Reading Diary

 

Hey guys!

So for uni, I had to write 300-500 words every week on something I had read to make a reading diary. I made them into the form of mini essays with loads of analysis and personal insight. Heres my first five entries.

• Week 1 - Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (novel)
• Week 2 - Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett (play)
• Week 3 - Trainspotting - Irvine Weslh (novel) and a brief comparison of the film adaptation
• Week 4 - A Dream within a Dream - Edgar Allan Poe (poem)
• Week 5 - Girl, Interrupted - Susanna Kaysen (novel)

Week 1: Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (novel)

 “…Lolita arrived, in her Sunday frock, stamping, panting, and then she was in my arms, her innocent mouth melting under the ferocious pressure of dark male jaws, my palpitating darling! The next instant I heard her – alive, unraped – clatter downstairs.”

In this extract of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Humbert and his ‘Lolita’ kiss for the first time. Nabokov consistently uses elegant, stylist and often cryptic language to trick the reader into forgetting the alarming fact that the person Humbert is hopelessly in love with and making an effort to seduce is in fact a twelve-year-old girl. Nabokov manipulates Humbert’s narrative in such a way as to portray him as a romantic, articulate and thoughtful character. However these deceptive traits to Humbert’s personality – of being loving, intelligent, gentlemanly and wholesome – only make his paedophilia all the more sinister, unsettling and disturbing to read as Humbert seems able to hide his desires at will but speaks to the reader about them so openly and with such ease. By using the word “innocent” when describing Dolores, Nabokov is implying that Humbert is fully aware of how naïve and trusting Dolores is but continues to sexually groom her, regardless of him being conscious of the fact that his actions are tremendously immoral and illegal. Nabokov also suggests that Humbert is indeed taking away Dolores innocence by touching her inappropriately and practically forcing her to become a woman when she is still merely a child.

Nabokov emphasises this point by describing Dolores mouth as ‘melting’ under the pressure of Humbert’s jaws which offers a comparison between Humbert’s fully grown adult male form against Dolores petite, skinny and adolescent female body. Nabokov evokes this disturbing image which draws upon the reader’s own sensory perceptions by evoking the feeling of the physical pain Dolores must have felt under such pressure. The lexical choice of the word “dark” is also appropriate in supporting the evidence of Humbert’s immorality as the word has connotations of sin, suspicion, secret and evil. By abruptly and bizarrely adding in ‘alive, unraped’ when referring to Dolores’s state at the end of the extract, Nabokov is suggesting that Humbert is trying to manipulate the reader into believing that he technically did not rape Dolores and that simply kissing her in an overly sexual way is perfectly acceptable. Throughout the novel, Nabokov, through Humbert’s narrative, implies that Dolores is the party making sexual advances towards Humbert which I believe is Humbert’s desperate attempt to conceal, from the reader and from himself, that he is in fact a paedophile and a rapist who has been grooming Dolores over a period of time.

Nabokov discloses more of Humbert’s disturbing character as Humbert begins to frequently exaggerate and sexualise every movement, word and expression made by children around him, with particular attention placed on Dolores. This point is stressed by Humbert’s insistence on referring to particular children, and to Dolores, as ‘nymphets’. By using the term nymphet – meaning a sexually mature and promiscuous child - Nabokov furthermore reveals Humbert as a very manipulative and intelligent character who is not to be trusted as he develops overstated personas for these children to justify his unsettling thoughts and desires. By doing this, Nabokov makes a strong attempt to convince the reader that it is in fact the children around Humbert that tempt him into giving in to his specific, animalistic and sick sexual desires by using flowery language and linguistic trickery to make the act of rape sound like something beautiful and excusable. This insight into the psychology of a paedophile, although disturbing, is also very intriguing as it conveys how Humbert’s mind works as he intelligently invents bizarre and calculated reasons to justify his deviant behaviour.

