help?!

here is the situation. these are my gothic courseworks. i didnt like the first one much when i reread it, so i wrote another one. now i cannot chose. good readers of this blog, tell me which one you prefer. if you can be bothered to read all this. aha.

I have been walking just about three minutes now, and already I am completely bored. The beach is desolate and grim, the dog my mum still hadn’t decided on a name for wasn’t looking entertained anyway, but most of all it was beginning to rain. It bothers me the dog has no name; everything should have a name. I used to love the way my mum was ditzy, it made me feel powerful, but it plainly just annoyed me now. Nothing had been done since we had moved to the ‘beautiful’ area I was stuck in now. We had been living there almost a month now, and there were still about a hundred boxes dotted all over the house. She was at home all day, surely unpacking one or two couldn’t hurt? But she just sat and watched TV these days.
Then again, I must say she was better than my ‘dad’. She makes me call him that now they are married. Personally I despise it, he is not my dad, he is never even there to be a dad anyway. She is always in, he is always out. That is how it works now.
I hate beaches. Apparently, we are incredibly lucky to have been able to move somewhere with such an amazing asset right next to it. It is also supposed to be summer, I had even worn my favourite green dress in the hope of sunshine, but in typical English style the weather was rubbish. It annoys me the way the dog is just trundling along beside me, I mean, dogs are supposed to be happy when you take them to the beach? In all the movies they run around everywhere, jump in the sea and come out smelling of wet dog and shaking water everywhere. Alas, my dog is looking as bored as hell.
The sand is beginning to feel solid and uncomfortable beneath my feet and the instinct that comes with rain, to find shelter, flashes through me. The impulse struck me as strange, I like rain. I always stay out in it, everyone went inside and complained they were cold whilst I would walk around outside, absorbed in the splashes of water against my skin and the isolation the rain brought through. Talking of which, this beach is as empty as a crisp bag blowing down the street, well, except for myself and an old couple carrying umbrellas. I watch them hastily retreating up the steps on the far side of the beach. They look quite funny in a way, in proper summer bathing suits. running away in the heavying downpour; their umbrellas constantly turning inside out as the wind hit them in brick loads.
The sky definitely has the grey shade of an elephant now and the rain began running faster from the sky. Each droplet hits my nose and cheeks and with each one I feel the cold stab of the icy water. So when the impulse hits me again, this time I glance around for a shelter. Joy. There is none. The old couple have disappeared from sight now, and my eyes set on the moon that has broken through the clouds in the sky.
Holding my bag above my head, I begin a fast paced jog along the beach in search of something to hold out the wind, rain, and, the cold, which I suddenly am aware was creeping around me and bringing up ghost pimples on my skin. The tide washes around my feet as it moves further and further up the shore and the stab of ice cold English sea around my feet make them numb with cold. I can not remember where the dog is anymore. It could find its own way home for sure, and I am beginning to shiver as the rain seeps through my thin clothes and caressed my bare skin underneath them.
I barely notice I have come to the end of the shore until I almost ran right into the cliff face. The rain is still unbearably heavy, and I still have not found shelter. Beginning to feel desperate, I run up the beach parallel to the cliff face until my legs enter into a small hole in the wall of the cliff. It looks extremely uninviting, and I had never actually seen a cave before, (was this even a cave?) Nevertheless, my brain tells me it does not matter, just get out; get warm and get dry. So breathing in, I pace into the pitch black of the hole in the face of the cliff. I sense something tear as I duck down to get into the cave, and then feel my dress strap drift downwards. I do not care.
The first thing that strikes me as I round the corner of the passage is the brightness. I expected pitch black, at best glimmers of light, but I can see easily all around me.
I slow my pace so my feet are barely shuffling, and take in my surroundings. If this is a cave, it is ifascinating to look at.
A faint echo of thunder claps behind me, but my ears barely feel it. The cave has me totally engrossed, every tiny detail of it. Everything about it is entrancing, the faint glow emanating from nowhere in particular, the stalactites hanging as bats from the ceiling, the miniscule cracks that dot everywhere like raindrops, even the rough feel of my palms as they brace lightly against the wall.
My feet begin to continue walking at a normal pace again. I like the way every step I take gives an echo that bounces forward and backwards around the cave like footballs, bounce, bounce, bounce. And then there is the constant dropping from the stalactites as the torrents of rain from outside slowly begin merging downwards to meet me again. So many sounds to this silence.
And then, all of a sudden, it is silent. Completely silent. The dripping has stopped. My feet are not echoing. Sounds of nothing swirl around me, covering my rooted body in an invisible mist of nothing. the cave was no longer beautiful. I no longer find the silence reassuring. But the fact that I turn around and see nothing familiar whichever way I look is the one thing that crushes my brain the most.
