The Boy

He lent his full body against it, pushed. It was heavier than usual, the weight behind it greater, the noise behind it, some bustling commotion he knew nothing of and yet it moved with time, with effort, the door moved, opened, and there it was, the terrible party.

 

The room of big things and colours came as he appeared through the door. There were the colossal chairs that he had hidden behind during playtime, from mummy and daddy, who counted then came, curious, eager to discover, importunate, searched him out, found him, loved him, held him up, showed themselves, the world; who hid from him now in the crowd of noise; the boy, forgotten, invisible in the furniture, amid the throng of unfamiliar moving monsters, the crowd of noise. He stroked the chair’s soft flanks, the great immovable objects, two to three heads higher than the boy, who shrank still further beneath them. He saw the familiar dining table, the centre piece of the room, was pushed into the corner, feet gathered around it, shifting unpredictably, outside of any rhythm he could feel comfortable with, monstrously; sandals and the red summer legs of the grown-ups, huge lumps of skin, smell and other smells; and there were many of them, the unfamiliar legs, all bulky, the terror of loud unfamiliar voices, and his mother and father lost in it all, inaccessible, just other voices in the melee.

 

The chairs were bigger and more foreboding, with the giant unfamiliar giants sat in them drinking glasses and bellowing, spitting, guffawing, creased up in their grotesque faces, red and bursting. He kept his eyes from theirs.

 

The furniture, the group of people, the room itself, wasn’t as he knew it, the people he knew were unknown, the others unknowable, were different, were all giant immovable objects outside of his control. He knew this wasn’t his party.

 

No one he knew was present. His friend Nadia was nowhere to be seen, while her big pink uncontrollable mother was giggling with his own big pink mother, who looked different in this context, was grotesque. He felt sick and strange and lost, somehow abandoned, as if she wasn’t his anymore, with her unfamiliarity, her strange smell, her new bigness and her voice somehow ten times its own size. The boy was much smaller than he was, felt tinier than he ever had been and didn’t have a voice. He couldn’t be sure whether he existed in this mass. Only his heart made him certain, beating strong in the fear, the boy weak in the room of too much, wanting to leave the room but was deep in the crowd of giants, who were fencing him in with their unpredictable movements, menacing the boy: pink, red, smelling bad, spluttering, guffawing, stamping their feet, fat and happy.

 

He could hear his father bellowing in the kitchen with his new voice, words that his father didn’t use, people who he didn’t know, terrifying and free from the boy, who thought he heard his own name mentioned in passing but knew that it was of no importance today.

 

The incoherent noise continued, continued to become more incoherent and confusing. No one noticed the boy, small as he was, quiet as a boy, invisible in the grown up fun. The noise continued to grow, the laughter, the unpredictability of the bodies, many of which started to move even more unpredictably in a terrible rhythm of blurry and smudging redness that made even less sense than anything as the music, which was deafening and senseless, was introduced; music that bellowed loudly over the bellowing grown-ups who bellowed still louder, swallowed drinks still faster, as if they were forced to keep up with the incessant beat of a sound just as horrible as themselves, laughed almost continually in a terrible music of their own, moved even more unpredictably about, staggering, shouting; one man was sick, looked at the boy and then left, leaving another terrible face behind it, redder, pinker, more full for the boy to see.

 

People sat on the huge chairs, on the table, looming over; huge people, red and pink all over, smelling, smiling, looking from the chairs, goggling and giggling, grinning, unable to see or breathe or move coherently. Some noticed the boy and he averted his gaze, and soon they had forgotten him, their minds no longer working in that way; especially when the food was introduced, when his mother and her friend Angela came through singing with the food, dropping much of it, treading it in.

 

There was a brief rush for the table and food was consumed, drinks spilling on the invisible boy; crunch, crunch, as they greedily hustled forwards, treading in crisps. Then it was back to the bawdiness and gyrating. The confusion and unfamiliarity grew. The people grew, and for the boy there was no amusement, only disorder. The eyes started to come and then drift away, and it was like that. Attention wasn’t on him so much as seeing something insignificant pass, passing through him, and then the memory was gone. The pinkness of people and all their eyes moved around in an insatiable search for more. The boy was unseen.