Week 2: Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett (play)

In his tragicomedy, absurdist play Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett introduces the two main characters Vladimir and Estragon as two old companions who have spent many years in each other’s company. Although the two characters appear to have a fondness for one another, I believe that their friendship only exists to ‘pass the time’ as there is ‘nothing to be done’. Vladimir (profound, troubled, intelligent and philosophical) appears to feel protective over Estragon (vulnerable, forgetful, naive and ignorant) as Beckett depicts Vladimir demanding to know who has beaten Estragon during the night while they were apart. Beckett shows the strong differences between the comrades as Vladimir is constantly trying to find answers to the meaning of life while Estragon is blissfully unaware and ignorant to such profound thoughts and ideas. Beckett also illuminates their contrasting personality traits as an explanation of why they bond so well. I believe Vladimir and Estragon’s relationship could be considered as a representation of the two halves of a brain, with Vladimir symbolising the left side of the brain (the side responsible for logical thinking, reasoning and rationality) and Estragon representing the right side of the brain (the side responsible for creativity, imaginative thought and romantic notions). This theory supported subtly by Beckett suggests that the two characters can only be truly functional when working together, co-existing and depending on each other for emotional, mental and physical support.

Beckett also explores existential ideology widely throughout the play, shown through Vladimir’s increasing emotional turmoil and mental deterioration (intensified by his ‘cabin fever’ – the claustrophobic reaction to being isolated in a small space for a long time with no new stimulus) as he struggles to find the reason for living. The play, which is set in a deserted wasteland containing only a single tree, depicts Vladimir and Estragon’s agonising wait for a visitor – a man named Godot who never comes. As the reader begins to realise that Godot is not going to arrive, or if he even exists at all, Beckett hints that the expectations of Godot are so high, due to how long Vladimir and Estragon have been waiting, that even if Godot were ever to reach them, no matter what or who he was, he would only be a disappointment. I believe that this is Beckett’s metaphor for life itself because no matter what a person does or achieves during their lifetime, night will still follow the day and their life will still inevitably come to an end. The wait for Godot represents humanity’s wait for some kind of epiphany or explanation illuminating the purpose of our existence. However, throughout the play, Beckett is suggesting that such a meaning of life doesn’t exist at all and that every person lives simply to wait and pass the time until they die.

Beckett’s grim and depressing ideas of life are emphasised through Vladimir’s dialogue: “Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps.” Beckett presents this disturbing and grotesque image as he stresses the certainty of birth and death. Beckett proposes the unsettling notion of a baby being born and immediately being placed into a grave, to highlight that the infant is inevitably going to die regardless of his/her potential or future choices, posing the question: what is the point of living? In Waiting for Godot, Beckett saddens and disheartens the reader into the realisation that perhaps life and existence in fact has no meaning at all.

Week 3: Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh (novel) and a brief comparison of the film adaptation

Trainspotting, a harrowing black comedy novel by Irvine Welsh, offers an insight into the rave and heroin subculture in Edinburgh during the late 1980s-1990s, which also touches on the cultural and political issues of that time including: vast unemployment, the rise of heroin addiction and HIV and The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The novel consists of seven short stories that form loosely connected episodes with narration revolving around a group of friends/drug users; the main speakers being Mark Renton, Simon ‘Sick Boy’ Williamson, Daniel ‘Spud’ Murphy and Francis ‘Franco’ Begbie. The cult classic – written in Scots, in the regional dialect of Leith, Edinburgh – tells the often grotesque, disturbing, sexist and sectarian tales of the main characters to exemplify the squalor and gritty conditions they endure in order to fuel their drug habits. The Scots language in Trainspotting is essential as it provides a certain cultural realism and serves as a construct to build a sense of place, mentality and attitude as the characters adopt a life of drug abuse, crime, violence and sex initiated by rise of unemployment in the late 1980s. This point is exemplified by Renton’s narrative early in the novel when he is discussing ‘junk dilemmas’, cheating death and living in squalor: “The wallpaper is horrific in this shite-pit ay a room. It terrorises me. Some coffin-dodger must have put it up years ago…appropriate, because that’s what ah am, a coffin-dodger…”

