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Three Roses

The silence woke her as she waited on the bumpy, ragged couch under clouds of marijuana, watching absentmindedly as they floated above her. Her bony, icy hands gripped a glass filled with an unfamiliar purple liquid. She had waited for hours on end for the raging house to dim and for the drunken slurs to fade out the door, leaving nothing, but footprints of broken glass.

At 3:33am, the lights dimmed and the voices faded. Within her soul, arose a life, transforming her weary face and bony body to ones of a porcelain doll. Her eyes grew wide to those of a doe, like a baby, and her skin was smooth, pale to perfection, and her once chapped purple lips were luscious, painted a bloody red, ones of a bloody rose.

Gently she lifted her glass to her mouth and tipped it down her throat letting the strange purple liquid fall into her mouth, flowing down her dry throat and some of it fall down her lips and drip down her chin, staining her snowy white dress. Like an artist, she painted as she drank her poison. Pulling the cup from her lips, she wiped her mouth. She was preparing to come out in the light of day. Her poison gave her sanity. She dropped the glass and watched it shatter on the ebony marble floor, just like everyone she once knew. It was the sick twisted fate of all those she loved.

Quietly with her long, pearly white dress trailing behind her, she walked through the glass as shards pierced the sole of her feet, staining the ends of her dress a crimson red.

Not too long later, she reached the end of the creaky, eerie hall, did she reach a door with a single rose turning a dirty brown hanging limply on the knob, making her reminisce her fallen lover. Twisting the knob, the rose fell at her feet and the wooden door opened, granting her access. Within the four walls, of this room stood a wooden table covered in splinters and a creaky, rusted metal chair with a dusty pink cushion resting on it. Pulling the cushion off the chair, she sat on the squeaky chair, reaching for an ancient notebook, filled with recipes of breaking a soul, and a fragile black pen. Flipping to a blank page she wrote her story to the world shakily. As she gripped her pen, her head started to pound. Her grip tightened. She wrote faster. Her pen scraped the paper.... till everything snapped. The frantic writing ceased with the loud crack of her pen. The black ink splattered onto her already stained dress.

With a shriek, in frantic agony, she rushed out of the broken room, down the haunted halls. tumbling down the rickety stairs and out of the wretched house, only to fall into the cutting rose bushes. They cut her once untainted skin, sure to create scars. Eventually, she picked up the broken porcelain pieces and glued them together with the slater water that fell. Then with the rose petals, she painted her lips once more and stapled her mouth in a permanent smile with the thorns that grew the delicate, fragile flower. For she’d been told, this smile would please the entire world.

Hand and knees, till heels and stilettos. Her once pearly white dress stained with three colours: purple, red and black, filling the blank canvas. To the world a mysterious combination of royalty, romance and power. But in reality, at 3:33am, 3 roses, decorated like a bloody rose upon her lips, a rose hanging on the doorknob from her fallen lover and a cutting rose securing her pain, with her pearly white dress painted purple black and red. For without their knowledge, these 3 roses from struggle, danger and darkness, broke her soul. She fought the battles of every person. Through agony, troubles and pain, all goes unnoticed. Not a soul realises, but every soul praises the final product, a mixture of colours over another broken soul. 3 roses broke it all, but 3 roses won their cold and broken hearts.

#creative #metaphor

Biting My Pretty Red Heart in Two

February 1952

Mother,

Down here in Ottawa Valley, the wartime storm of artillery shells and roaring of fighter planes have been appeased. There are two men dressed in formal attire standing in the back watching the pearly white snow cover you like a tablecloth. One is wearing a brown khaki uniform and the one beside him wears his blues with air force wings. One is my father and the other is my daddy.

As I kneel beside the coffin, I embark on a pilgrimage to piece the fragmentations of my memory that you’ve left me with.

Mother, I’ve had to kill you, but still, you suffocate me. You choke me with your bony hands, gripping my throat. The more I scratch at your hands the tighter you squeeze. I’m at your mercy.

My mind goes back to the fragmentations of memory that are left in the dusty, cobwebbed corner of my mind. I’m yet to clean it out.

SPRING

April 1941

I remember being 5.

I was drowning in the midst of the tall, grassy fields. My eyes watering up at the canvas of warm orange and a royal purple, dusted with large, stormy, fighter planes overhead. My tears blurred my vision as I frantically examined the sea of blue uniforms, to find my daddy wrapping his arm around your waist. Stumbling towards you, I covered my ears to block out the roaring engines of the planes above.