 

The boy, at knee-height, wandered low amongst them, intrepid, terrified, stooping as they patted his head, ignored him, spilt things on him: drinks, ash, their hands wildly gesticulating as pairs or threesomes related different stories to each other at the same time, all nodding, no one listening or hearing above their own din; the boy wincing and ducking with their yelps, smothered in the clamour and horrible mess of grown up conviviality.

 

No other children were present. Nadia, who visited often, was nowhere to be seen. Nadia’s mother, who the boy knew well by sight, continued to laugh and enjoy moving about. Her father was nowhere to be seen. The boy’s own father was now moving in a ridiculous fashion, haphazardly, close to someone else’s mother. The boy couldn’t see who it was exactly, in the blur of bodies, but it could have been Kevin Jones’ mother, who the boy had seen arrive like a giant pink cake some hours before. Kevin Jones had not been invited. The small boy was curious as to where Kevin and Nadia were and what they might be doing. He continued to thread unnoticed through the grown up bodies that were cramped closer and closer together.

 

His father’s subjective rhythm at first amused and then terrified the boy. It wasn’t his dad. It was a big man shifting about wrongly, breathing heavily, and the small boy, when he was close, tugged at his father’s leg, going unnoticed.

 

Familiar and unfamiliar voices prattled on, huge pink and red bodies swayed and bounced, threatening to bump into or fall on the boy, who had started to use their legs as steadying posts as he meandered his way more determinedly to the far side of the room. No one had formally recognised the boy.

 

Amid the horror of laughter and clinking glasses there was no fun to be made. The smell became more and more unfamiliar, unpleasant and nauseating. The noise continued to grow in one terrible sound, and the small boy, with his panic amid the pink, red, fat smell and tiring din, could no longer think his own thoughts.

 

Soon the boy, in his oblivion, in his effortless stealth, had made it over to the fireplace, the ominous if unlit furnace, a sooty black cave, breathless, whose mantelpiece loomed, where ornamental figures glared at him, threatened to come to life; nothing would have surprised the boy, nothing was to be trusted anymore. A world of unstoppable noise had begun. His mother and father had been taken, lost to something insurmountably gross. The world had turned over and another scary world of big, pink, over-abundant, loud and insufferable giants had been discovered, an unliveable menace always upon him; the wet, hot stench of transformed people clamouring.

 

Reaching on his toes, he failed. Standing on a crate of beer, he reached and collected the keys unnoticed from amongst the figures on the fireplace, bravely confronting their steady threat, his parents detained gregariously with friends, captive, intoxicated, pink, huge, gross different people, not his parents.

 

Meandering his way back through the pink and red forest of shuffling legs, stentorian guffaws, bellowing giants, a long and hellish journey made more bearable by the success of his endeavour, he managed the door, slipping free into the empty hallway and, for the first time alone, left the premises.

 

Reviews

[TL Boehm]

I sometimes think that "overwriting" is in the eye of the reader especially when the writer is prone to poetry. I didn't really see this as overwritten - although the speed and tone made me slow down to understand the piece. I did find it surreal - which was appealing

[Sethnicity]

Well I don't just wanna add fuel to the fire... but maybe throw a bit of light on it... I think you and I both suffer from this too... although I typically write poems and prose and I love meter and rhyme! BUT It's something in the pace of scene building.. I can't quite always wrap my hands around it but when I do the writing seems effortlessly to flow from the floor to the foot the hand to the sky the sounds to the smell... unfortunately it seems that in this one and as for me too it has putty parts. the kind of writing that has lots of substance but goes down like half-heated oatmeal on Friday after a week of coffee and toast. I say come back to it and trim it back then rebuild it with better more concise parts. I feel like it may be a bit verbose in needless descriptions that weigh it down and maybe that's what your "critics" are pointing out.
Cheers My friend and come back to write again. Either way you take it, Everyone needs Haters, S**t! without how could atoms split? Drop a bomb on 'em next time!