One of Trainspotting’s most intriguing and complex characters is Francis ‘Franco’ Begbie. Welsh creates the character of Begbie – a terrifying, vicious sociopath who assaults and brutalises innocent people and is addicted to the rush of violence – to represent the very epitome of immorality, criminality and narcissism in society. Welsh depicts Begbie as an amoral character devout of compassion, conscience and sympathy. However, Welsh intriguingly proposes that Begbie lives by his own twisted, specific moral code: Begbie believes that it is perfectly acceptable to ferociously attach an innocent American tourist during the Edinburgh Festival and to mercilessly beat his pregnant girlfriend; but holds a firm and intense value of loyalty and dependability to his so-called friends. Another fascinating and perhaps sceptical feature of Begbie’s character that Welsh subtly offers is that Begbie repeatedly expresses throughout the novel his hatred for ‘junkies’ and how he considers them to be scum and the lowest form of life, yet he persists on mixing and socialising with a group of young, functioning heroin addicts. Although Begbie’s sexuality remains ambiguous throughout the text, his behaviour and overcompensation of being a thug and the alpha male of the group leads me to believe that Begbie’s alarming and fierce acts of sickening violence are motivated by his fear of being revealed as homosexual. This theory is supported by Danny Boyle’s film adaptation of the text in which Begbie has a liaison with a transvestite (unknown to him), yet he doesn’t viciously assault the transsexual when he discovers that she is in fact a man, which surprises the audience as we would expect Begbie to seriously assault the transvestite like he does to random, innocent strangers. Boyle’s film also depicts a moment charged with sexual tension in which Begbie forces Renton to place a cigarette in his mouth and light it for him. This idea also links in with the increase in cases of HIV around this time and illustrates a hesitation possessed by many people of coming out as gay for fear of being judged and ridiculed due to the social stigma, confusion and lack of knowledge associated with HIV and AIDS amongst homosexuals in the late 1980s.

Welsh’s brutal honesty and ability to create credible and complex characters is what makes Trainspotting so believable, genuine and successful.

Week 4: A Dream within a Dream – Edgar Allan Poe (poem)

A Dream within a Dream is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe written in the poetic structure of iambic trimetre to create a beat that progresses from lighter to heavier and forms a lyrical rhythm. On first reading, the poem appears to be merely about: the narrator kissing his partner goodbye and questioning if life is in fact fantasy after her departure. The narrator then stands on a beach whilst crying, holding grains of sand that inevitably slip from his grasp and he desperately tries to save even a single granule from ‘the pitiless wave’. However, A Dream within a Dream actually deals with the very existential concept of life being merely an illusion and the struggle of differentiating between reality and the imaginary. The narrator’s angst and philosophical despair over this notion stems from the parting of his companion, as the speaker’s memory wavers and he begins to wonder if he in fact ever had a partner at all: “You are not wrong, who deem, That my days have been a dream”.

Poe also portrays the narrator’s efforts to grip sand in his fists to symbolise his attempt to prove that the world around him is tangible and real by pursuing a feeling of permanency: “How few! yet how they creep, Through my fingers to the deep”. However, the sand continues to slide from his grasp and back into the current no matter how tight his grip is, making him question reality as he realises that nothing in life can be attained forever. Poe’s use of repetitive rhetorical questions throughout the poem supports the idea that the speaker’s mental state is unstable as he is incapable of distinguishing between what is real and what is allusion.

Poe also uses the title of the poem to show that the speaker is fantasising within a fantasy and to suggest that the speaker’s daydream/inner dream has become so lifelike and his reality/outer dream has become so dreamlike that he has difficulty distinguishing between them and becomes entangled in a profound and incomprehensible nightmare of vagueness, ambiguity and doubt.

In the development of further imagery, Poe depicts the sand as a representation of the passage of time as sand falling through the speaker’s fingers is reminiscent of sand falling in an hour glass. The ‘surf-tormented shore’ also provides another metaphor for time as the waves persist in dragging the sand back into the sea seemingly until none will remain. This ideology illustrated by Poe, mixed with the narrator’s turmoil as he appears trapped in a limbo of delusion and hesitation, provides a sense of finality and time running out. The concept of time is a significant theme throughout the poem as time co-exists with reality by means of tracking and proving events to support the idea of what is genuine and disproving what is fake. Poe subtly illustrates time as a prevailing force that contributes to the narrator’s panic and mental dissonance of reality. Poe hints that the speaker’s inner dream is proving to have consumed and ensnared him as he becomes completely detached from his perception of time and reality and descends into madness.

