First Draft of Novel...as requested.

Another crisp, clear and comfortably warm day in Melbourne.

Speaking to a very good friend today, she expressed her disappointment at reading the Prologue of my novel and feeling cheated, (tortured was her exact term) and wanting to at least read the first chapter. As it is a first draft, I'm relunctant to post it; however, her torture appeared genuine, thus the following is the first chapter:

Chapter One.

Who would have known that a simple telephone call to my father from a deserted pay phone in Irvine California would have changed my life to such a large degree? I didn’t want to call him, but as usual, I didn’t have any money and needed a small loan to ride me through my last year at the university. For a business and accounting major due to graduate that semester, I found my consistent lack of funds a bitter irony. Broke and hungry, I made the call and was granted permission to drop by his home and plead poverty, hoping he was sober enough to throw a few dollars my way. Father’s new wife answered the call and seemed pleased to hear from me.

My mother had died when I was toddler: only glimpses of her remain. My father told me that she had died of a rare disease, and refused to mention anything else about her. His new wife, Cressida, a middle aged woman of stereotypical beauty, could be safely categorized as a large breasted blond. She was a model and a ‘struggling’ actress as most people are in Southern California. To give her due, though, she did manage to make a few guest appearances on a variety of soaps and the occasional toothpaste and sanitary napkin commercial. Cressida would be considered beautiful in a plastic, baby doll sort of way: her grapefruit breasts were real, as far as I knew, and her long legs only added to her Penthouse appeal. Cressida’s pornographic good looks would be the dream of every adolescent, heterosexual male in America. And she married my father. We had only met once before at a bar mitzvah the previous spring, and I was looking forward to seeing her again.

Similar to most father and son relationships, ours had its good moments, but was mostly a conflict between egos: symbolically moving between a mutual fondness and pubescent arguments over who had the bigger penis. At this stage in our relationship, I had come to the conclusion that he was a frustrated statesman, a failed politician: in reality, father was a glorified mail clerk in the United States Postal Service. In the land of the free and the brave, despite all the propaganda to the contrary, if an individual desires to walk in the halls of power, money is required, a lot of money. The time where a lowly, working class person can rise to the number one, most powerful office in the country are long since past – if that time ever existed. Some twenty-five years ago, father graduated from college and went straight into the post office with all the grandiose dreams of moving up the political ladder and making the world a better place. Something happened in that high church of clerical bureaucracy, because he never left: so much for the great, American dream.

Upon entering their home, an attractive Southern California condominium, I found my father in his chair drinking expensive scotch and spouting-on about some political issue in the news. He was on a roll. Throughout his dissertation, his wife sat listening intently on the couch beside him, drinking a glass of wine, her legs spread across the cushions. I recall thinking how young and attractive looking she was for a woman in middle age. Some women posses a sensuality that expresses itself unconsciously: a sparkle in the eyes, a tone in the voice; a certain way they cross one leg over the other. Other women, of course, are much less subtle. They come right out with it: “I like the way you smell. Come home with me.” Luckily, I’ve had both experiences. The former seduction strategy, though, is much more dangerous. It is an innate power that has toppled entire civilizations, and has caused king’s to abdicate –an old myth but a true one. At this moment, my father’s wife seemed to be throwing out a few signals, as I sat listening to my father pontificate about the state of the nation. It could have been just me. She was wearing a tight-fitting blouse that accentuated her assets. Her long, tanned, perfectly shaped legs communicated frequent visits to the gym and solarium – another California habit in vogue at the time. Considering I was on my third scotch, this only compounded my lustful thoughts. Was she flirting with me? Suddenly feeling extremely self-conscious, I excused myself to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. ‘Come on now, boy.’ I thought. ‘You can’t be thinking these thoughts. She’s your father’s wife for goodness sake!’

Satisfied that my instinctive urges had been put in check, I returned to the front room to find my father nodding off and his wife adorning a new costume: a skimpy night gown. Taking a much needed deep breath, I sat back down on my chair and knocked-back the remaining scotch in the glass. She leaned back on the couch, throwing her arms behind her head:

“I think your father has finished tonight’s civics lecture. He’s out for the count. Help me get him to bed.”

Taking either arm, we dragged the old boy up the stairs, laying him as gently as possible on the bed. He then snorted, groaned and mumbled something, turning on his own, submerging into an alcohol-induced slumber. She turned to me and asked if I wanted another drink. We descended the stairs and she poured me a strong one. After a few sips of the scotch, she now became the most desirable woman on the planet. Not at all conscious of it at the time, the mysterious hand of fate was working its power, and there was nothing I could physically or mentally do about it: the seduction had begun.

