Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28428152-20170209015807

Since the whole story is really long, and nobody wants to read 30 pages of crap on the workshop, I'll break it into parts on the forum. I'm looking for any tips/suggestions about the plot and/or writing. I've already come up with some stuff on my own, but I want other feedback before I start the 2nd draft.

This is going to end up being a trilogy of stories, each with a different theme under a larger theme of trauma: The Book if Agony I will be about the death of a loved one (after I rewrite it, the draft on the workshop doesn't have that element yet), The Book of Agony II: The Nameless will be about rape (non-descriptive), and the Book of Agony III: The Dungeon (I haven't decided upon the name for the third one yet) will be about the guilt of murder.

This was originally going to be a standalone story, but I couldn't help but feel that I could expand more on the Nameless, and so I adapted an idea for a different story I had into being the second chapter. Then, realizing that there was more stuff that would be unresolved, I came up with the basis for the third and final chapter, though the plot for that part hasn't been fleshed out very much yet. The 1st draft of The Book of Agony I was 50 pages on looseleaf and 30 on Microsoft Word, so it's a longer one, and I'm about halfway through The Nameless, and it's already a little longer than the first one, so they're pretty long, hence me putting up the first draft of the BoA I in chunks for easier digestion, at least on this forum. I would really appreciate feedback, the mire the better. Enjoy:)

The Book of Agony

From Ben Ross to David Sakamura:

It all started when I turned ten. I will never forget that fateful day. It was a Sunday, and I was anxious to play with my new set of Legos. They were my favorite as a child. My parents had thrown me a grand little party; I’d had a few friends over, as well as my grandparents and a few other relatives. There was cake, ice cream, all the necessities of a ten year old’s birthday party. Yes, it had been quite an eventful day.

For some reason unknown to me, or perhaps forgotten, my parents had chosen this night to go out for a date. So, after all my friends and most of my relatives had gone, my father asked my grandmother - his mother - to watch me while they were gone. Immediately I knew that I needed to get away: she had put on another one of her excruciatingly terrible detective shows. It was then that I went upstairs to my play room. In the play room, on the right hand wall, was a door about half the size of a normal one, and this door led to a sort of cubby hole. It was in here that I played most, for it’s small space was like a comforting womb. I didn’t only play here, but I also read, napped, and even cried in that cubby hole. If ever there was a word to be an antonym of myself, I think that claustrophobic would more than suffice.

I possessed an abundance of toys and books as a kid, probably more than most. Some may even say an obscene amount. As it was, it was not a rare occurance for me to stumble across a toy or a book that I had forgotten about, and suddenly remember playing with it or reading it. This is what I thought had happened when I saw a book partially covered up by some plastic dinosaurs. Yet picking it up, I knew immediately that my eyes had never before beheld it.

The book’s cover was made of some sort of strange, black, spongy, leather-ish material. A golden picture of a severed head was stamped onto the front, and the title, The Book of Agony, was gilded along the spine. I opened the book up to a random page, and saw that the paper was a blotchy grey, and there was a long page of miniscule handwriting. The ink was a curious shade of reddish-brown. At the time, I didn’t know what it was, but looking back I know exactly what the author used in place of ink. Turning the page, my eyes flung wide open, and I heard a soft moan escape my lips. Staring me in the eyes was a grotesquely realistic painting of an old woman with her lower jaw cut in two and needles shoved carelessly into her yes. It, too, was in that same shade of reddish-brown.

I slammed the book shut Immediately, hurled it at the wall, and bolted downstairs to the living room. I’d been hoping to go to my grandmother and find warm comfort, but instead I found her head thrust back, and her mouth dangling open. Upon closer inspection, I saw a long trail of drool slithering down her cheek and neck. Since I was a shy kid, I didn’t wake her. Instead, I tried to find the remote so I could change the channel to something decent, but I couldn’t. So, I just got a big bowl of ice cream and watched Mike Hawk: Undercover, and then an even more boring documentary about forest fires. Try as I might, I simply could not get the image of that woman out of my mind.

I must have dozed off, because the next thing I remember is hearing: “ I tried everything! I tried Drano, coathangers, heroin, legal abortion! Nothing worked!” blaring from the TV. My grandmother’s drool had now made her shirt-front wet.

Bang!

My grandmother gave a snort and flailed her arms for a moment, looking around wildly! Just then, my parents walked in just in time to hear: “Seven out of ten doctors agree that child pregnancy is even worse before puberty!” and see a picture of a girl who looked about my age giving birth.