You took me inside our small red cottage by the Rideau River that flowed up into Vanier. You held me in your arms resting my head upon your chest, as you placed a newly sewn doll in my hands. Your chest rose like a steady drum. Your breathing was whimsical and melodic; I could feel the dips and divots of the music your heart made with each simple pulse and even though I was no musician, you composed finer music than Mozart. I drifted off to heaven in your arms.

Mother, you were an angel with God’s light shining upon you. And daddy. He was one too. Mother, you gave me the world down here in Ottawa Valley, by the Rideau River.

AUTUMN

September 1946

At age 10 my feet crushed the dried, auburn leaves beneath me. I walked up the familiar red brick road that led up to our small cottage. As it drew closer to me, I saw a man, not in blue uniform, but in a tattered brown one that hung loosely off his frail skeleton. He walked with a limp. His hair matched the patchy grass of autumn and he wore dark rings beneath his eyes. As his eyes met mine, the candle in his eyes was ignited. He reached out to me, but I didn’t know him. I didn’t recognize him and his body that was flecked with scars like a puzzle.

So I turned away, but he called out. “Emma, it’s me, your daddy.”

“You’re not my dad. You’re not my daddy,” I shook as I stumbled away, running into my mother who stood frozen behind me.

I clung onto her dress and hid behind her, as my daddy arrived, kissing her on her soft, pale cheeks.

“Darling,” my mother whispered shakily, to me, “Go fetch us some tea, would you?” She had never asked me to do this before.

As I return back into the dully lit room with mum’s imported Chinese tea, and approach the man in the brown shirt, I feel my eyes growing wide as my heart pounds, ready to fall out of my chest. His mouth is stretched up into a wide curve as he rubs two stubs on his left hand where his fingers should be. Noticing my stare on him, his upward curve reverses and his eyes droop. I looked away and quickly finished pouring the tea as I retreated back into my room where I pressed my ear against the cool, oak door.

I listened to the murmurs of you, mother, and the silence of the man in the brown shirt. Until quiet footsteps grew closer to my door in a stuttered breathing until it fades to a soft “goodbye”.

SUMMER

June 1946

The humid air choked you, my mother, and the large swamps of mosquitos clouded our vision. Still 10, I watched the light flicker dim from your eyes, faster than a candle being blown out as the face of the man in the brown shirt stains the house. He looms overhead in the air and his distant eyes, stared through the walls of our red cottage. They trap us within these walls.

You cannot run from the demons you created inside these walls. It terrorizes you day and night. Daddy and you formed into tornadoes at the end of the valley. I listened behind the white door of my dark room as I clung to my tattered doll that you had sewn for me.

Your loud voice echoed through the corridor, fading at my door. I peered through the keyhole watching you tug on your tangled brunette locks as daddy shook in his blue uniform, “What do you want me to do now?”

The door slammed, as bangs and clatters stormed our house like the unceasing fire of wartime.

I used to pray to recover you.

Mum, you were distant in the living room; you might as well have been dead. Your words never reached me so you became a bruise I took with caution. I treated it with care no matter how bad it stung or ached.

You have changed.

WINTER

1949

The icy fog of November settled at the doorsteps of our worn-down red cottage by the river that flows up to Vanier. The thick, red, brick walls kept us safe from the swords of the wind that pierced our skin. I was knee deep in photographs and tattered notebooks that held the truths of my life. A man in a brown and a man in blue.

I scanned the photographs that scattered across the dusty, timber floor of the attic. Some photos captured 3 people and some captured 2. Most held my daddy in blue and my mother. But one was different. One captured my mother in a simple blouse and a long pleated skirt. She held a weeping toddler in her arms as a young gentleman in an ironed brown uniform held her waist tenderly.

Turning it over it read “8th of September, 1939, in two days daddy will leave for war, baby Emma is sad to see him go, but mummy will protect her till he comes back.”

Not too far from the photograph, I found a letter dated 10 November 1941.

I read the following:

1941

Marcel L. Cooper SGT 3rd Battalion. - Missing, presumed dead

Last seen September 15.

If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of Mr. Cooper, contact the nearest military office immediately.

Just like that. His entire life and achievements reduced to three sentences.

And my heart was torn in two. Who was who, and which was which?

Which one do i now call my daddy?

February 1952

Mother, the winter won’t leave me and nor will you.

Everything is dry. Your porcelain skin is cracking. But still you cannot see the sky. The snow blocks our view, clouding our vision. They prevent us from seeing the deadly icicles falling off the roof of our warm red house, ready to puncture my fragile body.