The poem concludes with Poe hinting through the speaker that perhaps the difference between reality and dream can never be definitively proven: “Is all that we see or seem, But a dream within a dream?”

Week 5: Girl, Interrupted - Susanna Kaysen (novel)

Girl, Interrupted is a memoir by Susanna Kaysen based on her own experience of being sectioned, diagnosed as having border personality disorder and being in a psychiatrist hospital during her late teens in the 1960s. Kaysen intelligently structures her novel to depict the plot but intersperses the format with files from her very own internal hospital record that was logged during her stay at McLean Hospital. The text engages with many themes and social issues including: social stigmas of mental illness and insanity; sexism within mental institutions and in the workplace; the argument of treating the brain or the mind; and the question of how successful hospitalisation is as means of treatment to promote recovery.

The main characters in the novel include: Susanna; Lisa (sociopath); Georgina (depressive); Polly (schizophrenic, depressive and self-harmer); Daisy (addicted to prescription drugs, apparent agoraphobic and suicidal); and Cynthia (severe depressive). One of the most stimulating and complicated characters in Girl, Interrupted is Polly Clark. Polly was admitted to McLean Hospital for pouring gasoline onto her face and upper body and then setting herself alight, leaving her with a permanently disfigured appearance. When describing Polly’s scars, Kaysen sophisticatedly uses scar tissue as a metaphor to epitomise the carefully constructed persona that some people with mental illnesses feel the need to portray in an attempt to conceal their disorder and appear as ‘normal’ to the rest of society: “Scar tissue has no character. It’s not like skin. It doesn’t show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It’s like a slipcover. It shield’s and disguises what’s beneath. That’s why we grow it, we have something to hide.” By stating that scar tissue has no character, Kaysen is finely proposing that due to social stigma, those with mental illnesses are not considered as people with feelings and personalities, but thought of and labelled with only their disorder. Additionally, Kaysen’s suggestion that scar tissue is something that the mentally ill have the ability to ‘grow’ and her short, abrupt sentence structure create a clever and sinister construct of comparing scar tissue with altered characteristics which assists in the transition of an account of mental illness into sensitive and accessible fiction.

Another intriguing trait of Polly’s character is the respect she subtly commands from the other patients in the ward. None of the other patients ever dare to ask Polly why she so brutally and irreversibly harmed herself and almost admire her courage to do something that has altered her appearance in such a painful and lasting way. However the unstable and fragile mental state of, the usually cheerful and ignorant, Polly is fully exposed when she finally realises the permanency and gravity of what she has done to herself: “At dusk the crying changed to screaming. Dusk is a dangerous time…‘My face! My face! My face!’…And then I think we all realised what fools we’d been. We might get out sometime, but she was locked up for ever in that body.” At this point, Kaysen forcefully demonstrates that Polly’s deformity is what sets her apart from all the other residents in McLean Hospital. Most of the other patients will most likely be able to recover to some extent, be released from the hospital and be able to lead content and fulfilling lives but Polly will always have extensive burns that will serve as an unavoidable and painful reminder of her period of mental illness as she will be imprisoned inside a distorted body for the rest of her life. By conveying this point, Kaysen encourages the reader to consider how Polly will ever be able to recover from her psychological disorders under such circumstances.

Kaysen’s accessible and genuine narrative of insanity provides the reader with an insightful perception of the truth about mental illness and the pursuance of recovery in a psychiatric hospital. Kaysen also subtly hints that mental illness isn’t an affliction that can be cured purely with medication but demands a devoted, lifelong, therapeutic maintenance of the stability of the mind.

 

Ethel's Lagoon: A Short Story

 

“Your turn, Christie. Truth or dare?” Emma asked, then quickly glanced at Jess as they shared an eager, mischievous grin.

“Dare,” I blurted out, immediately regretting my choice as the wind on the cold, pebble beach whipped my hair around my face.

The blue dye inside audibly slushed around as Emma shook the magic 8 ball.

“Should Christie…swim all the way over to Helena Island?” Emma asked slowly before turning the black ball over in her hands to reveal that the bobbing, floating die concealed inside answered: A definite yes.  

My icy cheeks flushed bright red and my chest tightened.

“Oh I-I can’t. I don’t have, eh, a swimsuit with me,” I stammered, searching desperately for an excuse not to do it.