And it is at this moment I miss everything. Even the things I hate. What I would give to be back with my stupid boring dog, my ditzy annoying mother and my stupid workaholic ’dad’. I am wishing so hard, for a moment I find myself back at home, surrounded by boxes and the smell of paint. Then my eyes flicker back open and I am back in this cave, lost in a wilderness of an unknown, isolated nightmare.
I find myself walking forwards again, but shakily this time. The cave is still terrifying as before, and I still have no sense of where to go. So I walk to nowhere in particular. After all, being more lost than I am right now is pretty impossible. Up ahead of me is a brightness that seems different to the glows that radiate of every other surface of the cave. This glow feels inviting, almost eerie in the way it so badly attracts me towards it. My feet walk towards it, speeding up the whole time, but it feels so completely right I keep them going.
A few meters away from the light I find my feet slowing down to an average walk. The cave all around me is brighter, thanks to this new found unknown source of light. It looks almost as beautiful as before, the walls that surround me are the kind of grey you find on a school skirt, and as I breath in the air, I feel the cool refreshing smell of moss. It relaxes my heartbeat to; I almost feel calm again.
The few last steps towards the light are the slowest I believe I have ever taken. As I walk into it I find myself in a mist of fog. A fog the colour of snow; not the grey mouldy type you find in backstreets, but the white of fresh untouched snow. It smells of bleach and something else I ca not place, something tangy and familiar.
Walking further into the mist I find myself feeling a bit light headed, as if I was nauseas, though I feel completely fine. I feel completely happy, completely relaxed, completely normal. The mist swirls and flows around me, a whirlpool. Somewhere further into this fog of snow, I begin to see the outline of something. It sticks up out of the floor with the power and edge of a lion, it does nothing yet you are totally in awe of it. Walking towards it, my head feels lighter, my pace becomes faster and the mist dances quicker.
It is, as one thing like a giant stone plate. It sticks out the floor getting wider and wider until it has formed a bowl, a huge bowl, about two meters in diameter. Completely made of stone, pumice I think. It feels rough under my fingers, and files some of my skin off as I run my fingers along it. Around the edges it is chipped quite a few times, some look like they had been cut out by a dagger or a knife, and some look like teeth marks. This probably should scare me, something having teeth strong enough to mark stone, but it clicked in my mind that mist had probably made me a bit inebriated, so the thought means nothing to me. I am still utterly content in this cave, this beautiful cave. My eyes run further along and around the bowl.
They focus around the centre, where I notice a set of drawings, long, forgotten and aged. How strange, the feeling I am the first here in centuries. Finding myself examining the drawings more closely, they show a story. The first one shows a girl, a girl with long brunette hair. Her clothes are shabby and cut but faintly show the traces of an emerald green dress with pale skin underneath. She wears ripped up shoes that are barely on anymore. Next to her is a small dog with long floppy ears and short beige fur. A little sausage dog. The dog had a little black spot on its side, just like mine. That brought up something in my brain, I had completely forgotten about my dog. I hope desperately he has got home, or was safe, or just something positive. Dodging the thought he might not be in my eye, I turn my eyes to the second drawing.
There is lots of rain, streaming down in torrents, and the girl in the green dress and torn up shoes was running in it. She holds a beige bag over her head, and her brown hair has gone coal black from the rain. There is a sunshine yellow lightning bolt stuck behind her. On her face she wears a slightly annoyed, slightly distressed expression.
Wandering my eyes to the next one, I see a cave. The entrance is dark and black, and the girl looks relieved. Her hair is sticking up, and one of the straps of her dress is torn and dangles down. My eyes glimpse down towards my dress strap, the ripped one. The ripped green strap of my dress.
Slightly exasperated and hoping it is nothing, I move my eyes to the fourth drawing. The background is completely black except for a white, messily drawn scribbles along the bottom. Faintly in them you could see a patch of green, a trace of brown, and a flash of red.
The fifth drawing shows just the girl in the green dress standing in front of a bowl, the exact same shape of the one I am looking into now. The view was taken from the back of the girl, all you see is her hair; you do not witness her face. My mind is jumping everywhere at this point, this girl is wearing what I am and has the same story as I have. Before I turn to the sixth and last drawing I turn around. Just to make sure. There is no-one, just the white mist. The smell of moss still flares around inside my nostrils, and I turn my eyes slowly and cautiously to the sixth, and last drawing.
You can see the top of the girls’ head, but the main focus of the drawing is the centre of the stone bowl. I blink slowly, then move my head of to the centre of the stone bowl.