“You don’t look like your father. You must look like your mother.”

“Yes, I’ve been told I look like her. I don’t remember her much.”

“She must have been a very attractive woman.”

Taking another long sip from my drink, she sat forward, her gown opening naturally around her shoulders, revealing a portion of her left breast. A surge of electrical pleasure shot through my loins

“I’d like to remember her as a beautiful woman.”

At that moment she spread her legs giving me a glimpse of the holiest of holies. I felt my face turn red as she sat back again and smiled. All I wanted to do at that second was to enter the church and sing my praises. But she was my father’s wife! There was no way in hell. When I stood up to leave, she stood also, removing her gown entirely, it dropping to the floor around her ankles.

“So, what do you think? Am I beautiful for an older woman?”

What could I say to her? Standing before me was an incredibly sexy and attractive female, communicating that she wanted to engage in the most natural of activities between a man and a woman. Not even a saint or the Pope, sworn to a life of celibacy, could repress the desire to make love to her.

She put on some music and we danced for a while. The rhythm of the beat sent my mind wandering; the delicate scent of her perfume wafted around my head as we swayed in each other’s arms. I wanted to release our mutual touch, the delicate softness of her skin; her slender hand wrapped around the nape of my neck, lost in the resonance of the song. The tune faded, that magical moment ended, and I found myself making love to my father’s wife. Was it blind lust or something more meaningful ?

The mind shifted and images of my early childhood moved into consciousness. A young boy, no more than three or four, standing at the doorway of my parent’s bedroom; pushing the door open I saw my father grunting like a pig on top of my mother. They didn’t see me at first and continued rolling around the bed in a strange way. At first I thought they were fighting; I knew without doubt that my father was hurting her, because she would let out an occasional scream. Soon she spotted me and they abruptly stopped. Father turned quickly around, saw me and yelled something. I ran up the stairs in absolute fear, knowing full well that he would kill me. As I lay trembling under the covers, I could hear them laughing. It seemed like hours passed in the darkness, not either of them came up the stairs to check on me, leaving me with my terrible thoughts. Soon I fell asleep with the image of my mother’s glistening skin under the light of the lamp.

Reaching that peak intended in the physical act of love, the outline of my father standing in the shadow of the hallway was the last thing I wanted to see at that moment. Cressida’s eyes were closed as she moaned in ecstasy for the third time. As she opened them, seeing my expression, she lifted her head and saw her husband, my father, observing us in the act. “Oh my God!” she whispered, her body shrinking in shame below mine. Rather than separate and cover our naked body’s, we remained connected, frozen in guilt, as he turned around, without a word, the ember of his lit cigarette glowing in the darkness, and ascended the stairs.

Cressida was panic-stricken. She began pacing the room, her naked body flowing in full view, grabbing cigarettes from the table and strangely lighting one after another. Then something very odd occurred: her face took-on an entirely different expression. This was not a simple emotional change of expression from fear to grief or anger to boredom, but a radical transformation, an extreme shift in physical features, as though the woman had become someone else. Even her voice sounded different: much lower, sexier, gravel-like: “Get dressed. We have to leave before he kills us both.”

Cressida dressed quickly and disappeared from the room. Through the ceiling, shouting could be heard: “You didn’t take your medicine, did you?” father exclaimed. How are we to live a normal life if you don’t take your pills?” Silence. Cressida appeared again and said, “Drive me to the nearest hotel. Hurry, he’s looking for his gun.”

My father was not the murdering type. In fact, to my knowledge, he had never owned a gun in his life. This memory was soon falsified when a loud pop sounded at the top of the stairs. Could the man be actually shooting at us? I didn’t want to hang around to find out. Grabbing Cressida by the arm, we ran through the door and outside to where my car was parked across the road. Fumbling with the keys, I finally managed to get the door open, jump inside and unlock the passenger door. Tina slipped casually next to me, somehow eerily oblivious of the situation and curiously pleased with herself. She was too calm, too relaxed. Slamming my foot on the accelerator, the tires burning in place, we fled the scene.

Then she started to laugh. I’ll never forget the insidious tone of that laughter. It was evil, sadistic and cruel. And it didn’t stop for some time: her head stuck out the window, the wind blowing her blond hair back from her face as if she was flying through the air like a broom less witch.

“Where do you want me to take you? Is there a particular hotel you had in mind?”

“I don’t care where you take me. It doesn’t matter now because I’m free at last. Free from your father – free to fly again!”