[Yheela]

Maybe you were in bit of a hurry with this one?
Some more editing and it will be better.

[3rd Chance]

Are you familiar with the saying, 'Purple Prose'? Its when a writer, simply put, overwrites - which is what you're doing now. Undoubtedly, you have a fantastic, intriguing - and what's the word for it - 'invoking' style of writing that catches terror, fear, and all those little dark emotions, in a sharp light that seizes the reader's heart and clutches on their nerves. In this case, excessive wordplay and heaps of purple prose daunt my ability to read it smoothly. It still captures the vivid, haunting scenario the titular 'Boy' finds himself in, but fails to impress me as some of your earlier work did, and ends on a far too enigmatic note, breaching the boundaries of 'mysterious' into, 'hey, wh-?'

[Beau-dee-loot]

I wanted to depict the entropic terror of a diminishing self realised, the chaos of a world where one is not central, a world incredibly more vast than oneself unveiled grotesquely, using the hyperbole, repetition, waxing prolix (perhaps) to convey the overbearing impact this has, from which the child, in an early innocence/ignorance, seeks to escape into what even the least keen reader must recognise as the fuller crisis beyond the cramped invisibility between four walls. Does the critic really need as much guidance as the small boy? ;)

Your detailed critique is appreciated and received graciously, definitely giving pause for thought. Thank you.

[Michael of Gilead]

I think you need to edit this down some, but it is very intriguing

[Beau-dee-loot]

Thank you.

[Manda]

i really enjoyed this. u really hook the reader in the beginning. very well done

[Beau-dee-loot]

Cheers, glad you liked it. I think it captures the perspective well, whilst I heed the exhortations of my critics considering the super-abundance of clauses, though the hemmed in sense of overload to me seems key to the piece

[John Alexander McFadyen]

I think the grossness of the description is somewhat overdone. The mother and friend bringing in the food for example and spilling it and treading it in! Mothers tend to be more careful even when drunk. There is a lot of tortology and repetativeness. This detracts from a well penned vision but a weak ending did not excite.

[Beau-dee-loot]

I commend your mother. Mine dropped everything apart from her drink.

[John Alexander McFadyen]

Ok I was naive. But even drunken folk try to keep up appearances.

[L0v3craft]

My only complaint is that most of your sentences seem redundant and too 'chaotic'--- I mean I get that the setting is pretty boisterous, clamouring and disorganized, you did EXCELLENT conveying the sense of the chaotic whirlwind stress the boy is suddenly stuck in, but I think you should go over this and perhaps add in dialogue to help the reader stay grounded because he/she might get overwhelmed with all the descriptions!

Anyway this was really interesting and I totally agree with Hannah, you should continue this piece because I'm just not satisfied with that ending!! I'm left with soooo many questions and seem lost on what's happening-- I was thinking maybe the boy is a ghost or at least feels like one because he's unnoticed and completely 'alone'. I want-- no, I NEED-- to know what happens next!!!

[Beau-dee-loot]

Do you think? I thought the remoteness of the boy's experience was better catured without recourse to dialogue. I felt dialogue would connect him to the surrounding environment, counter to the narrative theme, bringing the boy into the party and diluting the object-subject dynamic I was attempting to create.

You're right, the boy suddenly feels like a new ghost. You already know what happens next. His short freedom is overwhelmed by a new even greater sense of impotence and isolation on the outside in the next installment in a lifetime fight against helplessness/hoplessness. He goes on to win and lose this fight many times over until he dies around eighty with mixed horror and relief

[axel]

it is a nice story and fun to read.

[Emily Dickinson Jr.]

its a good start and leaves you wanting more! however I dont think you should leave it alone! You should continue it and the next time bring in more dialogue and further character develoments