“What...in God’s holy name… are you watching?” My father asked incredulously. My grandmother pulled out the remote from underneath her, and frantically tried to change the channel, but only succeeded in clanking the volume up. “JOIN US AFTER THE BREAK TO LEARN HOW ONE MAN GOT SYPHILIS BY STICKING HIS WHOLE HEAD UP A--”

I never did learn what that unfortunate man stuck his head in, because right then my father walked over to the television and turned it off.

“Ma…” he said, looking at her sopping shirt front, “did you fall asleep again? Come on, we’ve talked about this.”

“N-no, of course not!” she sputtered. “I had an eye on him the whole time!”

“Ma,” Dad said sternly, “your shirt’s all wet and a show about pre-pubescent pregnancy and unusually contracted venereal diseases is on.”

“Ah, well, er… um… I really must be going!” and with that, she snatched up her purse and coat, and bustled out the door. I can’t remember what sort of horrors sought refuge in my dreams that night, but they were enough to jolt me awake in a frigid sweat. Oddly enough, I drifted off into a peaceful slumber immediately afterwards.

School was very normal the next day. Despite the fright that The Book of Agony gave me, not once did it enter my head. In fact, I recall that I was in quite a good mood that day. That is, until I came home. Dad was still at the office. For he always had to stay late on Mondays, but Mom was home from her job as a nurse. Initially, there was nothing to trouble me, but as the afternoon came on, Increasingly felt as though somebody or something was watching me. I tried to ignore it, because I felt silly, but it eventually became so overwhelming that, even though I already knew the answer, I asked my mother is there was anybody else home. Of course, there wasn’t. The whole time, I’d had a nagging suspicion that the book had something to do with it. Unable to stand it any longer, I finally resolved to read the wretched thing. As one might figure, the rest of it was much like the page I’d seen the day before. The book’s sole purpose seemed to be to instruct the reader how to perform the most grisly tortures humanly possible. I distinctly remember a man being devoured alive by a pack of starving wolves. So being the young little tike I was, I stuffed the thing in my closet and pretended it never existed.

Over the next two weeks, I became very humorless and apathetic. Nothing managed to entertain me, nothing. Jokes were lame, books were boring, TV was stupid, toys were trivial… Yet, despite what it may seem, I was not at all depressed. There wasn’t an ounce of sadness, just flat apathy.

Then the nightmares came. Right as my apathy began to decay, I was given terrible dreams. At first, I could not remember what it was that had plagued my slumber that night; but as time wore on, I could recall what they were each morning with increasingly clarity. These nightmares were all united under the same dark umbrella: every night, the dream would be of me receiving a different tortured method described in The Book of Agony. Whether it was being drowned and quartered with barbed wire, or having live scorpions shoved down my throat, it was always a Hellish experience. It was inescapable. If I tried staying awake, I would always fall asleep against my will. The dreams would come if I so much as dozed off in school or took a nap. My nerves became on edge. I had bags under my eyes, and I jumped at unexpected noises. I didn’t know how much more I could take.

You are probably wondering by now why I never told anybody, namely my parents. At first, when I had found The Book of Agony on that November afternoon, I had kept it secret merely out of child whim for secrecy. Though, as time went on, it transformed into a terror that if I told somebody, anybody, about the book and my nightmares, that something horrible would happen. What that horrible something was, I didn’t know, but it was enough to keep it a secret. Until, at last, I cracked.

-

“What in the sweaty hell have you been watching on TV?” my father asked one December morning at breakfast, after I’d just described a chapter about drowning people in their own blood.

“Just normal cartoons, Dad,” I replied. “B-but it’s not TV! Weren’t you listening? It’s a book! Written in blood with all these nasty pictures in it!”

“Davie,” my mother called from the kitchen, “did Ben steal a copy of Hustler from the school library again?” She must have heard me say “nasty pictures.”

“No, honey, he’s not talking about nudie magazines, he’s talking about- -” he stopped and peered at me over his expansive newspaper. “What were you talking about?”

I just stared at him incredulously. I had been talking at least ten minutes about the stupid thing. So instead of repeating myself, I lead him- and my mother- upstairs to my bedroom, so that I could just show it to them. The only problem was that it was nowhere to be found. I prefer to not think about the embarrassment that followed immediately.

School that day was pretty normal. Some kid soiled themselves and a fat kid broke the tire swing; nothing unusual. Walking home from the bus stop, I could see that both cars were parked in the driveway. But when I got home, there were no signs of life. They were usually in the living room around this time of day, but no lights were on, there or anywhere else in the house. I tried calling their cell phones from the house phones, but they went straight to voicemail. Very spooked by this point, I set off to to check upstairs in the playroom, the one place I hadn’t looked. The creaking of the floor seemed abnormally loud.

The room was completely empty, and completely silent. It was eerily dark in here than the rest of the house, as the quickly- fading winter light struggled to squirm through the blinds. The only place left to check was the cubbyhole and the attic. If they weren’t there… then what? I’d figure it out when I got there, I figured.

