head and into my hair where they burrow deeply into my scalp. The screaming from within my own skull is all I hear as the individual sensations of their tiny feet on my body are now replaced with the shock of knowing they are in my mouth. They consume the moisture around my tongue. They resist the wild swinging of my limbs. They dig in under my eyelids, and the flickering red and black burnt into my retinas are now replaced by the blurry microscopic vision of the little legs scratching my eyeballs until all I can see is brown.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then blood red.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then white.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The sun is up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

St Michael’s robes are glowing with resplendent purple and orange and green. My gasps for air are interrupted by the build-up of phlegm in my throat, and breathing through my mouth only worsens the blockage of my nasal cavity. I jump to my feet and scratch and dig and scrape away at my neck and chest and legs in a fury of possessed fear.  In my frenzied spasms of unapologetic self-cleansing I slip sharply on the sweat-soaked blue sleeping bag and slam my face onto the old wooden floorboards, instantly causing my head to swell in a fire of nausea.

Eyes are closed. Eyes are open. Eyes closed. Eyes infiltrated by German cockroaches. And now, in no uncertain terms, eyes are most definitely closed.
Wandering off into an unexpected undefined amount of additional darkness, I hear Father Thomas say the words “Fookin’ ‘Ell,” in that deep Irish accent of his. I am conscious of the bloody mucous leaking out from my nostrils as I vow, this time, like a hypocrite, to never, ever, Ever, force myself to sleep again.

Photo courtesy of Anderson Missouri United Methodist Church

Unpublished Work © 2009 Will Ooi. All Rights Reserved