English Extension One Piece: Revenge Tragedy / Friday, November 2, 2007
Creative Writing For Extension English
Cambridge Wong
----
Use this stimulus to create a creative piece, using the key as a treasured article of your piece.
-----
London, October 10th, 2007
London Bridge is falling down...Humming the tune of a small well known nursery rhyme, Rachel Contrapasso lightly and delicately stepped out of the light plane, glancing at the forever raining city with a repressed sense of nostalgia. Home…it’s such a short-lived word, the pervading darkness an echo of the past and a glimpse of the future. Her eyes watered from the strong memories, but her hands clenched in anticipation.
There was no logical explanation for it. Just a 19 year old conviction of faith and hateful will for retribution that she’s fed and raised, and like all things wild, needed to be released one day to its source. The wind blew in her face, its cold bite a sharp reminder of her reality and another slapping reminder of what home truly felt like.
She glanced at her travel guide and quickly located the Thames, her other hand fiddling with a small, brown metal key in the depths of her purse, acknowledging the wet weather by pulling her overbearing waistcoat tightly around her waist. The pain women have to put up with for fashion... She smiled absently, looking at the mirror of her rented car and into the right blue empty eye for any warmth, and agreed with the outcome, whilst staring at the green left eye, and sinking into its depths…
A blur of a warm palette of colours and emotions, a dash of laughter and a sprinkle of trust, all mixed together in a tightly bound sushi people called ‘family’. Rachel Contrapasso remembered something similar too, somewhere embedded in her forlorn past. She was raised in what would have been a family unit, in what was every child’s right and the building foundation of their childhood.
She could still hear her own cries and the deep soothing voices that must have belonged to her father and ‘mother’. She could remember the joys of discovering unknown toys; the wonders of the different smells and the excitement at the interactions of society. Although all these were good and well, what she remembered most of all was what she had not remembered; the lapses of darkness between memories that filled up most of the time in transitions. The first game of hide and seek, followed by the first bicycle fall and followed by the same voices that drifted in and out of consciousness.
She loved her father, treasured every living moment they had together and it was him she resembled more than she did to her mother; they were both heterochromatic. It was their little bond, something that nobody else had and could share. But the thing she missed most of all were the rhymes that he told and the stories that he whispered.
Every night, without fail, she would have him sing the same nursery rhyme, regardless of whatever bedtime story preceded it. ‘
My Fair Lady’ he would also call her, and that meant the world to a six year old girl. Holding onto the key her father gave her, she would keep it around her neck, hoping she’d find her own treasure she could lock up one day.
But there was something unusual about one particular evening. When her father finally comprehended what it was, it was already too late. He would never see her again.
Falling down…falling down…‘Is this the place?’ Rachel stared at the house, squinting to recognize any features which might spark a memory jog. ‘Wait…this must be it. It looks the same as the photo’
Rachel muttered under her breath, walking up to the modest brick building and sighed.
‘I’ve waited 19 years already. What’s a couple more hours? This place does ring oddly familiar, even though I haven’t been here in such a long time. They’ve re-decorated, added a garage, but its still the same. My rightful home…’
Rachel returned to her car, waiting for her ‘mother’ to return, “Home”, she whispered.
‘And so it begins…’
She had cried afterwards. Pretending to be asleep when she saw the blood leak in front of her; his warmth and protection leaking into a crimson puddle on the carpet of her room, and she struggled not to make a sound.
He never saw it coming, and neither did Rachel. As if in slow motion, she could see and rewind that moment clearly, the muffler on the gun recoiling from that trembling hand, straight into her father’s back. And there was no fuss too. The blood was cleaned, the bullet removed and any forensic evidence removed. The body was dumped into the Thames from the bridge and nobody knew the wiser. As for Rachel, Theresa Contrapasso thought she was ignorant of the matter, and so was spared.
For Theresa, there was no reason to dispose of her daughter as well. She only needed to be rid of her husband in order to wed her boyfriend. There was the need. Filing for divorce wouldn’t give her the house; their relationship was never stable and the court would never award full custody over Rachel because of her alcoholism.
