I have been so flat out at work for the last month or so that I haven't had time to post. I keep most of my action to Twitter. I thought I'd quickly put a post up before bed to make up for the lack of posts. All I could think to use was the opening page of my abandoned novel - The Strip.
The Strip was my attempt at the early 90s grunge fiction genre - think Praise, think Trainspotting, think Bongwater. It was loosely based on my own life (of course) and set in my home town Kwinana. I didn't try to hide the setting in any other way, but I called the town Woodley after a street in Orelia. There are several characters all connected, all with their own story and the book takes place over a single weekend (a la Pulp Fiction, except mine came first!).
This is a character called Catherine. The leading lady and resident smart chick. She is in her first year of teaching at a remote country school and things haven't been going well. This passage opens the novel.
Catherine
Cathy is drowning, choking for air. The anger that wells from within the pit of her stomach is a suffocation - like clambering for the surface after too long under water. She draws her first gasping breath of release as the empty bottle she has hurled across the room connects with the television. The screen cracks at a diagonal and the bottle shatters. Dust, the product of broken glass, floats up from the point of impact. The anger chokes her still. She kicks over the stereo with a deep gutteral scream that is not her own. Her foot planted firmly into its bulk, the stereo cabinet lets loose vinyls and casssettes. She stomps on several tapes, shattering plastic trampled underfoot. Randomly clutching at a record she throws it at the wall. It connects and cracks, splitting into three pieces. Throwing the coffee table on its side with her right hand, she kicks at its surface. Her heavy boots smash the glass. Her foot goes completely through. Her jeans are torn, and a dim feeling of pain sees a stream of blood traverse her leg. She removes a leg from the upturned coffee with a kick to its base and sets about destroying the china cabinet. Its contents - champagne flutes, crystal vases, gravy boats, butter dishes - all shattered. Glass and china fragments fly all around. Several pieces whip at her pale, angered face drawing shallow, bleeding lines on its surface. Feet flailing at wooden furniture; The sound of cracking timber; Nails removed rudely from hinges with forceful blows. Fingers tearing the black vinyl loungesuite, exposing white cotton padding inside; Pot plants uprooted, soil flung wildly across the carpet; Empty terracotta pots broken against everything solid.
Not yet close to calming down, Cathy picks up a pot which has remained somehow intact and throws it at the window. The brown clay bowl speeds towards its target turning end over end. Contact brings the sound of smashing glass. The sound brings on the hysterically high pitched screaming. Cathy stands at the rooms centre clutching her hair. Pulling hard. The pain is distant - as if this were not her breakdown. The screaming is shrill and unearthly. Exhaustion sets in and she falls to her knees. She bends at the waist and buries her head in the carpet.
Finally there is air, release. The surface of her angers water is broken. She raises her head and tentatively surveys the damage.
It wouldn’t be so bad if any of this stuff was hers. It isn’t. Except for the empty bourbon bottle that she’d thrown at the television, it all belonged to the Ministry. Fully furnished houses were a perk of working in down-south hell holes. Thinking a little clearer now Cathy realises she is in trouble. She is in the kind of trouble that she isn’t fit to deal with right now. Deciding her next course of action is not difficult. Leaving behind the destructive scene of the lounge she enters the kitchen. On the breakfast bar the broken telephone that had started it all. She finds her keys on top of the fridge and goes to her room. She begins throwing random items of clothing into a large leather suitcase, and zips it closed. Exhausted, sitting on the end of her bed she is assaulted by flashes of the days events. Events that had, finally, made her snap.