My mind goes frantic and I have no idea what to do. In the centre of a bowl is, that. Clean, fresh shiny silver. And all of a sudden I know what the tangy familiar but unknown smell and the flash of red were.
I run. There was nothing else to do. Every sense of direction is lost to me. Up, down, left, right, gone. Run. Faster. Faster. Keep going. Run. Don‘t stop now. It felt like planes had been stuck to my feet. They were non-stop moving. Running. Faster. Keep going. Keep running. Forever.
Stop.
------------------------------------------
and number two!
I had never really thought about how I would die, or where and when. Until now there had been no reason for me to consider the concept of the one inevitable thing in life, death. We spend the whole of our lives wishing for more, yet when we face losing what we do have, we fight so hard to keep it.
Terrified as I am, I can not bring myself to regret everything. Being here, now I can not repent. I look up slowly towards my death and embrace its cold heartless touch.
* * *
My mothers front door is locked. This means one of two things; she is in her photography studio taking refuge in the creativity and solitude, or there is something wrong. My mother rarely locks her door, she sees little point in trying to keep people out. As a child I had never questioned this, it was just normality. I fumble in my pocket for my key and groan as I hear them jangle on the bitter slabs beneath me. In the dense blackness I can not see where they have fallen; I crouch down to pick them up. All I need is a small glimmer of light but there is none. No doors are open, no lights in windows open, nobody with a torch - it is far too early. Out of the corner of my straining eyes I see a shadow pass over the house, then another, then another. Turning around to see what is producing them; I see nothing. Just continuous darkness. What was there is either gone, or was never there in the first place. Is my mind playing tricks on me? The feeling I am being watched will not leave my side, and the heavy night seems to tighten around my frozen body. Slowly I go back to hunting for my keys. Suddenly the door in front me looks so much taller and more daunting. Staggering backwards to try and get away from my home, I hear the jangling of my keys beneath my lumbering feet. Like a flash, I stoop down to grab them then straight back up to standing. It feels silly, but everything feels scarier at night. I repeatedly tell myself this as with shivering hands I attempt to unlock the door. It swings open, and I am hit in the face with the deafening silence of the hallway. Suddenly I realise how long it has been since I have visited this house, the walls have been repainted to an icy blue, the carpet is gone, replaced with a smooth polished linoleum. It no longer feels like my home. The hallway light is not on, but fading light emanates from the kitchen. It looks gloomy, and feels empty. Stepping inside I feel no homely warmth, the air is heavy with tension. The walls are still covered with photos of me as a child, growing up, her and my father, but still numerous amounts of her photography grace the walls. I find myself smiling at a photo of myself about five years old, standing proud in my bright red school uniform on my first day. Leaving the photo, I walk briskly forwards and feel a wave of nausea as a shiver sprints down my spine.
‘Mum?’ no reply. The atmosphere shifts slightly, even colder now. I pace hastily forwards toward the back of the house, toward the kitchen. I stop as I feel my phone vibrating in my pocket. I open the text from my mother; ‘Hurry.’ Still no explanation. Still no reasoning as to why she has called my down here at no notice. Shoving the phone back in my pocket, I turn the corner and see my mother lying dead on the kitchen floor.
I freeze. I open my mouth but do not scream. I feel my bag drop out of my hands then I hear the thud as it hits the floor. The world around me goes thick with the sound of my own blood pounding in my throat. I take two staggering steps toward her. Her throat is savaged, her tongue lulls and the kitchen air holds the unmistakable stench of death. There is a silver gleam of wire wrapped around her blood spattered neck.
An empty kitchen-table chair stands next to her, as if she may have been sitting on it before she died. A low moan escapes from my dry throat, and I crash down next to my mothers body. Brushing a tangle of her greying hair away from my face, her eyes are revealed. They are wide and swollen, unseeing. I brush my hand on her pale cheek, her skin is still warm.
I stand back up. A wave of dizziness buckles my shaky legs. The police. I have to call the police. I stagger around her body to the kitchen counter, where her breakfast still sits; a half full coffee cup and the leftover crumbs of her toast. I reach past this toward the slender white phone, my hands shaking violently. I punch in the three best known numbers and hold the phone to my ear.
Metal hammers brutally into the back of my head. The phone slides out my hand and crashes onto the stone floor, and I drop down with it. My teeth bite into my tongue and I taste the tang of blood. I shut my heavy eyelids and crumple into the darkness.
I feel a gun press coolly against the back of my head. The perfect circle of its barrel pushes on my scalp. I rope is looped around my neck and I feel the burn as it is tightens. Jerking away from it, I feel the gun crack against my temple, and a strong male voice speaks from above me.
‘Be still.’ immediately I tense my body and try to sit up. I feel a powerful arm push me back down.
