WritingFreak
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- Nov 2, 2011
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schizophrenia? Here's a passage from my book. The protagonist is a schizophrenic who's mother has just died and has left him and his sister alone in the world. Do you think it's an accurate(ish) portrayal of the disease? I don't want to offend anyone by making it too unrealistic.
I’m alone, apart from the voices. The world has ended except for me and them. They’re uncooperative and malicious. I try and talk to them, but they’re devious and obstinate. They drive me mad.
“What are your names?” I ask them politely, but I never get a straight answer. They cackle and jeer, but they don’t talk to me properly. They only live to torment. There are demons in my head.
A black cloud follows me wherever I go now. Demons pull on my earlobes, crawling all over my body. The shrieking crowing of their small dark bodies sliding over me, smothering me. I walk around and there they follow. Yellow eyes and sharp brown teeth, glimpsed. A scrabble of claws. An unrelenting crowd. I blink, and they’re flies. There are flies everywhere these days.
Luna tries to make a joke out of it. “There are no flies on me!” she laughs at her own pathetic joke. I just stare at her coldly. I don’t understand her anymore.
She shrugs, and when she touches me, I flinch. I’m always flinching nowadays. This is how it feels like to be prey. The flighty gazelle on the African planes. The twitching dormouse in the empty field. Waiting for the owl to swoop.
Jessie, an alien creature, whining for food and clean clothes that I can’t provide. Crying. Tears that I don’t understand. Water pours from her eyelids, but what does it mean? What does emotion mean? And why can’t I feel it?
The blond-haired girl becomes thinner, and that eventually jerks me into a dulled kind of action. I find a phone book and call a number. It takes half an hour of threats and emotional blackmail, but eventually Jake turns up in his flash car and takes my sister. I tell him not to get her into drugs, but I can see the white packets in the glove compartment. It won’t be long before my sister is a gaunt skeleton with a dodgy nose and missing teeth, but what can I do? I can’t take better care of her. Jake’s a dealer, but I hand him over a child. And that’s when I realise the world has gone mad.
Not the world. Just you.
A fistful of black hair scattered on the floor. “Shut up.”
They don’t.
Sometimes I watch the liquid pool from the lacerations on my skin. Scarlet.
Crimson and russet. Cherry. Cerise. Ruby and burgundy and wine. Maroon. Claret. These are the colours that make up my existence.
Red and black.
Always red and black.
The red of Luna’s hair.
“For God's sake, get a grip!” she tells me again and again, exasperated. But I can’t get a grip. I feel like I’m a caterpillar in a cocoon, but I’ll never turn into a butterfly. That the whole world is in black and white, but I can only see the black.
Oh, yeah, I'm only fourteen by the way so can you not be too harsh? I'd really like it if you could suggest some way of improving my work, and give a short critique? Thanks a lot.
I’m alone, apart from the voices. The world has ended except for me and them. They’re uncooperative and malicious. I try and talk to them, but they’re devious and obstinate. They drive me mad.
“What are your names?” I ask them politely, but I never get a straight answer. They cackle and jeer, but they don’t talk to me properly. They only live to torment. There are demons in my head.
A black cloud follows me wherever I go now. Demons pull on my earlobes, crawling all over my body. The shrieking crowing of their small dark bodies sliding over me, smothering me. I walk around and there they follow. Yellow eyes and sharp brown teeth, glimpsed. A scrabble of claws. An unrelenting crowd. I blink, and they’re flies. There are flies everywhere these days.
Luna tries to make a joke out of it. “There are no flies on me!” she laughs at her own pathetic joke. I just stare at her coldly. I don’t understand her anymore.
She shrugs, and when she touches me, I flinch. I’m always flinching nowadays. This is how it feels like to be prey. The flighty gazelle on the African planes. The twitching dormouse in the empty field. Waiting for the owl to swoop.
Jessie, an alien creature, whining for food and clean clothes that I can’t provide. Crying. Tears that I don’t understand. Water pours from her eyelids, but what does it mean? What does emotion mean? And why can’t I feel it?
The blond-haired girl becomes thinner, and that eventually jerks me into a dulled kind of action. I find a phone book and call a number. It takes half an hour of threats and emotional blackmail, but eventually Jake turns up in his flash car and takes my sister. I tell him not to get her into drugs, but I can see the white packets in the glove compartment. It won’t be long before my sister is a gaunt skeleton with a dodgy nose and missing teeth, but what can I do? I can’t take better care of her. Jake’s a dealer, but I hand him over a child. And that’s when I realise the world has gone mad.
Not the world. Just you.
A fistful of black hair scattered on the floor. “Shut up.”
They don’t.
Sometimes I watch the liquid pool from the lacerations on my skin. Scarlet.
Crimson and russet. Cherry. Cerise. Ruby and burgundy and wine. Maroon. Claret. These are the colours that make up my existence.
Red and black.
Always red and black.
The red of Luna’s hair.
“For God's sake, get a grip!” she tells me again and again, exasperated. But I can’t get a grip. I feel like I’m a caterpillar in a cocoon, but I’ll never turn into a butterfly. That the whole world is in black and white, but I can only see the black.
Oh, yeah, I'm only fourteen by the way so can you not be too harsh? I'd really like it if you could suggest some way of improving my work, and give a short critique? Thanks a lot.