My great niece , a teenager, wrote this essay recently
I think it deserved its own blog entry
Enjoy
Chasing the Dragon
A shadow descends the desolate alleyway simultaneous with her ambled movements. Looming over, it threatens to engulf her into its murky abyss. It’s both unnerving and formidable – Not her. She’s hunched forward, eyes raised ahead, amply expanded yet sustaining a stoic guise of detachment and serenity. She is numb in the utmost physical and mental way. The only thing giving her away is the rugged pace of her breathing. She trudges forwards into the ominous unknown. The shattered glass of beer bottles forms a transient mosaic at her bare feet. She smiles and paints it in alluring shades of crimson as she walks. A gurgled laugh escapes her throat accompanied by a trickle of blood. It’s laced with cynicism and before she’s aware of what’s happening she’s laughing hysterically and her façade has crumpled like the decayed bricks she leans against for support. She slides down the wall and crumples to the ground. She is still laughing as she stares into her blooded reflection in the window ahead.
She gazed into the face of a dragon. Striking a match to her demise, she watched as an intoxicating trail of poison seeped from his lips. A transcendentsea of ecstasy and tranquillity leaving behind a path of internal destruction. The hypnotic thumping of base from Massive Attack’s “Black Milk” droned in the distance, followed by an unsettling passage of keyboards. His heavy stare bored into hers, taunting and temping, challenging her. She wanted to duel with him,to conquer her untamed desires and the savage beast which lay beneath her hooded gaze. She reminisced of a time free of such yearning and self-scrutiny,before happiness was such an alien concept and her soul was tainted by thethirst that consumed her very being. This only conjured images of their copious battles… his gentle embrace proceeding savage dominion, her frangible resistance proceeding assured submission. She’d always submit. From the moment he found her she was desolate... Whisped away in his smoke. She was no heroine, he was the heroin, and she could not resist.
“Eat me in the space within my heart”.
He released another seductive puff. So alluring, so sensual... She surrendered.Euphoria manifested itself in her lungs and she was elated ten feet in the air.Flying. She wondered if this was what death felt like, if only it felt so good. I am invincible, she told herself. Awash in the exaltation, she was suspended,cradled within a comforting cocoon of fog. Its tail snaked its way around her,kissing her scalp and caressing her skin. She had fallen in love with her capture.And then the smoke morphed into fragmentized glass and she was falling into gravities embrace. Soft acts of endearment were transposed with sharppunctures as tangible grains of reality clawed at her skin, drawing blood. The light refracted from the glass drowned her in an aura of luminescence, as thoughher form had been ignited on fire. She was jolted from descent as she collidedwith a hard surface while a thousand shards of glass showered down around her.There was no trace of smoke in sight.
Defeated.
Betrayed.
Still. Her crumpled form no longer moves as I cast my gaze down on her from above, watching. Always watching. Scarlet permeates through her glass clad skin, intertwining with shattered fragments of prospect and aspiration in a puddle at her waste. The lone moon drowns her in a cold breadth of florescence,looming over and mocking the spectacle of her pathetic state. Matted eyelashesframe crusted, dead eyes which still fixate impassively on her reflection.Eventually, she succumbs to the shadows.
“God Stares to Marvel, Only Love.”
This is what I do. I anesthetize your dreams… I mutilate ambitions… I lure you in to a delusion of spurious security and devoir every cell of your anatomy before I whisp you to ashes.
I smirk and turn away, leaving to lurk the streets in wait of my next victim. The dragon does not chase you, you chase the dragon…
But who is the one that gets burned?
Word Count: 381
She is a clever teenager to be able to write so well at her age.
ReplyDeleteSubstitute heroin for alcohol. It might take a bit longer but the end result is the same.
ReplyDeleteAnd she's a teenager? Blimey.
Thanks tom..... I want to forward onto her any comments
DeleteAlmost sounds as if she's been there. What grade did she receive for this?
