The Birthday Nightmare - Original Writing
It was the misty morning of Charl's 21st birthday. Herself, her
partner and her best friend were preparing to travel from dull-skied
Trenton, their hometown in New Jersey to Glamorous New York to
celebrate Charl's birthday. Her best friend Sarah was to drive the
kitted out van and her partner Leone was to accompany Charl on their
first travel from the time when they were at college. Now geared up,
they set off to New York. The Dodge Durango STL was travelling down
the B849 at a steady speed as Leone luckily escaped a fatal car crash
when he was 11, so he was slightly uncomfortable about travelling on
reasonably sized journeys.
They were about half an hour into the journey when Sarah applied the
brakes with extreme force. Charl asked, "Why did you stop?" Sarah
replied with "Look behind the van, there's a young woman just standing
there. She gave the impression that she had been standing there for a
while. We should go and talk to her" All three got out of the van and
asked the girl why she was stood there. She whispered, "I want to go
home, I want to go home." Having that, Sarah took the girl into their
van and carried on travelling.
The trio were asking the distraught girl what happened. She muttered
under her breath "he's killed them all." Then she pulled a black gun
from under her blouse and put it into her mouth. The whole group
shouted "NNNOOO" and then all of a sudden, it all went silent. The
girl had pulled the trigger. All of the group were traumatized. All
they could see was the girl, covered in thick, red blood, lifeless on
the back seat with a hole in the back of her head. Sarah swiftly got
out of the van and vomited at the side of the road. Charl and Leone
also got out of the van to comfort Sarah. Leone asked, "What should we
do?" Sarah and Charl agreed to stop by the nearest service station and
The bus pulls into Port Authority and she hops onto an escalator that goes down into a swarm of people. She gets
Suddenly realizing she was cold, wet, in excruciating pain and that her pajama’s were so heavy with rainwater she could barely move, Harper slowly passed out in the back of the taxi shivering as she wondered what Saskia would make of all this.
backwards then went around it as soon as she got to the window she slowly unlatched the
himself. It was the last lot on the bay at the end of the road that
into the road in front of the car that the blue man was driving. The blue man managed
The driver makes a quick right, then a left. She tries to grab the gun as it continues to slide back and forth beside her. Suddenly the van went completely dark.
opened the ultimate door of stress upon myself as I have to get all of
The Nightmare begins with Saidi pitting his protagonist, Ben Chadiza, against his antagonist, the witchdoctor. A group of seven witchdoctors, is described as they encircle Chadiza: “It was a macabre scene, which in other circumstances the sophisticated Mr. Benjamin Chadiza would have carelessly attributed to his rather flamboyant imagination” (Saidi 421). The definitions of the specific words in this quote speak volumes as to its underlying meaning. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary macabre means: “comprising or including a personalized representation of death”. Mr. Chadiza is described as sophisticated: “having a refined knowledge of the ways of the world cultivated especially through wide experience.” In using these words Saidi gives Chadiza the identity of personified worldly knowledge and foreshadows the character’s courtship with death that continues through the story in the person of the witchdoctor. Saidi further identifies Chadiza and his wife as the “children” in this allegory by saying that Chadiza had “Cried like a small child” during his nightmare and upon awakening, was comforted by his wife in a way that resembles a mother comforting her child: “His wife put her arms around him and soothed him with her warmth, pressing her breasts to his chest and whispering comfort close to his ear” (422). The witchdoctor also refers to Chadiza as “my son” in paragraph 39 (425). Toward the end of the story it is revealed that Chadiza’s wife, Maria, is the biological granddaughter of the witchdoctor and that her mother had forsaken the witchdoctor “because of his sorcery” (427). Mr. Chadiza and his wife are therefore identified as the children of this sorcerer in figurative and literal ways. But they are more than that. The...
'Ah, it all looks splendid, but I think I shall have to go for the
Owen and put his hand over his mouth Owen tried to shout his Mum but
and a carton of ‘Yum Yum Orange Juice’ in the other. She was wearing a
"Ok, my darling beautiful daughter, whatever you say. Now get up we are meeting Tracy there." Sarah said as she walked out of the room to go downstairs.
list and more, good old dad. I think I've got about 10 coming plus all
I am younger to her by around two minutes. Or One and a half to be