TheBaroness
11/14/07, 10:55 PM
So I decided to write a novella, I don't know why. Anywho, it's vastly different from anything I've ever done in terms of the construction of the narrative, and the content (which is deliberately weird). It's about a celebrity stalker caught up in a web of his own delusions.
Here's the opening 1000 words, I'd appreciate any thoughts you have, i.e. whether it's interesting - I don't expect people to like the prose. It's like that for a reason, though (oral narrative)
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“From the first time I saw her I knew there’d never be anybody else. No, not ever again. There’ve been others in the past, sure. Of course. Plenty of them, but none like her. I see now they were just preparation – readying my body, my heart, to cope with seeing her, with being struck, like training for a marathon or something. Each day doing an extra mile to make sure you don’t just drop dead midway after the first checkpoint. But when she appeared, it was like, well, it was obvious to me, right then and there, what it had all been for. All the sweats in the middle of the night, waking with entangled sheets stuck clinging to my groin, the dizziness whenever their images came into my head, or even from the most fleeting thought. It was preparation. Not a curse, a destiny. This, she was my destiny, and it would be so. It would be so.
“It strikes me now, and only now, how wrong I’d been for so long. How completely off the track. But we all have our mistakes, don’t we? Particularly when it comes to love. But I guess it worked its way out in the end because if it weren’t for them I wouldn’t have come here in the first place, then I wouldn’t be so close. So achingly close. But, as they say, you have to go through a few before you can find your true beloved. That way you’ll know. I mean, you can’t really know what is love, what is true if you have nothing to compare it to. It’s just absurd to think so. For so long I was convinced that it was Angelina. Her and I, Soulmates. I followed her, chased her like a lovelorn puppy begging for a scratch. All the way out to Los Angeles, a place made only bearable by the thought that she was here with me. Sometimes when I lay in my dank, one-bedroom hovel, constantly illuminated by red neon flashing I would close my eyes and imagine I could feel her breathing. Even in a city of millions, all moving constantly, vibrating like atoms and ions and all that, I could hear her breath. We were connected like that. Or so I thought. Turns out I was wrong. Que sera sera they say in this part of the world. I say it to the Latin ladies I see at In ‘N Out and they smile knowingly. If only I could extend my Spanish to ‘no salad’. But I digress. Angelina, I’d admired her from afar for so long, months and months, before it became intolerable. I knew when we finally met she’d love me the way I loved her, so I packed up a suitcase and moved coasts. I found her house pretty quickly, a few people online that I talked to had ways and means of obtaining such information. Turns out they loved her, too. But not as much as me, they weren’t hers, they weren’t destined for her, or so I thought I was at the time. Turned out to be a mistake but I’ll get to that. No, they were fellow suitors, competing with me, against me for the fair maiden’s hand. So I had to play dirty here and there, just a little. It’s what Shakespeare would have done, you know. At any rate, they weren’t willing to make the sacrifices I was. Follow her out here, wait for her, but I would have been remiss not to, knowing she’d fall for me as I had done for her. It wasn’t to be, but what can you do? All was for the best, thankfully. I was well off the track. The folly of youth. Back to Angelina, after I moved, and tracked her down I had to wait, again, my fair share of weeks and hours before she was available for me to court. She was busy, I understand that. I like my women to be independent, have a career, work hard, it’s the sign of a good constitution. She certainly worked hard, and not that I minded each time I saw her up on the silver screen looking back at me. Her knowing smile, flirtatious wink. It was for me and me alone, a secret language I suppose. I waited and waited for just a chance, just the slightest minute of her time where she would see me and know. She would sense our connection, women are very good at that, you know. Body language, pheromones, they say it’s primal, evolutionary, I don’t doubt that. I waited, but so too did others. My competition, my enemies in love, or lust, as it turned out.
“As I said, I waited, with the others and without, when they had long since departed for their evening repose. Weak of will, I say, and not in the least deserving of her hand. But my will was iron, of course. I would not be dissuaded, but each evening crept that little bit closer. She would know my face, my touch, she would love me in an instant. For nights on end I crawled on my belly through thickets and scrub, skinning my elbows and forearms just to be near her. A typical act of chivalric heroism, she was the sort of woman who would be enchanted by that, I knew. But I was to be thwarted, at the time I thought annoyingly, but now I see it was fate itself, fate embodied in the leviathan form which halted my progress out one gentle summer’s evening amongst the cacti. A fellow-suitor, a competitor, an enemy, saving her all for himself drove me away at the point of a cocked gun-barrel, his radio earpiece ever-relaying further instructions, strategies for taking me, the head-suitor, the King of her heart, out of the equation. So desperate was their endeavour that they brought the Authorities in to ensure I did not commit further transgression. Try as I might. I was halted at every passage. The legislature even intervened on their behalf, going so far as to bid me keep my distance from the property at the risk of the removal of my freedom. But I knew no freedom, not in my heart, I was bound, drawn, and so I continued my courtship, albeit with more caution lest they succeed in their conspiring to destroy our love. To win her for themselves.