“Ah don’t worry about that,” Jess said as she materialised a blue sports bag from behind her back. “We packed a bag for you! There’s a swimsuit in there that you can change into in that toilet,” she pointed to a public toilet across the street from the entrance to the beach. “And we put a towel in there too. The bag is waterproof so your clothes won’t get wet while you’re swimming over. Now remember, you have to bring back something scary as proof that you were on the island.”

Jess and Emma flashed dark, cruel smiles in my direction as Jess threw the bag at me. I often wondered why I was friends with these girls.

“You’re not scared of Ethel, are you?” Emma smirked.

*

The Isle of Helena is said to be one of the most haunted locations on the planet. Situated on the east coast of Northern Ireland, the small isle is apparently home to the infamous phantom of Ethel Victoria, also referred to as “The White Lady”. The island was populated by around 100 people in the 18^th century until a pandemic of the Black Death broke out in Northern Ireland. By order of the Mayor of Belfast, Ian O’Flaherty, the sick from Northern Ireland were shipped over, abandoned and left to die on Helena in an attempt to eradicate the mainland of the disease. One of Helena’s natives, Ethel, had a young daughter, said to be around two years old, who died from pneumonic plague only a week after the first group of ill people were brought to the island. Folk lore states that Ethel was so heartbroken that she drowned herself in the lagoon near her home and continues to haunt and roam the island searching for her daughter. More recently, the island is said to be polluted with radioactive waste, which is the council’s explanation for the island being condemned, but many believe that The White Lady is in fact the real reason for Helena’s mysterious closure.

*

I stood on the edge of the beach in the white swimsuit and yearned for Emma and Jess to tell me not to jump in but they just watched with their arms folded and with spiteful smiles. The bitterly cold sea air was already seeping to my bones. I dipped my toes in the water to test the temperature and icy pangs shot up my legs.

“It’s freezing!”

“The sooner you’re in, the sooner you’re out,” Jess sneered.

Wanting to get it over with as soon as possible, I ran into the sea and as soon as it was deep enough, I dived under.

As the chilly water swallowed me whole, every fibre of my body felt instantly stiff and frozen. The arctic water pricked and nipped my body like pins and needles. My hands were already blue and wrinkled like prunes and a cloud of steam escaped my mouth with every exhale. I threw my arms forward and kicked my legs hard towards the lump of land isolated by deep blue water. The sea thrashed me around effortlessly and flooded my mouth and eyes with stinging salt as I battled against the current. My muscles soon began to fatigue as I struggled against the booming waves. Soon panic began to infest my thoughts as I wondered if I would ever make it to land.

After what seemed like hours, I finally reached Helena.

*

Murky sunlight split through the thick canopy and illuminated the lagoon. The pool was surrounded by a wild jungle of plants and waist high grass. The lagoon felt like a den, almost completely sheathed in plant life that held the creek securely inside like a shrubby giant pair of clasped hands.

I waded through the marshy land to have a closer look at the tranquil lagoon.

In the centre of the emerald water, small bubbles arose, then a mass of white hair immerged from the water. Slowly, a woman slid up from underneath the lagoon and began to wash her long, snowy hair. My pulse thudded hard through my veins as I thought about running back into the sea.

The skinny woman stopped and spun round on her axis to face me. Her features fell and she soared up into the air and out from the water with terrifying speed, casting waves with her, and flew towards me with an outstretched hand and came to a grinding standstill a centimetre away from my face.

“Bella?” She cried.

“No! No, I’m not Bella. My name’s Christie, I’m so sorry,” I blubbered.

I turned to run but Ethel smashed through my body and came out on the other side. I immediately felt like I’d been hit by a car and my insides were drowning in dust and debris. I coughed ferociously and brushed the thick powdery dust off my skin. Ethel was facing me again.

“I’m not Bella! I am not your daughter,” I said through my spluttering coughs.

Ethel had porcelain, china skin that was cracking around the edges of her face like old paint and her eyelids were bruised purple. Her milky hair flowed down to her knees, her cheekbones protruded, her lips were pale pink and she wore a ghostly, long gown. Her eyes were too far apart and her glassy eyeballs were completely white as if they were rolled back inside her head.