This woman had truly lost her mind. She brought her head back into the car and started to fiddle with the radio dials. After moving through several stations, she finally decided on a heavy metal one, turning the song to full volume.

Because of the amount of Scotch I had consumed the road seemed to ebb and flow like waves on the ocean. My vision started to blur as the pounding bass from the radio rattled my skull. It was then I lost control of the car.

Memories can come back to one in two forms: snippets, flashes or sporadic scenes influenced by the imagination, distorting reality, creating false images of what actually happened. Through years of social conditioning, I’ve come to understand the mind as a separate entity, repressing memories that affect one adversely, or changing the circumstances to suit one’s temperament, one’s capacity or strength to deal with the truth. The other kind of memory, the true kind, can return acutely, re-presenting the past, a segment of one’s history, with all the reality as if living the moment all over again. My memory of the accident lies in the second category, haunting my daily life – even in my dreams. Similar to one of those instant replays you see of a spectacular sporting moment on the television, the accident returns: played-out in slow motion, ensuring that I will never forget those terrifying twenty seconds.

The sounds of the accident echo loudly: the pounding bass and high pitched notes of the heavy metal song on the radio; the hysterical screams of my father’s wife as she was hurled through the windscreen like a bullet shot from a high powered rifle; the sickening scraping of metal impacting against metal. The sound that pains me the most, however, is the splintering shatter of glass, exploding in every direction. Then, of course, that deafening silence.

Why did she reach out and grab the steering wheel? Why did I violently wrench it out of her hand, guiding the car back into the path of the truck? It was the in-coming brightness of the headlights, cruelly zooming-in out of the night – the false light, blinding us to oblivion. Did I want to destroy us both? Again and again I see her thrown forward from the seat into and through the windscreen, the jagged edges of the glass cutting into her scalp, neck, shoulders – but most horrible of all, as her body hurls over the hood of the car, airborne in the night sky, she turns almost nonchalantly, her eyes peering into mine, her lips mouthing those unforgettable words: “It’s not your fault, Marcus.” She then slams against the windscreen of the truck, rolling off the hood and onto the road.

Did I simply imagine her saying those words to me? Because of my guilt, did the mind edit the memory; insert these macabre few seconds to alleviate my pain? Knowing what I know now, that is the underlying powers of the temporal world; the forces that determine our fate as human souls, my destiny, these words were indeed spoken. While her body was thrown violently through the air, she turned and uttered these words: “It’s not your fault, Marcus.”

The exploding impact of the vehicles colliding should have killed us both. I remained strapped in the seat, smoke and steam floating around me, hearing the sound of a distant siren. The body of the car had been utterly decimated. My body wedged between the dashboard and the seat, unable to move because the car had turned on its side. The last image is the many faces peering in at me through the wreckage: “Just remain still young man. We’ll have you out of there before you know it. Don’t move.”

The memory of the accident fades.



*

What I was told after waking from a three-day sleep in the hospital changed my life irrevocably. The information was enough to emotionally send any man to the pits of despair, guilt, and the undeniable wish to end it all. Suicide was a definite option. Blinding myself like Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, as a symbol that the truth is too terrible to bear, felt much too easy – a coward’s way out. “Not to be born, past all prizing, best.” A line the protagonist, Oedipus, states tragically, after discovering the awful truth.

A common scene: the patient opening their eyes to a white-clad doctor and nurse looking concerned but relieved that the person under their care has come to consciousness. The doctor had a kind face, a natural bedside manner that so many modern doctors lack: a genuine care for my physical as well as emotional well-being. Beside him stood the young nurse, appearing angelic because the light streaming through the window cast a white glow around her pretty head.

“Mr. Parks joins the land of the living. How are you felling?”

“I’m not really sure. My head aches and I can’t feel my legs.”

“That’s to be expected. Both your legs have compound fractures but we managed to repair them. If you don’t mind I’d like to check a few things.”

Removing a pin light from his coat, he shined the light in both my eyes.

“You have a slight concussion which again is to be expected considering the magnitude of the accident. You’re a lucky man, Marcus. Now, can you sit up for just a moment?”

The stethoscope felt cold against my back. Sitting up took a tremendous amount of effort and I was relieved to lie back down again. Suddenly the image of the accident poured into consciousness, and I remembered Cressida crashing through the windscreen.

“Can you tell me if Cressida is all right?”

Strangely the doctor and pretty nurse made eye contact with one another as if they were expecting the question. The nurse’s face turned pale while the doctor gritted his teeth and said: “ I’m sorry, Marcus, but your mother passed away in the crash.”

“I knew she was dead but I still wanted to ask. Anyway, Cressida is my stepmother – my real mother died many years ago.”