My memory of you, daddy and the man in brown, is like glass shards of a window. Scattered and distant.

Now mother, you have cowered beneath the earth. Your skin is blue in the cold and dusted with brown matter. Mother you have left me here with my two daddies. They’ve been tugging at my arms to get a fragment of you. They want your hair, your heart, your baby. Mother they want me. They’re latching on to me and they won’t let go.

These daddies here, they’re biting my pretty red heart in two.

#creativestory

Module C

Part A - 12 marks

“Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there’s no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It’s loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.”– Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Use the ideas in this stimulus above for a piece of imaginative, discursive or persuasive writing that expresses the transformative power of literature.

The skyscrapers and erratic emerald green and bloodied lights reflect off the dampened streets of Fujian. They neglect the pungent smell of decay an hour away. They neglect the whisper of a family's past in the trees.

***

Wendy nudges the towering mahogany door open in the apartment towering over Fujian. The bitter aroma of lemongrass laced with Chinese herbal remedies wafts to her nose: Ginseng, Rhubarb Root and Ma Huang. It makes her cringe. Mrs Hu (her mother ) believed they had medicinal benefits, but Wendy knew that they were just from dodgy articles that her mother read on WeChat.

As she hobbles out to the living room where a single conical hat is locked away in a glass box that has a single stripe of pearly white paint on the side of it. It is well protected from the dust and humidity of the air around. Wendy could not understand the importance of a simple hat. Why had her mother kept this hat for so many years? Why was it secured away? What treasures did it hold? What stories did it tell? Her mind was full of questions.

“Why do you keep that hat?” questioned Wendy as she sat on the bright red leather couch of the living room.

Mrs. Hu’s eyes fall as she recollects the time where the book of her life fell on a dark chapter.

She had heard the rusted hinges of the splintered wooden door creaking in a dark omen. A rampage of 5 boys ran out of their cold, stone house followed by 3 girls. They had worn tall conical hats and held woven baskets as they waved goodbye to their parents. Their faces were lined with wisdom and age.

Huian, the youngest of the eight clutched tightly on to the hand of her elder sister as she gripped the oversized basket to her chest with her eyes fixated on the distant Ting River ahead of her. The Ting River is their cafeteria for the night. Mrs. Hu can taste the salted clams, fried ham yu fish and scallops (it makes her mouth water). They were going to fill their baskets that night.

In the muddy fields of the Ting River, they scavenged in knee deep water in search of any small creatures to eat. They hadn’t found much. Just a 2 small ham yu fish. The sun had fallen beneath the horizon.

“There’s no fish here, I'll go look further out. Stay here Meimei.” Jiayi utters to Mrs. Hu, handing her conical hat to her.

Where is she going? What is she going to do? Why couldn’t she go with her? Her mind was full of questions as she clutched onto her jiejie’s conical hat.

Hours ticked by. Ink splattered across the sky. The tides had risen and the wind whistled through the trees urging her to go home. Still Mrs. Hu waited for her jiejie. Her stomach was growling, yet she refused to leave the banks of the Ting River.

When she finally returned, her parents had splattered snow white paint on their doorpost with a solemn look on their face. The cheap incense burnt throughout the night as water crashes on the river banks of the Ting River with empty returns.

Now, decades later, Mrs. Hu gazes out the apartment window through the trees that whistle in the wind and the rain that blurs the city’s view.

#englishadvanced #modulec #craftofwriting

Man in a foreign country

He tugged his long umber coloured trench coat around him as his hand gripped onto a small, cheap tattered suitcase that held a single change of clothes, $200 and letters from his wife. The rain splashed off the roofs of white taxis onto him. They were trapped behind endless rows of red traffic lights and the bodies around him were also stagnant as they murmured quietly on the phone, uttering apologies of their lateness. His monolids lifted over his pecan coloured eyes as he watched them speak their foreign language.

#englishadvanced #creative #man #character development

A Girl

Her dirt brown locks covered her lowered head as she stumbled through the narrow dirt path that led to her small, red cottage. The overgrown garden in her front yard protected it from the fragmentation of time. She clutched her mid-length snow-white dress that was stained with her morning coffee.

The sun painted the sky apricot orange and honey-yellow as it floated gently like a feather below the horizon. The sound of tires on unsealed roads was heard two streets away as the smell of roasted beef wafted to her nose from within the kitchen. Her mother had been clunking pots and pans together as she eagerly prepared for the guests to arrive in half an hour.

#englishadvanced #creative #character concept

The End

As Luciano rested on the worn out leather office seat, his eyelids fell as the crackling fire withered. They were reduced to monochrome ashes as ink-black silence falls over the once brightly lit office.