“Help me find my daughter! I’ve lost her!” Ethel whined as her blind eyes flickered around.

“Your- your daughter died, Ethel… She died a long time ago,” I said gently, petrified I would make her angry.

Ethel was silent for a moment and then let out a huge, banshee wail that shook the trees around us. I threw my hands to my ears to cover the deafening sound as Ethel continued to cry with impossible volume. Thunder roared and lightning struck several trees around us, torrential rain hurtled down like bullets and gale force wind lashed and circled around the epicentre of the island – Ethel. The tempest and Ethel bawled in unison as the island itself came alive and I realised that Ethel’s enormous power as she was brewing this storm.

After a few minutes, the weather eased and Ethel calmed.

“I know. I’ve always known she was dead. I just couldn’t accept it. I tried to convince myself it wasn’t true,” Ethel whimpered as she wiped her chalky cheeks.

“You have to move on, Ethel,” I said through steadying breaths. “You can’t bring her back.”

Ethel’s hollow eyes gazed at me. She nodded as she bit her quivering lip.

“I just needed someone to tell me. So I knew for certain that it was true… Now I can pass,” Ethel thought aloud.

She gave me a sweet, childlike smile and gradually from the top of her head down to her toes, Ethel’s presence crumbled into ashes that blew in the mild wind past my body and into the ocean.

*

I clambered out of the sea and flopped onto the stony beach, letting my chest rise and sink as I could finally breath properly again.

“So? Where’s the scary object we told you to get from the haunted island?” I heard Jess chuckle from behind me.

My legs trembled like jelly as I struggled to my feet to see Emma and Jess holding their hands out impatiently. Before I could say anything, a small skull appeared in each of their hands, with mushy flesh and sticky blood dripping from them. They both squealed, threw the skulls to the ground and wiped their soiled hands vigorously on their clothes. The skulls lay on the seashells and then evaporated into the salty sea air.

“What the hell was that?!” They shouted at me with curled up, repulsed expressions.

I couldn’t help but laugh. A little parting gift from Ethel.

Psychosurgery: Short Story

I.

The eerie, faint sound of a girl screaming pulled me out of my terrorised sleep. My tiny bedroom was in darkness with only the soft moon providing light and diffusing dust across the room. I threw back my blankets and sprang from bed over to the window. I noticed through my sleepy constricted eyes that my window was wide open and allowing the frosty, crisp night air to flood in. I was sure I had closed it before I went to sleep.

My bedroom was at the back of the house and my window overlooked some small houses and a path risen on a grassy hill behind them. The path was used frequently as a shortcut for the locals to get from the town centre back to their houses.

The girl’s distant shrieks continued to echo against the clouds. I almost preferred the horrifying blare of the air raid sirens to these awful cries. I heard her gasp hard then abruptly the unnerving wails stopped. The night fell silent and I listened intently but all I could hear was my own rapid pulse throbbing in my ears.

As I waited silently, I vaguely saw a flicker of movement from between the dark trees behind the path.

A ghostly hand immerged from between the branches, followed by a beastly seven foot man who clambered out from the trees. He wore a long beige trench coat. He had scruffy black hair and a ghastly scar etched from his left eyelid down to the corner of his mouth.

I was transfixed in a disturbed state of shock and terror as I watched the enormous figure pull something out from the small murky woodland. He yanked out a body from the bushes and began to pull the person by the ankles. It was the screaming girl.

The girl stirred and awakened from unconsciousness. She began to struggle and flail as she was dragged along the ground. She was wearing a pale pink nightdress, her hands were tied behind her back, tape covered her mouth, twigs and leaves matted her hair and she was covered in blood. She tried furiously to wriggle free but the towering figure pulled her along with ease. After a moment, the two figures who had now left the moons spotlight and became darkened silhouettes, escaped my sight where my view of the path was cut off.

“What are you doing? Why are you waking me at this time? Go back to bed,” my mother groaned as I shook her awake.

I explained what I saw and urged her to take me to the police.

“Dorothy, you know you have nightmares. You probably imagined it,” my mother said in a sleepy daze.

“Mum, I have to go to the police. He has kidnapped that poor girl!” I protested.

It was useless. She had already fallen back into a deep sleep.

