Prologue
Although the room was dark she could see him clearly. He stood calmly at the end of her bed. One arm was wrapped tightly around an old, dilapidated bear. Its left eye was missing, its ears and body were completely threadbare and one leg swung lower than the other following a feeble reattachment with rather poor stitching.
The little boy’s face was pink, as though he’d just woken up. He stood in silence clutching the bear. His other arm hung limp by his side as it always did. An emaciated stump consisting of lean, wasted muscles, a grim reminder of the horrific accident that had swiftly severed all life from below the elbow with one merciless crush.
She pushed her arthritic frame into a sitting position until she was more or less upright.
“Hello,” she asked in a whisper, as if not to disturb, “is that you, Joe?”
The boy continued to stare ahead. She could see his familiar dimples and a hint of white as his mouth opened. Was he about to speak?
She leant towards him. He was wearing a pair of red pyjamas. They were his favourite. She had been given them. Hand me downs, from another girl in the home. They had been too big. She remembered how she had to turn up the trouser legs several times otherwise he would trip up when running up and down the corridor with the other children.
“Joe? Joe?” she repeated. But he remained where he was, in silence.
She frowned. Why could she could see him? It was the middle of the night and her room was dark. Was her elderly brain finally surrendering to the inevitable decline towards senility into which so many of her peers had already succumbed?
She shivered. Where were the cobwebs and the network of skewed, distorted images, that now plagued her vision every woken moment? All gone. Instead there was just Joe. Sweet Joe. Joe in his red pyjamas.
She reached for the bedside lamp and felt for the switch. Click.
Her bedroom flooded with light. Impulses raced between her tired, aged eyes and her brain. But with the light returned the tortuous web of blotchy, disrupted images from her failing sight.
She moved her eyes erratically back and forth, trying to catch the one patch of useful vision she knew she had still hidden amongst the now muddled composition of her once perfect eyesight. Finally, she caught a brief glimpse of the end of the bed, but the boy had gone.
She slid out from beneath the covers and confidently walked over to a dresser on the far wall of her bedroom. Five steps. Just five. She’d stubbed her toes often enough to know the number and length of strides she needed to make. She centred herself in front of the dresser by stretching her arms out on either side of her body and allowing her hands to find each corner. When she was in the right position she she bent down and opened the bottom drawer. She started her search systematically from the left until she found what she was looking for. Under a pile of clothes she carefully removed a set of boys’ red pyjamas and held them to her face.
Yes, they were still there. And they smelled just the same. After a moment or two she replaced them in precisely the same place in the drawer and felt amongst the rest of the clothes until she found the bear. As her fingers rubbed the threadbare ears, a tear began to trickle down her face.
She picked up the bear and got back into bed.
With the light still on, she quickly fell back to sleep.
Lorraine and Jane: I think it was simply the word 'another' that confused me in the sentence. If it read ' hand me downs from a girl in the home', then it would clear it up without changing the meaning. Hope that helps Jane. Maybe it's just me. It is a great opening though and makes me want to read on to hear the whole story.
I guessed you must have had some experience or knowledge of macular disease. My father-in-law who has it, sat in the garden with me last summer and asked why someone had parked their motorbike at the top of a tree. He could see the image quite clearly, enough to identify the make and model. Although I have worked with people experiencing true hallucinations as a psychologist, I had not heard much about it until then.
Jane, the prologue here is short and full of questions - which is as it should be. You can reveal more about the lady's condition as the novel progresses. This is one aspect of her life though not all; it's facilitating a revisiting of the past while being a very definite problem of the present, and that works really well as a concept.
There are glitches - as I often tell people, you have to learn to read your work with your ears! If you read it aloud, you will pick up errors because speech is a delayed function of the brain, and that tiny fraction of a second allows you to actually notice what's on the page, not what you thought you wrote.
I'd suggest that at the beginning or end of your finished novel (doesn't that sound great?) you put in an author's note about MD and CB Syndrome, and possibly any links to more info that you deem suitable. That would cover anything that would otherwise be intrusive or not fully explained in the novel itself. If you have an author's website you could do the same there.
It's hard to be an expert about something when writing a novel based upon that subject - you can only reveal as much as your protagonist feels or knows at any point in the story. She may not know what her condition is, or how to treat it, or what the prognosis is, so although you know, you have to take a step back.
Lorraine
Thank you all - three comments at once I am truly grateful!
I have embarked upon a book about Macular Degeneration - as far as I can tell there is nothing in the marketplace. I am an eye specialist with a good number of years working with elderly patients who have lost their sight gradually through this devastating and surprisingly common condition. In the past I have written textbooks and articles for students so this is new territory for me (other than the 7 year on-going attempt at a fantasy I have shelved for now - we've all got one of those).
Colin, yes, with macular degeneration is associated Charles Bonnet syndrome - visual hallucinations, seen in the dark or the light – and I wanted to link this to the protagonist's past - thus the boy. So I think I'm on the right track here but need to elaborate a little? I don't want the reader totally confused from the outset, as Charles Bonnet syndrome is little understood.
The grammatical errors I shall review with your detailed feedback. Gosh, I’ve got so much to learn about writing fiction compared to academic articles! Happy NY to you all - thank you once again.