They made eye contact again, not with expressions of expectation, but of fear.

“Nurse, would you mind leaving Marcus and I alone for a few minutes.”

“Of course, doctor.” She turned around and walked through the door, closing it softly behind her.

He took a deep breath, clasping his hands together, and resting them on his lap.

“I have other bad news, Marcus.”

My mind began to reel. What could be worse than two compound fractures and a dead stepmother? What other bad news could he possibly tell me?

“The police are outside waiting to ask you a few questions.”

“Do they want to know about the accident?”

“Yes. But they also want to ask you about your father.”

“What about my father?”

“There is no easy way to tell you this, Marcus. I’m sorry, but your father is dead.”

Only those people who have experienced the unexpected death of a parent know the emptiness and numbing shock that is the result of receiving such news. I’ve known people to go into extreme denial, not accepting the fact and going on with their existence as if the dead loved one was still alive. Then, of course, there are those who accept the news and move into the mourning process appropriately and naturally. My situation seemed different. I was lying in hospital in pain, feeling responsible for my stepmother’s death, and now they tell me my father had passed on. I remember thinking: Is this some kind of test?

“How did he die?”

“I’m afraid he took his own life.”

“How?”

“He shot himself in the head with a 22. calibre hand gun. I’m really sorry, Marcus.”

Then it came back to me -the loud pop at the top of the stairs. Cressida was right. He did have a gun. The bastard didn’t shoot us but shot himself. You stupid bastard, I thought, you bloody stupid bastard.

“The police are just outside waiting to ask you a few questions. Do you feel up to it?”

“I don’t feel much up to anything at the moment.”

He stood up. “Fine, I’ll tell them to come back another time. Is that alright with you?”

“No it’s not. Tell them to come in. I want to get this over with.”


Two uniformed officers and a smartly dressed woman entered the room. Their expressions were sombre and professional. Obviously the woman was in charge because she ordered the two men to stand by the door as she approached the side of my bed. Her blond hair was cropped short accentuating her aristocratic facial structure: typical high cheekbones and cold-blue eyes. I remember thinking there was nothing soft about this woman at all.

“Mr. Marcus Parks?”

I nodded my head.

In a clipped, military manner, she explained the details surrounding my father’s death. A neighbour had become suspicious after hearing a loud retort next door and called the police. They gave a description of my car and an investigation ensued. There was no doubt in their minds that my father’s demise was self-inflicted, but they were curious as to what occurred just prior to his death. I was in no hurry to tell them what had actually transpired that night.

“So you’re saying that a difference of opinion between your mother and father caused you to take your mother out of the house? Did your father threaten your mother in any way?”

“No, but he was slightly drunk and Cressida didn’t want to take any chances.”

“I see.” She jotted something down on her little note pad.

“I’m curious. Have you always called your mother by her alias?”

“She’s not my mother, but my father’s wife. And what do you mean by alias?”

The detective began flipping the pages of her note pad in a nervous fashion. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.” Finally coming to the page intended, she read:

“Mrs. Janice Parks, alias Ms. Cressida Burton. Born 1952 in Melbourne Australia. Married one William Parks in Los Angeles California, 1974. Birth of one Marcus Parks in Los Angeles California, 1977. Janice Parks diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by a Dr. James Bellow, 1980. Committed to a State Psychiatric Hospital, 1980. Released to the care of one Dr. Paul Fromm as an outpatient, 1995. Died February 2000 from massive head injuries due to car accident.”

She stopped reading and looked up from her notes. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way, but Cressida Burton was your biological mother.”

My initial reaction to this appalling revelation was purely physical: every ounce of blood rushed directly to my head. Water filled my eyes and my nose began to bleed. I wanted to run and hide but my legs were broken. There was nowhere to hide.

“Are you alright Mr. Parks?” Shouting to the officer’s behind: “Hurry, get the doctor! He’s having some kind of seizure! God damn it, get the doctor!”


Evidently I lapsed into another comma for a period of seven days. After coming out of this dead sleep, not surprisingly, I experienced a slight dose of amnesia. I could still remember my name, but as to the bare facts: unknowingly having sex with my biological mother, causing her death, and inadvertently causing my father’s suicide, these memories were banished to the depths of my unconscious. The in-built safety valves in the mind that most of us are lucky enough to have, in this case, worked like a charm. After about a month, however, the shells fell from my eyes and the facts presented themselves again.

Thus my journey into hell began.

There you go my friend; feedback would be highly appreciated.

Emotional State: Thoughtful.



Chapter Two.

TThere you go