I went back to my room and peered out the window again. There was no trace of the man or the girl.

In the morning when my mother was chaotically rushing to get my siblings ready for school and organising her ration book, I slipped out and instead of going to school, I headed for the police station.

As I walked along Churchill Street in my neatly pressed school uniform, my heart jumped into my mouth. Right across the road was the monstrous man I saw the night before. He just stood there, staring at me. I was frozen on the spot. I began to shake as his gaze intensified and suddenly I bolted. I ran as fast as I could and turned the corner to the police station. I quickly sprinted inside, finally feeling safe, and rushed to the counter. I nervously told the police officer I needed to make a statement. He looked at me with suspicion before calling over another officer to take me into an interview room.

“What’s your name?” He sighed flippantly as we began the interview.

“Dorothy Edwards. I’m sixteen and I live at 27 Glebe Road,” I answered as he scribbled on a form.

“Okay. So what information do you have for us, Dorothy?”

I frantically gushed every detail I could remember about the hideous, frightening man and the young girl.

“And I saw that man again this morning! He was standing on Churchill Street. He just glowered at me. You have to find him. I think he could be dangerous. And you have to find that girl!” I said panicked.

“Could you give me the girl’s description again? Just to be sure,” PC Cooper asked.

“Yes. Eh, she had dark hair and it was tangled with twigs and leaves. She was wearing a baby pink nightdress, she was covered in blood, her hands were tied and there was silver duck-tape across her mouth,” I blurted out again.

 “This is the third time this month, Dorothy. We warned you what would happen if this happened again,” he sighed.

“What are you talking about?”

“Go and look in that mirror, Dorothy,” he groaned as he pointed to a full length mirror in the corner of the room.

In confusion, I hesitantly walked over to the long mirror.

I wasn’t wearing my pleated school skirt and blazer at all.

I was in my bare feet wearing only a pale pink, cotton nightgown that was stained with congealed blood. My hazelnut brown hair was in an impossibly matted frizz ball with twigs, grass, debris and leaves layered through it. Frayed rope tangled from my red, scratched left wrist and duck-tape was crumpled and gripped in my right hand. I was the screaming girl.

I stared at the unfamiliar girl. I felt like I was looking into a carnival mirror that distorts and warps your reflection. This wasn’t me. My eyes watered and swelled like shiny balls of frogspawn.

Vague memories from last night rushed back to me.

Edging out of the window in my nightdress… Cutting my legs as I fell from the drainpipe… Taking rope and duck-tape from the Anderson shelter and walking into the forest…Looking down at my hands and seeing fresh blood.

That was all I could remember.

When I turned around again, a doctor was there along with my teary mother.

“Dorothy, this is Dr Jenkins,” PC Cooper said softly.

“Why do I need a doctor? What’s happening?” I asked, failing to conceal the fear in my voice.

“Dorothy, I’m afraid that due to your mental state and your recent actions, we feel it is necessary for you to be lobotomised,” the posh doctor said.

I had heard horror stories about lobotomy and I was not certainly not willing to have it done. Horrified, I appealed to my mother to protect me from the doctors and take me home but she just sobbed hard and turned away from my gaze. I kicked, struggled and fought but I was eventually restrained and taken to the hospital.

II.

The poor girl was only sixteen. After reading her report, I suspected schizophrenia or a similar disorder. She was so terrified before Dr Jenkins gave her the electric convulsions that rendered her unconscious. I was only a student nurse at the time so I needed all the experience I could get but this operation was a particularly gruesome one. The doctor delicately lifted a long, thin needle from his tray and peeled the girl’s eyelid up with the other hand. I could feel my breakfast churning in my heavy stomach. He pierced the inside of the eye socket, above the actual eyeball, with the ice pick and with a sickening crunch tapped lightly on the opposite end of the needle with a hammer to break through the orbital plate into the white matter of the frontal lobe. He then twirled the needle in his hand and wiggled it around inside the brain. The process was then repeated on the other eye which bruised, just like the first, in a matter of seconds. The traumatic surgery was complete in only ten minutes. Many believed lobotomy was the new cure for all mental illnesses but in most cases, the patient was left with devastating brain damage. I knew that girl would never be the same again.