Chapter ONE: Old Memories

THE CATHARSIS

MANUSCRIPT

.........................................

A Novel By 

David DeLane Snow

CHAPTER ONE

   The slap was loud and unwarranted as the sting from the woman’s hand immediately began to show its welting print on the young boy’s cheek. The boy was no more than six years old.  He tried to rub his right ear, but the woman continued to violently shake him by the shoulders while screaming at him.  She was angry about having been prematurely awakened.  The frightened child did his best not to cry out because he knew that always angered her even more.

   Just as she raised her hand for a second blow, another boy jumped in between them both.  The nine year old shoved the younger to the ground making him skid to a fall a few steps away.  The older boy shouted, “Leave him alone!  Run little brother, I’ll hold her off.”  With that the thin blond-haired boy on the ground scrambled to get away, but not before catching a glimpse of her beating his rescuer.  The tall dark haired hero then fell to the floor and curled up as the angry woman began furiously kicking him in the back and ribs, shouting, “So you think you can handle this instead - alright!” 

  Crouched behind his nearby bed the younger boy could only watch in silent horror as the beating continued until the woman grew tired, then quitting on her own accord.

   Jacob woke up wide eyed and breathing heavily from his dream.  Its realism was disturbing as he sat up on the side of his bed rubbing his ear, and the sleep from his eyes.  His sleeping wife rolled over and continued to lay undisturbed.  Jacob seemed to have suppressed so much in his life; amazed by how a single nightmare could have resurrected a host of unremembered emotions - long thought forgotten.  But, the haunting vision of those two boys -- his mind strained to put their faces back into focus.  He almost knew their names, but the attempt to recall them was futile.

   The phone rang.

   “Hello?  Morn’, James.  Yeah, go ahead and order three black and four baby blue ones, they seem to sell a lot.  Alright, yeah, I’ll see you at regular time tomorrow. Bye.”   Then, just like that with the phone returned to its cradle it was gone again; his dream and any concept of its recollection. 

   Jacob had always thought that it was his fate in life not to have a family history, because he had been in and out of orphanages and foster homes for most of his life.  He had no memory of his mother, and only the vaguest flashes of a brother and father watching Star Trek in a dimly-lit living room.  Yet those nearly forgotten happy thoughts were overshadowed by layers of darker experiences.

  The first foster dad that Jacob ever remembered was an alcoholic bum who lay about the house in boxers barking out orders to him and his three other abused foster-siblings.  By his second family...

.........THIS is the Story I am currently re-editing and working on.  It may be awhile, as I am also trying to finish CURE CRISIS first.


............................................................................................................................
FEEL FREE to leave any comments in the box below; I'll get an e-mail alert, and thank you!