By the time I’d crossed the long room to the cubby door, the sun had gone completely down, I’d moved so slowly. The only light come from the hallway. I’d forgotten to turn the light on when I came in, and it was all the way across the room. Oh well, I thought. Then I flung open the door.

CRASH

- a great noise from the attic adjacent to the playroom.

WHAM-

The door slammed shut with so much force it shook the walls.

The two booming noises came in such rapid succession that at first I’d hardly even noticed that the light had gone away. I didn’t even realize what the second noise was until I’d already flung myself at the door and tried the locked door knob. Then the silence and utter blackness to hold of me.

The attic was to the left of the playroom, and was accessed by a door about two-thirds the size of normal doors. I never went into the attic alone, because when I was really young, a toddler, I think, my father made me watch a horror movie where there was this creature living in the attic, and ever since then I’ve had an unnatural fear of attics. This is also why I never looked for my parents in there.

So, now I was locked in total darkness and silence. Though I could not see anything, I could hear my heart pounding like a drum, and my breath was a whirlwind of sound against the ringing silence. Then… then came a slow, creeping, creaking from the attic door that was to my back. I stood frozen to the spot in fear, imagining some horrible, slimy monster with hands reaching out towards me, waiting to wrap themselves around my throat, but… instead I heard a soft weeping. It sounded like woman’s… It sounded like… no, it couldn’t be, but it sounded like my mother. Then I heard her say my name, “Ben, Ben, I just want my baby…. Please, give me my baby.”

“Mom?” I whispered, but there was no answer. I turned around, and could vaguely make out the open doorway to that long, narrow room that was somehow even darker than the playroom. I tried to flick the lights on, but to no avail.

“Mom? Mom?” I whispered again, but got no reply. It sounded like she was all they way in the back of the attic. Drenched in sweat, I finally mustered up the courage to venture in to that black abyss.

Once inside, I could definitely tell that my Mother was in the very back.

“Mom? Mom?” I said in a hushed voice.

“My baby… that’s all I ask… I just want Ben…”

“Mom!” I whispered. “I’m right here! It’s Ben!”

“B-Ben?” I heard her croak. “Ben, is that really you? Oh, thank goodness I - - no, no, No!”

I heard a short-lived shriek followed by what sounded like Mom being thrown against the wall and crumpling up on the floor.

“M-mom?” I quavered. No answer. I stifled a sob.

And I heard a high, quiet growling from the back of the attic.

WHAM-

the door was slammed shut behind me, and I heard the lock click.

“Give it to us.” a high, raspy voice hissed in front of me.

“Yes,” a low, guttural voice growled behind me, “We know of the book.” I couldn’t have answered if I’d wanted; i was frozen where I was. I could perceive that the that the two creatures were creeping forward, closing in for the kill.

“Where is it?” the creature to my front spat.

“I-I,” I stammered.

“Tell us!” The thing, behind me roared.

“I -I don’t- don’t know!” I sobbed, tears flooding down my face in a huge tidal wave. After I said this, the thing in front of me gave an ear-piercing, harpy-like shriek straight from the depths of Hell.

The I was seized from behind by large, powerful arms and spun around. I saw a bright, blinding light and saw- -

Dad.

“Sacred-ja, didn’t we sport?’ he said playfully, tousling my hair, as if nothing he and Mom just did was seriously traumatic to my young mind. I didn’t answer him, I just shoved him away in disgust and stormed off to my room, not wanting them to see my angry tears.

“What gives, sport?’ I heard him call after me. “It’s just a prank, man, chill!”

I thought long and hard that night, until I’d gotten a pretty good idea of how they had staged the whole thing. After turning off their cell phones, all they had to do was wait for me to come home. I figured Mom stayed hidden in the attic the whole time, while Dad probably hid in either the spare bedroom or the bathroom that was near the playroom. While I was in the playroom, my Mother must’ve been watching my by peeking at through a crack in the door. When I opened the door to the cubby hole, she knocked something over as hard as she could and shut off the house’s lighting through the electric panel that was in the attic. I figured this was the cue for my Dad, who was probably right outside the door at this point, to slam it shut and lock me in. After I quieted down, my Mom slowly opened the attic door, and then snuck to the back of it and pretended to sob, which would explain the delay between the door creaking open and the sound of her lament. All it took was to lure me far enough into the attic, and then she pretended to be killed, which signalled for Dad to unlock the door and creep up behind me, and slam the door shut and lock it. After that, all it took was decent acting, which wouldn’t have been hard for them, seeing as they met in the drama club during high school. Why they thought the whole thing would be okay to do, I’ve never figured out, and probably never will. 