Blog of Oonah V Joslin -- please visit my Parallel Oonahverse at WordPress

where I post stories and poems that have not been seen elsewhere - also recipes and various other stuff. http://oovj.wordpress.com/

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Saturday 10 October 2020

October 2020 -- A whole Heap of HORROR -- No10

Kind of autobiographical. 

Patterns for Life

By Oonah V Joslin

It is a function of the human brain that we recognize faces wherever we see them; friend or foe, it is a prerequisite to survival. Alma it seemed was a well adapted child.

It all began with the wallpaper and a purple crayon.

Alma lay awake looking at the roses. Those same roses that looked so bright and cheerful in the morning took on quite a different aspect at night. One was an ugly dwarf with a great fat bulbous nose and scowling face. Another was a cruel witch, long-chinned, looking sideways at her, brandishing a branch as if at any moment she might turn and smite her with a sweep of her wand. But worst of all was a puppy dog with one eye hanging out of the socket and down onto its nose and it looked so sad and there was nothing she could do–night after night she watched it – wretched and undying.

So when Alma sneaked the purple crayon upstairs and hid it under the bed, it was with the express intention not of defacing the wallpaper, but of ridding herself of monsters. Her mother didn’t see it that way.

Worse than being scolded and sent to bed early, was the realization that the pattern repeated over and over again – as do all patterns – and that she had only obliterated one dwarf, one witch and one hideously deformed puppy. Silently, hundreds of others stared at her in rebuke. And what would they do when her eyes involuntarily closed in sleep? And what could she do about the undying fears that now formed the pattern for her thoughts and dreams?

Copyright: © 2009 Oonah V Joslin