Right! So, novel synopsis!
(I should really be cleaning the house...eh.)
The novel's name is Zero for Three; it will soon become apparent why. (Those of you not fortunate enough to live under the glorious rule of Elizabeth II, 0 for 3 is a cricketing score; it means that a team with that score got an out (like in baseball) three times but has scored no points).
There are four main characters: the protagonist, named Ross (though as yet sans last name), and three of his girlfriends (I shall explain), in order of appearance Rachel, Alana and Caroline.
The thing about this novel is that it was in its infant stages conceived during a crush gone horribly, horribly wrong about a year and a half ago- serious depression projecting itself onto a teacher crush. It got as far as my cutting my wrist with my razor over her (eep). Don't tell my father (who was the poor woman's boss).
Anyway, your life is fair game and all that, so over that time the novel has evolved. The main character, Ross (no last name given) is a sort of Stephen Dedalus construction- take the author, add some, subtract some, generally mix things around a bit. The main point is that he is cast as clearly quite brilliant (graduate student by profession) but also completely neurotic (clingy as fuck, self-destructively romantic, depressed).
Rachel is the only one who isn't designed to be completely dysfunctional. She's his first girlfriend, and the only one who can
seem to keep him in check rather than exaggerate his doormattishness and clinginess. (He hangs on to her far more than is healthy.) There's a certain Freudian overtone to this: she's a maternal type, which his desperate need for affection, emotional stability and security needs. Unfortunately, about a week before he plans to propose, she falls through a glass door, cutting herself on the jugular, while he stands there falling apart and too indecisive to apply a tourniquet or call an ambulance immediately, and that's that.
Where Rachel was a foil, Alana (whom he dates out of desperation more than anything else) is a mirror: she, like him, is near-suicidally clingy, depressed, cuddly, introverted. So, they just sort of feed on each other's neuroticism, horribly, until she throws herself into a river. In January (Seasonal Affective Disorder is likely to be in play). A few days later, so does he, although he gets stopped at the last minute and fails to succeed in killing himself.
So now we get to Caroline.They are all perfectly designed for him, you might say, just in different ways: Rachel kept him sane; Alana was his mirror image; Caroline is a horrribly manipulative and abusive bitch.
He is a doormat.
It was a match made in hell.
Because, since she sees him as her toy and he's perfectly willing to play the role, she likes to see how far he'll go, since he's such a
wreck. BDSM? Let's see if he'll be the dom. He's horrified by the proposition, of course; he can't stand the idea of hurting her. It
takes an entire hour of cajoling him and breaking him down before he relents.
Unfortunately, he has a streak of deeply repressed sadism, and an equally repressed desire to take revenge on her. Combine this with the
aforementioned mental instability and things will not end well. He, to his horror, enjoys using a riding crop on her; indeed after a few
minutes it's not enough; he starts whipping her harder and more intensely, and finally loses it completely. Against her protests/safe
words, he rapes her, then pulls a cricket bat out of the closet and beats her to death.
He is, of course, horrified at the monster he is, or perhaps has always been. So he runs out of the flat outside. The problem, of
course, is that leather is distinctly thin, and it's winter. He collapses from hypothermia, and enters a sort of dream-before-dying, in which he finds himself in...heaven, of a sort, in that there's a floor, and it extends infinitely in all directions; however, it is bisected by a wall of glass; on the other side is Alana. It dawns him, after a bit, that this is hell, and they are condemned to pine for each other for eternity, being unable to communicate or touch but fully able to watch each other fall to bits
Sorry if that sounds strange or bizarre or wasn't explained well. I've had almost no sleep recently.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9703895 times)