One Way Out, Always
Published by R. M. Fraser at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 R. M. Fraser
Discover other titles by R. M. Fraser at Smashwords.com:
Shadow Boxer - and other poems -
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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One Way Out, Always
(Part One)
The life
that goes by
Through the future that has passed
Cannot hold a
candle
To the spirit that's aghast
Its soul worn thin
But
held firmly together
By the strength of its
Love, devotion, and
emotion
She comes to in a panic, sitting upright, her arms holding her body up in her bed. These nightmares have been disturbing her sleep for years. Her breathing begins to slow in pace and the fog in her mind clears. Realizing it was another one of her bad dreams, she looks around the room, and something is not right.
“It's the door”, she tells herself. “It's in the wrong place.”
As she gets up to walk towards the door, she makes a mental note in the recesses of her brain that her bed is far too small. Later on she will remember this. What attracts her focus is the dress she is wearing. Enough light spills in from the slightly open doorway to help her see that this dress is familiar, but not what she wore to bed. She remembers going to sleep in flannel pajama pants, but this is a dress. Not really a dress at all the more she stares at it. It’s the night gown she wore as a child, and incredibly short on her now, for that matter. She hasn't seen it since she was called 'Less. It was his nickname for her, and the thought of his voice uttering it again repulses her, making her shiver in spite of the sweat on her body. It has been twelve years and now she can't shake the feeling that this is, in fact, twelve years ago and not the present.
The open door beckons her forward and she slips into the hallway, revealing her childhood home. The stairwell is directly in front of her and she makes out the faint light from the living room. Inside, little 'Less pleads with her to not go downstairs, but grown up Allesandra doesn't understand the voices coming from the living room and must figure them out. 'Less knows what's to come and she curls up in the fetal position inside her older self. Allesandra makes her first step down.
As she approaches the landing, the voices become clearer, and her growing fear becomes affirmed. She steps on the landing, turning the corner to see her mother. Allesandra's heart and stomach sink deep within herself as her mother shrieks in terror. A fist from her father comes into view, finding its mark on her mother's cheek, and knocking her back. He moves into her and one more fist follows another into her mother's face.
Allesandra begins to whimper, unaware of the tears rolling down her flushed cheeks. Her fear rises up from her belly as her inner child desperately attempts to cover up her ears. She tries to suppress her small sobs, her inner child's emotions have taken over and she is afraid he will hear her cries and turn his attention. Her mother is now screaming through the thudding fists in her face and tries to strike back. She catches him on the cheek, and he momentarily stops to feel his face. He realizes it's merely a scratch, and a sickening grin spreads on his lips. He slams a fist so hard into her face that she crumbles to the floor without a sound escaping her. He stands over her, seething, but no longer assailing her.
She cannot watch anymore without reaction. Her inner child finally breaks, forcing her to scream. The utterance is long, painful, primal, and everything else around her blacks out.
And the
likeness of the light
Beaming upon in the darkness of night
Always
there, but not always seen
Is the only way out of this suicidal
dream
She opens her eyes, drained from what she has just witnessed and the futile effort put forth to remain calm in the face of it. The voices are gone, and the images begin to fade from her mind, yet the blackness still remains. There is no light anywhere. Waving her hand in front of her face, she is unable to see it, sparking a new fear that grips her body.
Quickly it turns to anxiety as thoughts begin to dizzy her. Her heart starts to pound in her chest and her sense of balance fails her. She falls to the floor and sobs uncontrollably. The memories of her father's beatings replay in her mind again and again, as if on a loop. The only assurance she has is of the floor below her. It's her only bearing in this brutal storm of emotion. She lies down on her side, curls up like a baby and allows herself to continue wailing, nearly choking on her own cries from time to time. Behind her, the door lies ever so slightly open and a pale light glows underneath. She doesn’t see it as she cries herself to sleep.
###
This concludes the first chapter of Allesandra's Bequest, which is soon to be published. This work actually started out as a song I wrote many years ago. Back then I had only flirted with the idea of making it into a concept album. After a few more years of writing songs, I began to look through what I had, and without even realizing it, I had all the pieces there, whether it was instrumental music, or poems that had never been written for music. The ability to record the music has been an obstacle for me, and I must admit, music for me is therapeutic. I haven't written or played much as of late, and that's not such a bad thing. It just means I'm happier overall. (Who could complain about that?) Since then, I have written a long narrative type poem out of it, which is hard to define. The narrative is poetry wrapped around the lyrics for all the individual songs. The one thing I didn't necessarily like about it was that the narrative was built in a rhyming scheme, and some of it just came off as extremely cheesy. I held onto it for a few years and looked at it again. I sent it to a poetry journal editor for review, and she confirmed my sentiment about the rhyming. Something in it didn't quite work.
So, I have since used that version as the framework for what you just read. Instead of narrative verse, the narrative has now become a short story wrapped around the individual song lyrics. I think it holds up fairly well without the music behind it, though it is a future goal to record the music and have it available. Maybe by then I can figure out a way to combine the two together so that as a chapter is on-screen on an ereader, the appropriate track is playing in the background. It's a thought, anyway.
So what will happen is this. In a short time (a month or a few), the other fifteen chapters will be ready, and Allesandra's Bequest will be published. If you liked this first chapter, please keep an eye out for the debut of the book. How has Allesandra's past history of being abused affected her? How will it influence the decisions she makes in her life? The rest of this story will be told, and thanks in advance to those of you who will be waiting to find out.
I make my home in New England, just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. I have been writing music, lyrics, and poetry for about twenty years, and finally decided it was time to put some out there and step into the field as a new author. That's what I did with my first book, Shadow Boxer, a collection of random poems from over twenty years that I feel are strong, and worthy reading. I have recently shifted my focus to short stories and novels, and plan to publish them when they are ready. What you just read is the beginning of Allesandra's Bequest, a short story about a woman whose abusive past wreaks havoc on her adult life, and whether or not she can overcome it.
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