Narratives Traditional and Non
My body is a canvas of memories and the scars are the paints. Every part of my mutilated body, slowly but surely rotting away, is a landmark in my life. Every cut, every burn, every part of me ripped away. All of these define me, and all of these changed my life.
Left eyebrow: My first true scar was cut into me by a coffee table in the apartment I lived at when I was a kid. I was running through the apartment living my happy life when suddenly I felt a pain just above my left eye. I hit the ground and started bawling when I saw the chunk of my eyebrow still on the table. I had then realised that I had just mutilated my head and needed medical attention.One layer of glue later and my eyebrow was fine. We still have that coffee table to this day. Corner of my Left Eye: This accident is the one that really sticks in my mind. I was at my babysitter Sheila’s house. In this house she had an enormous fish tank in the hallway which all the kids would play around. One day I was running around the tank and tripped toward it. When I hit the tank, my head went completely through it and shattered the tank. I started crying because I thought I was in trouble, then I felt a sharp pain in the corner of my left eye cried even harder. Sheila called my Aunt because my parents were at work and she took me to the Hospital. They again glued me shut and sent me home. Right Eyebrow: The first accident that wasn’t completely my fault. This happened during the first year of baseball and my first time playing first base. It was the bottom of the third and the kid at bat had just hid a grounder. My teammate just picked up the ball and whipped it at me. He threw it kinda high though and I lost it in the sun. The next thing I know I was being smashed in the face by a baseball. It broke my glasses and cut my eye open and I sat the rest of the inning out. That did not need any medical attention but still left a scar. My Left Ear: My final head injury happened at the Y.M.C.A. I was walking after my dad after he picked me up from the kid center after his workout. We were walking toward the doors by the front desk which they’ve since got rid of. These doors were small and black and were used to keep people from entering without a membership. The doors walking out though were weird as they would reach a certain point and snap shut. Well I was walking out of the Y when suddenly I felt a sharp pain and fell to the ground. The door had snapped shut on my ear tearing away part of the flesh and left me bleeding and bawling. The staff gave me an ice pack to put on the wound, a f***ing ice pack… they didn’t call an ambulance or at least help my dad calm me, they just tossed me an ice pack and sent me on my way. I went to the hospital and this time needed to have my ear stitched shut. Six stitches in the canvas. Right Shin: This injury I will be speaking of is my personal favorite as it has brought me many laughs wondering what the hell I was thinking. I was camping with some friends of my parents and I was playing with there kids, Marina and Trevor. While we were playing the ball we were kicking went into the road so I went after it. After Picking it up I noticed there was a 3.5 foot tall tree stump 20 feet in front of me. I decided, since both my cousins run track and could probably do it, to try and hurtle it. Lets just say it didn’t go as planned. I got my left foot over the stump but my right shin gouged into the side of the stump. Marina, seeing this horrifying incident, simply walked up to my mom and said “Christina, Brendan really shouldn’t have done that” My mother got my dad and they carried me over to the campfire. I could see what I thought was bone, but was really just some flesh ground to a white powder, through the remaining bit of flesh I had in the crater now formed in my leg. My parents tried to keep me calm whilst they searched for the Ronan Family First Aid Kit which was bought on a hunch before the trip. They patched up my knee and I rested for the rest of the afternoon. Thanks to my stupidity I now have a missing chunk of flesh on my right shin. Right Big Toe: My final injury is the also the bloodiest. This was the one which caused me the most pain in the dumbest way possible. I was helping my mom with dishes and she asked me to put away some bowls. I was putting them away when suddenly I dropped one and it shattered…. right on my foot. The bowl slice open the side of my toe and blood started to rush out of it. I rushed to the bathroom where I was met by my dad and he ran to get the first aid kit. We pulled the glass out and wrapped up my foot and started to clean the floor. It looked almost as if someone had been killed in my kitchen. |
When people asked me what I wanted to be when I was small, I would always say a chef or a pro golfer or hell even a hockey player. It was only recently that I realised I wanted be a writer; more specifically, a horror writer. Like Stephen King, Bram Stoker or Edgar Allan Poe. I enjoy frightening people, but not to the point of everlasting madness caused by the remaining essence of a “good scare”. I like to give people chills and make them think twice before they dismiss that creaking in their attic, or the faint sound of breathing in your closet.
I guess I realised how well I wrote in my Junior year of High School when I was in Dr. Schofield’s english class. We had to write a short story about christmas and it could be either fiction or nonfiction. I figured since my list of funny christmas stories was a barren wasteland, I would do fiction. I began writing and decided to take a darker, creepier outlook on the santa myth and made a truly horrifying story of naughty and nice. In the story the nice children were given toys and candy and other nice surprises, but the naughty… the naughty were kidnapped, held captive, and tortured for 24 hours while their parents were given a series of appalling tasks which they had to complete if they wanted to see their child again. I don’t know why I took such a dark turn but it worked It took me a little longer to write it than I had expected but I finally finished and she loved it. This later inspired me to write on my freetime. I tend to stick to horror, but will sometimes branch out to utopia/dystopia fiction. The weirdest part about this dream of mine is that before that year, I despised writing. I was almost insulting for me to have to write before I began to enjoy it. I found writing a meaningless and unneeded task only done by teachers and old hermits who never left with the comfort of their homes because they have agoraphobia. Every time a teacher gave us a writing assignment I would get furious and just bullsh!t my way through the paper. But that all changed that year. Dr. Schofield’s class had a large impact on it, but another portion of my love for writing came after I read IT by Stephen King. That book changed my life. IT was the greatest book I had ever read so I started researching Stephen King. During this three day Stephen King research obsession, I stumbled across a video of him doing a book talk and what he said had made me want to write. I began reading more and more Stephen King and have read five of his books and I’m almost done with another. So far my favorite is Revival which was published in 2014. It is one of the best books I’ve ever read in a long time. Reading his stories has made me more adept at writing and has really impacted my life. Although the one book that has impacted me the most, the one you could call the “Bible for Writers”, is On Writing : A Memoir of the Craft. My dream is now becoming more and more of a reality though, as I am taking a creative writing class along with my English classes. I have more time to brainstorm new ideas and jot them down. I have started one story in which a man and his wife go to visit his brother in an asylum. During the visit though, the brother manages to kill an orderly, escape and start an asylum take over. I love writing now and the way it lets me speak my mind and act out my fantasies without actually committing them. I love the freedom it brings me and the way it allows me to create whole entire worlds which I can destroy with an apocalypse or an asteroid or what have you. It has become almost a lifeline to me. When I’m mad, I write. When I’m sad, I write. Whatever emotion I’m feeling, I write. My parents think I should become a carpenter or some other job which requires me to be mechanically inclined. They believe since I forged an ok end table and a rocking chair, that I’m a master carpenter. My friends think that it’s awesome and always want to read my work. They’re always asking me to put them in a story or put someone they hate in one so I can kill them. That may sound a little violent, but it is better than actual violence. Being a writer is fun but challenging and gives me more freedom than I have in my own life. I love writing. |
Fiction
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