But when Rachel ran away, her mother didn’t feel any remorse either. True, she loved her. But her fear of someone ever knowing the truth was greater. Rachel had vowed to avenge her father, and when she was taken in as an orphan and raised in Sydney, she knew she would do as she said some day…
Rachel knew that one day she’d have her tit for a tat. If Theresa wasn’t punished by British law, then she must be punished another way. How dare she take what wasn’t hers away from her? And to add insult to injury, she got full possession of all her father’s property as a by-product of some loophole! She would make Theresa fall and suffer for every moment of anguish it caused Rachel.
London Bridge is falling down…Rachel watched the car pull onto the driveway and saw an older woman step out and slowly walk into the house. Anger flared in Rachel’s heart. It was her. Rachel quickly moved into action, but made sure to keep herself under control.
She went up and delicately knocked onto the door, waiting with the chloroform cloth behind her coat. Rachel smiled at the thought, ‘She probably can’t recognise me now that I’ve grown up. Good, it’ll only work in my favour”
Rachel forced a cheery smile when Theresa answered the door and started, “Hello-“
Her mother stared at her for a second, then snapped, “If you’re selling something, I don’t want any of it!” So saying, she turned to close the door.
Rachel’s eyes narrowed; her blue eye reflected her anger for a moment before she attacked, smothering her mother with the cloth, and quickly sensed her mother falling into unconsciousness as she breathed the fumes.
“Take a key and lock her up,Lock her up, Lock her up.Take a key and lock her up,My fair lady.”Carefully, Rachel lowered the soundly breathing figure of her mother into her trunk and straightened her coat, ruffled by the physical exchange…and waited again.
How will we build it up,Build it up, Build it up,How will we build it up,My fair lady?Her new husband was just as easy to capture. Not a minute longer than her mother. With both in her trunk, Rachel drove off, humming the next verse of the nursery rhyme, happily anticipating the next great act in completing her revenge.
She had pondered this next stage for a long time now; cannot deciding how to properly restore her father’s honour.
However, she had finally reached her verdict as to what to do:
She tied the two of them together; the sick murderers and tossed them in a concrete coffin she had prepared for this occasion, before driving off to do them off the same way she knew her father was rid off.
As she reached the great Thames river, she suddenly felt this huge surge of doubt stab her, ‘Was she any better than her mother? Her mother had done murder to suit her purposes. Didn’t she hate her for it? But isn’t she doing the same thing right now?’
She shook off those thoughts, “I have to do this! I must! This isn’t about me…its for father!”
Build it up with stone so strong,Stone so strong, Stone so strong.Build it up with stone so strong,My fair lady.She opened the coffin and smiled; her victims were now awake. Her mother kicked and squirmed but couldn’t make a discernible word through her gagged mouth.
Rachel looked down at her, “You don’t recognise me? Look closer”. So saying, she bent down and looked at her mother straight eye to eye, taking pleasure as her mother’s own eyes widened in horror at her eyes; ‘yes, the same eyes as your dead husband! The one you murdered! My father!’
Rachel kicked her and closed the lid, taking one last look at her mother and her lover before shutting it and pushing it into the river. The magic of her revenge lies in the key in her purse, the only thing that can open the coffin. The coffin wasn’t airtight, with water able to pour in through the very same keyhole so they would drown soon, and the coffin wouldn’t be found because of its weight, and would eventually be covered by dirt as the currents rolled in its southerly course.
“Say hi to Dad for me, would you Mum?”
Stone so strong will last so long,Last so long, Last so long.Stone so strong will last so long,My fair lady.Rachel enjoyed the sight from her car; the brilliance of the stormy night in the beautiful city of London, and closed her eyes as the lights of the city shone with an amber warmth she finally felt after years of isolation and cold calculation.
She drove off and over the river, tossing her treasured key into the river below and was finally free of her restraints and able to pursue her own goals; to start her new life in a city she could finally call ‘home’.
Rachel hummed the nursery rhyme for the last time of her life.
London Bridge is falling down,Falling down, Falling down.London Bridge is falling down,“My. Fair. Lady.”Labels: HSC, literature
/because of my high tolerance.
6:49:00 PM
>>>
