I have just begun to write a new psychological thriller. This is how it begins:
Chapter 1: What hell is this?
1.
“A bitter heart devours its owner”.
Herero adage.
Michael Curran awoke to the sound of the mechanical alarm clock ringing violently, like the bell of a local fire engine. His head was pounding. Picking up the clock, and switching the alarm bell off, he noticed the time – 5.30 am. It had gone off half an hour early. But he was glad to be awake, since waking up pulled him out of the nightmare he was submerged in, up to a moment ago.
He swung his legs out of bed, and looked up at the crucifix on the wall opposite the side of his lonely bed, above the holy water fountain by the light switch. Over to his left he could see his son Christopher’s blankets rising and falling rhythmically, as he snored through his drunken stupor. The little drunken bastard. Under the chair, to the side of Christopher’s bed, Michael could see the quarter bottle of whiskey which Christopher would slug down as soon as he awoke. Sixteen years old, and already an alcoholic for more than two years. And getting his booze money by driving a coal truck, below the legal age for driving.
Michael, who never drank alcohol, stood up on the cold lino, and began to scratch his chest and back, under the long-sleeved vest he always wore in bed. He was sick of his life. Sleeping alone in his cold bed, in the box room, for the past eight years, had been a great strain on his mental state. He was depressed and angry – bitter - and he constantly felt an ache in his heart. He was sure he would have a heart attack one of these days. ‘My heart is scalded with the lot of them’, was his constant mantra.
He put on his work clothes, and laced up his boots. He knelt by the side of his bed and began to say his morning prayers. He could not understand why God was tormenting him so. He wife having sex with other men; his youngest ‘daughter’ not really his; extreme poverty; and this horrible wretch of a son - a degenerate alcoholic at sixteen years of age. And Dermot, his oldest son, who was just eighteen years old, and the only son who really respected him, had left for England three months earlier, in the middle of June. He prayed fervently for redemption; for release from his suffering. He had always tried to be a good man; but he’d lost his farm, then his first job and tied cottage, then his wife, and his life revolved around working as a poorly-paid gardener for toffs in Dublin.
He went down the stairs with a heavy heart, as silently as he could, to avoid waking the house. In the kitchen, he buttered two slices of homemade brown bread, put some jam on, and made a pot of tea. In the front room, he sat at the table and read the unread parts of yesterday’s Evening Herald.
At 6.45 am he put on his overcoat and cap, put his bicycle clips on his trouser ends, and wheeled his big, black Raleigh bicycle up the hall, out the front door; closing the door quietly behind him. Although there was still a whole week to go to the end of September, it was cold and damp that morning, and the light was gloomier than it had been just last week.
Out on the road, he mounted his bicycle and pedalled furiously up the road, to raise his temperature, and then settled down to a steady pace, which would get him to his workplace in about thirty minutes. He was in the blackest mood he had ever experienced. He could not imagine carrying on with this farce of a life. Perhaps this day the Lord would liberate him. Oh God. Why hast thou forsaken me?
~~~
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