“I felt OK about it, felt good....That feeling feels OK.”

#englishadvanced #HSC

Page 49 - Crafty Feeling

She pushed the dust aside with her dainty, cold finger, trailing over the lines of books: Pride and Prejudice, The Bell Jar and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

“Or the Psalms. Or Ulysses. Or the Songs of Public Enemy. Or the films of Grace Kelly”

#englishadvanced

A Daily Morning Ritual

The thin brick walls of the tall house backed by the blue gums, didn’t seem to insulate out the bitter cold of the Australian winter. Huian had hid under three layers of blankets breathing steadily as Mrs. Hu gently nudged her mahogany door that creaked on its worn out hinges. Her mother entered her room carrying a warm glass of lemon grass laced with Chinese herbal remedies: Ginseng, Rhubarb Root and Ma Huang. The bitter aroma wafted to her nose, stirring her awake.

“Goodness, You’re still asleep! It’s 10 o’clock already” Mrs. Hu exclaimed setting down the glass and tearing the curtains open.

Jumping alert, Huian and rushed to her desk pulling up her laptop which read 8am.

#englishadvanced

A Moment In Time

Rosella had not been back here in 30 years.

She gazes out of the dusty glass which protect the memories of the office from the elements outside as she runs her cold, bony fingers over the lines of books sitting on the wooden shelves surrounding every corner of the office. She watches the birds flock harmoniously in the multi-coloured canvas of warm orange and a royal purple as the flickering of the freshly lit furnace warm the cold afternoon. Each intricate detail in the office seems to brush the cobwebs from the fragmentations of memory in the corner of her mind (she is yet to clean it out). Rosella’s fingers fall upon a monochrome photograph capturing a chubby, young girl with her hair tied in messy piggy tails curled in the lap a young gentleman in an unironed brown uniform.

At 12 o’clock, 6 year old Rosella creeps through the towering, mahogany door of her daddy’s office as the television blasts obnoxiously of the war time storm of artillery shells and roaring of fighter planes which multiply like bacteria with the impending enemy. Rosella, chewing her hair with the faucet running in her bright, hazel eyes grip a hand-sewn doll in her stubby hands.

“Come here Rosie” her daddy comforts, running his hair through his luscious midnight black hair in a crinkled tan suit as Rosella approaches him with her body becoming heavier on her trembling frail legs.

As Rosella scrambles onto her daddy’s lap as he reads softly to her. She is comforted by the steady drum in her daddy’s chest. His breathing was whimsical and melodic. She could feel the dips and divots of the music of his heart, and although her daddy was no musician, he composed music finer than Mozart.

With the weight of Rosella’s eyelids falling, the fire flickered from the furnace and her daddy held her steadily in his arms. (She drifted off at 1 o’clock)

The artillery shells are muted in her daddy’s arms.

Still her daddy holds her (even at 6 o’clock) with the sun gleaming through the window panes and the morning frost settling on their windowsill. The aroma of buttery goods being cooked on the fire stove, seep through the crevice of the brightly lit office awakening the two. Carrying Rosella to the dining room her where Rosella’s mummy greets them with a soft upwards curve on her face carrying two plates full of golden-brown pastries. In a sky-blue apron which covers her long pleated skirt with a vibrant red paint, across her lips, she reaches over to give daddy a kiss leaving a red stain on his flushed cheeks. Cringing, Rosella struggled out of her daddy’s arm as she grasped a plate from her mum’s hand dropping her doll.

At 8 o’clock, Rosella finishes the plate as his daddy retrieves to his office once again. They stay within the constraints of the thick, brick wall of their cottage with wall covered in freshly plastered, rose tapestry. Rosella admires the rows of hand-sewn dolls that sat on the shelves of their living room waiting anxiously to play. Rosella admires the intricate detail of each classic painting. And Rosella was the clock tick hour after hour.

9 o’clock…10 o’clock…11 o’clock

Now time no longer matters.

Now as Rosella breathes the remnants of the dusty office, the multi-coloured sunset has darkened to a dark indigo speckled with lights and the crackling fire in her daddy’s office is dwindling to nothingness, but dusty, monochrome ashes (just like Rosella’s mummy and daddy). Rosella has absorbed the warmth and flickering of her parents who are now constrained by a simple photograph.

Hearing a pitter-patter of footsteps approach the mahogany door of the office a loud voice screeches “Look mummy! I found another doll!”

#creative shortstory narrative englishadv