‘Or you’re dead.’ They pick up my bag from the edge of the kitchen, a robbery. I stop myself saying anything just in time, and hear the rustle of them rummaging around in my bag; my computer, my camera, my laptop. I hear the sound of my laptop turning on, louder than my own ragged breathing. Then a few long seconds of silence, fingers tapping on a keyboard. I want to ask what they want, what they are doing here, with me, why they killed my mother, but I can not. Fear of what the consequences of this action stop me.
The gun pushes me further forward so I am almost touching my mothers dead jaw. I can smell her blood fiercely burning my nostrils. I want to turn round and see my captivators faces, but this is an impossibility. The noose around my neck tightens around my neck, pulling savagely into my throat, and I feel my pulse pushing against it.
Behind me I hear them whispering, and I strain my ears to try and hear. As if I am being punished for ear wigging, the rope tightens again, and I writhe around trying to grasp some oxygen. There is none.
‘You took breathing for granted, didn’t you now sunshine?’ This mans voice is new, different to the previous ones. It crosses my mind when they could have switched places without my noticing. He loosens the rope just enough for me to breathe, and I gasp it in. Flooding myself in oxygen, I feel my lungs thank the cold air. Disgust at my weakness radiates from the man above me. His shadow folds over me, and I cower underneath his power. It is a cold shadow, and I let the darkness steal me in.
* * *
I wake to the sound of my phone screaming at me. Something is wrong, no-one who knows me would ever call me this early. I open my eyes to stare up to the cobweb ridden ceiling. Stained with festering rings of mould it was not a pleasant site and only made me wish I’d spent extra on the hotel. There was no questioning what could have happened in this room; murder, crime, anything. I did not want to think about it. Turning away from the ceiling I grab around until my hand finds the phone.
‘Hello?’
His mother answered; ‘Richard, I need you to come home now. No questions. Just do it.’ She spoke in a hushed whisper, her voice fast and unnerved.
I fumbled for the bedside lamp. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I just need you here now, please.’ composed but persistent.
Why could she not tell me? Surely she did not expect me to travel all that way with no reason? ‘Mum, please, just tell me what’s going on and I’l come.’
‘I said, not over the phone Richard. Please.’ She fell silent, this was the end of it. An uncomfortable tension rose between us for around ten long seconds, until she broke it. ‘Please Richard.’
The naked neediness; a tone I have never heard from my mother, made her sound a stranger to me. I have nothing left to say. ‘Okay Mum, I’m coming.’
‘Thank you. I love you.’
‘I love you too.’ She had already hung up.
* * *
Consciousness floods back into me; I keep my eyes shut. Silence. I hear no speech, though the atmosphere is still heavy with tension and death. The rope is still around my raw neck, but loose now. Realising I am shivering violently, I open my left eye a slit. The room is empty. For a few seconds I lie there with both my eyes open now taking in everything that has happened.
Stumbling up I take in this changed room. The countertops are spattered with mine and my mothers blood. The floor is carpeted with the shards of glass of all my mothers favourite photos. I stare at the pictures behind the spider webs of smashed glass, all my mothers photography, ruined. Her life. Gone. Already the absence of her seems to have settled into the house, into the air, into my bones. One of the shiny cupboard doors is hanging on its hinges, another has fallen off completely, revealing a gaping cave of glossy bowls and plates. The cutlery draw is open and disorganized and the knife stand is missing several. Lurching forwards I fall against the wall, then stagger through the archway back into the hall.
There is a large cavernous hole punched in the cool blue walls, and many stab wounds gouged into them. Outside the sun is rising slightly, and patches of the natural light bathe the hall in ugly beams of daylight. Stepping over the torn trampled photographs, and the remains of their frames I reach the front door. One of its glass panes is smashed, another now a shattered maze of cracks. I pull it slowly open, it squeals like a famished cat. Outside it is dawn, casting the street in a mist of grey. Each house looks substantially bigger than I remembered; much more intimidating. I feel so insignificant and minute.
Standing still for many elongated seconds; I have no idea where to go. Where can you go when your mother has just been murdered and you can not tell anyone? Nowhere. This is not normal. A luxurious black business car pulls up at the end of the driveway. Somewhere in the distance, a cat screeches, and I feel time slow down. Watching the car door open I keep still. A man in an expensive suit and thinning grey hair climbs out. His shoes are polished to perfection, and even his tie looks ironed. All I can do is watch as he walks briskly towards me. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Feeling myself being grabbed from behind, I do not fight. There is no point, I know nothing of what is happening here today, with these people I may find answers. Answers to why my mother was murdered, answers to why I have been targeted, answers. My body gives in as they march me down the path to the car. The door is opened by the man with the ironed tie, and I step fearlessly inside.