The Boy Who Never Drowned PREFACE

England, 1912. Felix belongs to a family who have lived a dark life before him. A father who loves of a ghost he now keeps alive in a now broken woman, decides the Titanic will provide an escape.

Preface

I was twelve. I didn't know quite what to think of her. She was laced over the bed, her eyes fixated on the window and her undiscovered world she saw behind it. The glass was clouded with December cold but she saw a clear view of a freedom that she could not grasp. Her luminous skin glowed in the premature light, a skin littered with purple and blue patterns that throbbed with pain. The quiet storm in her grey eyes was in a forever turmoil, for she lived in the eye of a whirlpool, unable to escape. I did not know of her struggle then, she was just a woman that I was told was my mother. Her midnight screams, the scratches that appeared of the servants faces; a secret prisoner that I was supposed to call mother. She was deathly still, silent. I held my breath, absorbed in her voiceless screams. My mother, surrounded by maids who looked as lost as she did. I felt a strong hand on my shoulder, and the stern, shaking voice of my father telling me to go on a walk.

The vast window of the laundromat on the other side of the street that stretched to the horizon, displayed an image I would remember for some time. A girl in long white socks and an oversized jumper was kneeling down collecting her laundry, her spiralling waves of orange hair toppling over half of her face and her shoulders. She had red lips and big dark eyes, looking out from a face of freckled cheeks. In that moment I thought I was trapped in the pages of a love story that had no time. It appeared that she was innocently gazing upon her basket of clothes for my whole life up until the age I was then. I watched her still elegance and wondered if all women in London could be this beautiful at eight o'clock in the morning while washing their clothes.

Reviews

[MAC]

very soft with streaming visuals throughout! you have very strong writing skills....

[Bella]

Thank you so much, that means a lot:)

[Hakim]

It took me a while to get what was going on because there was so much description but i got there in the end. Very detailed and vivid. The picture in my mind was quiet clear, but was the mother dying in agony or giving birth?

[Bella]

Thank you! Yeah I probably over do it on the description but I love it haha. Well it's purposely unclear, but my idea was that she's basically mentally ill. But because this is through a 12 year old boy's eyes it doesn't explicitly reveal much.

[Hakim]

I see, fair point, clever approach. keep the reader in the dark so they'll want to read on and find out :p

[D.S. Dirck]

" I watched her still elegance and wondered if all women in London could be this beautiful at eight o'clock in the morning while washing their clothes."

This is a masterful way to end a story.

[Bella]

Thank you so much! I think I'll put the other chapters on now.