ReplyDeletei sincerely hope she is not writing this from her own experience but it sounds like she is. this is what i do. i spend all my time with addicts. if you don't embrace your disease and truly understand it, you will die. if you think it will help, have her contact me.
ReplyDeleteI think she has a wonderfully mature and florid imagination
DeleteNothing to worry about
She is an actress aged 16
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ReplyDeleteSorry forgot to add ....but a very well-written piece.
ReplyDeleteThis blog entry is going in a direction I didn't think it would go
ReplyDeletegood news john! there is no area i like being wrong in as much as this! my red flags fly up very easily!
ReplyDeleteWhat a writer!!! Did she get a grade on this? Extraordinary for a teenager!
ReplyDeleteShe's got quite the vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteShe is most likely very perceptive and exceptionally empathetic for her age-it can happen. Wonderfully written piece.
ReplyDeleteVery well written and she has a lovely nose for metaphors. I have a thirteen year old who writes like this.....and it is not from experience, but as you mentioned John, from an incredible imagination and well developed sense of empathy. I'll bet your Eli is a voracious reader as well; writers also gain their "experiences" from what they read.
ReplyDeleteWOW !
ReplyDeleteWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW !
What a story I was pulled in by the first sentence.
cheers, parsnip
When I took a writing class with a bunch of 18-year-olds, I was writing about ducks down by the river, and they were writing some serious, deep, meaningful, and angsty stuff.
ReplyDeleteShe gets it. She will go far with her observations; her ability to put life into writing is a gift, and one that by all appearances she doesnt take lightly...
ReplyDeletebrava!
Deep and disturbing. If she can write this, she could write anything. Brilliant. Keep us posted as to her career path. One to watch.
ReplyDeleteWow ! She should be invited to schools to tell that story; powerful stuff.
ReplyDeleteI like, " It’s laced with cynicism "
A very grim view of what so many chose as a way of life. Perhaps they should read her résumé before they take the inevitable path.
ReplyDeleteWell written Eli.
This young girl is deeper than a mole with a penchant for caving .....
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same as Cro Magnon. A beautifully written piece about a heart breaking subject. Although my children have made mistakes, I thank God every day it wasn't that one.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that, John. Not quite your usual scenario, though still features an animal as befits 'Going Gently'.
ReplyDeleteUnlike some of your readers I don't think one has "to have been there". Anyway, I believe it irrelevant where her insights come from. All that matters WHAT Eli was able to put on paper.
I love the way she paints a picture, draws you into an atmosphere, giving you the shivers. My interpretation was very different to those of some of your commentators: At first I had no idea where her narrative was leading: A fairy tale? The imaginations of a feverish nightmare? Someone in the claws of her Svengali? When I came to her sublime "shattered fragments of prospect and aspiration in a puddle at her waste" I thought she might be referring to how sometimes life may derail, smashing our hopes and ambitions. Which of course she did.
It was only Hippo's comment which made me link her essay to 'heroin'. Do laugh if you must: I thought her "She was no heroine, he was the heroin" to be a typo which should have read 'hero'. So, with my newly gained insight, I read it again. Let's just say my first interpretation is tame compared to the true picture she has painted. Powerful stuff.
Keep your imagination fertile, Eli, (your Uncle John is most generous with his chicken manure). Imagination not least being a useful tool for any actor. Wishing you a great future.
U
Good God, that's excellent. Thanks for posting it and tell her she's great.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
Wow! That left me speechless. I'm amazed that a 16 year old can write with such a depth of maturity. If she chooses to pursue it, she has an amazing future ahead of her as an author.
ReplyDeleteWhat a talented young lady ... I am sure she will go far. She needs to nurture her amazing imagination ... too often we grow up and leave it behind.
ReplyDeleteAmazingly talented young lady.
ReplyDeleteShe writes with a knowledge only imagined and yet gets it so right.
Flipping brilliant. As already said above, plug in my drug of choice (alcohol) and I relate totally - I wish I'd have known what she clearly knows at that age, would have saved 25 years of insanity.
ReplyDelete