Here's the opening 1000 words, I'd appreciate any thoughts you have, i.e. whether it's interesting - I don't expect people to like the prose. It's like that for a reason, though (oral narrative)
--------
“From the first time I saw her I knew there’d never be anybody else. No, not ever again. There’ve been others in the past, sure. Of course. Plenty of them, but none like her. I see now they were just preparation – readying my body, my heart, to cope with seeing her, with being struck, like training for a marathon or something. Each day doing an extra mile to make sure you don’t just drop dead midway after the first checkpoint. But when she appeared, it was like, well, it was obvious to me, right then and there, what it had all been for. All the sweats in the middle of the night, waking with entangled sheets stuck clinging to my groin, the dizziness whenever their images came into my head, or even from the most fleeting thought. It was preparation. Not a curse, a destiny. This, she was my destiny, and it would be so. It would be so.
“It strikes me now, and only now, how wrong I’d been for so long. How completely off the track. But we all have our mistakes, don’t we? Particularly when it comes to love. But I guess it worked its way out in the end because if it weren’t for them I wouldn’t have come here in the first place, then I wouldn’t be so close. So achingly close. But, as they say, you have to go through a few before you can find your true beloved. That way you’ll know. I mean, you can’t really know what is love, what is true if you have nothing to compare it to. It’s just absurd to think so. For so long I was convinced that it was Angelina. Her and I, Soulmates. I followed her, chased her like a lovelorn puppy begging for a scratch. All the way out to Los Angeles, a place made only bearable by the thought that she was here with me. Sometimes when I lay in my dank, one-bedroom hovel, constantly illuminated by red neon flashing I would close my eyes and imagine I could feel her breathing. Even in a city of millions, all moving constantly, vibrating like atoms and ions and all that, I could hear her breath. We were connected like that. Or so I thought. Turns out I was wrong. Que sera sera they say in this part of the world. I say it to the Latin ladies I see at In ‘N Out and they smile knowingly. If only I could extend my Spanish to ‘no salad’. But I digress. Angelina, I’d admired her from afar for so long, months and months, before it became intolerable. I knew when we finally met she’d love me the way I loved her, so I packed up a suitcase and moved coasts. I found her house pretty quickly, a few people online that I talked to had ways and means of obtaining such information. Turns out they loved her, too. But not as much as me, they weren’t hers, they weren’t destined for her, or so I thought I was at the time. Turned out to be a mistake but I’ll get to that. No, they were fellow suitors, competing with me, against me for the fair maiden’s hand. So I had to play dirty here and there, just a little. It’s what Shakespeare would have done, you know. At any rate, they weren’t willing to make the sacrifices I was. Follow her out here, wait for her, but I would have been remiss not to, knowing she’d fall for me as I had done for her. It wasn’t to be, but what can you do? All was for the best, thankfully. I was well off the track. The folly of youth. Back to Angelina, after I moved, and tracked her down I had to wait, again, my fair share of weeks and hours before she was available for me to court. She was busy, I understand that. I like my women to be independent, have a career, work hard, it’s the sign of a good constitution. She certainly worked hard, and not that I minded each time I saw her up on the silver screen looking back at me. Her knowing smile, flirtatious wink. It was for me and me alone, a secret language I suppose. I waited and waited for just a chance, just the slightest minute of her time where she would see me and know. She would sense our connection, women are very good at that, you know. Body language, pheromones, they say it’s primal, evolutionary, I don’t doubt that. I waited, but so too did others. My competition, my enemies in love, or lust, as it turned out.
“As I said, I waited, with the others and without, when they had long since departed for their evening repose. Weak of will, I say, and not in the least deserving of her hand. But my will was iron, of course. I would not be dissuaded, but each evening crept that little bit closer. She would know my face, my touch, she would love me in an instant. For nights on end I crawled on my belly through thickets and scrub, skinning my elbows and forearms just to be near her. A typical act of chivalric heroism, she was the sort of woman who would be enchanted by that, I knew. But I was to be thwarted, at the time I thought annoyingly, but now I see it was fate itself, fate embodied in the leviathan form which halted my progress out one gentle summer’s evening amongst the cacti. A fellow-suitor, a competitor, an enemy, saving her all for himself drove me away at the point of a cocked gun-barrel, his radio earpiece ever-relaying further instructions, strategies for taking me, the head-suitor, the King of her heart, out of the equation. So desperate was their endeavour that they brought the Authorities in to ensure I did not commit further transgression. Try as I might. I was halted at every passage. The legislature even intervened on their behalf, going so far as to bid me keep my distance from the property at the risk of the removal of my freedom. But I knew no freedom, not in my heart, I was bound, drawn, and so I continued my courtship, albeit with more caution lest they succeed in their conspiring to destroy our love. To win her for themselves.