My Nightmare - Original Writing
It was Monday morning, my first day of babysitting. I wanted some
extra money and because it was the school holidays, I decided that
babysitting for my mum's friend (Elizabeth) was a good idea. I had to
look after baby John who was six months old between the hours of 9 and
4, Monday-Saturday, which I didn't mind doing because I loved kids.
Elizabeth, had moved away with her husband Steve, a few years ago
because of his job, but still they kept in contact. A few weeks ago
she moved back to live in our area because she had left her husband,
he was beating her. He had got so stressed out with his job, and
things did not work out as he had planned them too so he took all his
problems out on his wife. She came back to the same house she had
lived in before moving away and left him because she was afraid that
he would start taking his problems out on John, and she was not going
to stand for that. My mum helped Elizabeth to get back her on feet and
she was starting a new job so I offered to do some babysitting during
the day for her.
When Steve lived with Elizabeth I remembered him being like an Uncle
to me, he was a really kind man.
As I walked over to Elizabeth's house I started to think to myself
'how could Steve of beaten his wife, no matter how hard things got for
him he should not of done that.'
It didn't take as long as I expected to walk from my house to
Elizabeth's. When I arrived at the house, Elizabeth was standing at
the door waiting for me. She was wearing a red long sleeved top and
black pants, ready to go to work, she was a very organised person. She
welcomed me into her home and...
... middle of paper ...
...eld me in her arms. I was so afraid that
Steve was going to kill John and I. Elizabeth calmed me down, and then
she rang the police. They came over to the house and I had to give
them a statement, giving them my version of events. They said that
what I had told them made sense and that there was no need for any
further investigation on Steve's death because it was obvious from the
scene what had actually happened.
I am now still babysitting for Elizabeth and we get on really well,
John is now three and is such a well-behaved little boy. I don't look
after him during school hours, but I do sometimes after school, and at
the weekends, also in the school holidays. I really enjoy it. We don't
talk about Steve anymore or about what happened. We have just let it
become a thing of the past and have gotten on with our lives.
Renee Heikamp, 19, and case worker from the Catholic Children’s Aid Society (CCAS), Angie Martin, were charged with criminal negligence resulting in the 1997 death of newborn baby, Jordan Heikamp. The charges were dropped shortly after Jordan’s death, due to a lack of evidence from the investigation of a 63-day inquest. (CBC, 2001). Renee Heikamp and her baby were residing at the Anduhyaun shelter that services Aboriginal women fleeing abuse during the time of his death. Jordan Heikamp had starved to death, weighing only 4 pounds, 4 ounces less than what he weighed at his pre-mature birth, in May 1997; a photograph shown to witnesses at the inquest revealed the corpse of the baby who was little more than a skeleton.
...and the police wanted to find out who was buying things from her. Over a span
“Nightmare Number Three” by Stephen Vincent Benet is set sometime in the future. In this poem, machines have just revolted against humans. This poem supports the theme because it shows technology becoming so advanced that it takes over mankind. This is exemplified in the following quote, “Machines, of course, the superhuman machines, The ones we’d built to be better than flesh and bone” (Lines 16-17) This quote is showing the reader what will happen if machines become so advanced as to develop a mind of their own. It uses irony, expressing that humans tried to perfect machines to be the ultimate slaves, and then the same machines became so powerful that they overthrew their human masters, making the humans the slaves. This poem connects to
to her feet, but they could not wake her so they went to the police
Elizabeth (Struggling to get up) what are you trying to do, kill the baby or hurt me?
The Nightmare, painted by Henry Fuseli, became an icon of Romanticism and a defining image of Gothic horror (Lebailly, 2016). Some of my favorite writers, for example, Mary Shelley and Edgar Allen Poe, were inspired by Fuseli’s dark painting which led me to choose his work of art for my humanities paper. As I scanned the list you had given us to choose from, Henry’s name lit up with familiarity. In high school, I did extensive research after reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and learned about Henry Fuseli. I began studying his art and I fell in love. I chose Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare because of its mixture of horror, sexuality, and morbidity.
raising them on his own was too much for him and soon began looking for a
her. His mother and father rushed in and realized what had happened. This family was
explained with remorse and I could see now that it killed her to tell me no. She had explained to
when he was about to shove that knife into his wife she woke up, and
I think it was at its peak from about the age of twelve to roughly
As the kid went into the candy store, the reaction of his face was priceless. Like all kids in a candy store, his eyes livened up and his mouth drooled. It was kind of amusing to watch, but the grandparents loved every second of it. They knew that as the kid grew older, he would go his separate way and would not be as close to them. They wanted to cherish the moment, enjoy every little detail about the boy, and spend as much time with him before he would “leave the nest.”
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...
battery had run completely low and I began to feel a sense of panic as
As I was walking down the street, I felt the cold night air filling my