Imaginary Friends

I'm trying to write a crime novel. I wanted to create a very dark character in the first person. I want the reader to know the character, to get to love and understand his motivation. Perhaps, to identify with, as well as pull for him, despite his evil

 

  Growing up wasn't easy for me. Oh, I was able to make it look easy, if the looker wasn't really keen. I made perfect marks in elementary school without even trying. My teachers were always commenting on my skills and the ease at which I used them. I remember one time finishing a test in ten minutes that was supposed to take us all morning. The teacher thought I had just rushed through it so I could go outside and play. I was punished, told to sit in the corner until my work was checked. Needless to say, I was given an A on the test and an apology from the teacher. My abilities were rarely questioned after that.

   I also seemed to have built-in social skills. Other kids liked me and even kind of followed me around. I had so many “friends” that I hardly got a moments peace. That was how it seemed anyway. Inside, I was a very different child.

The same kid that got such good marks in his lessons was living in a far different reality. The very child that other children looked up too and wanted to hang around with was scared to death of what may lie around the next corner. I knew I was different, but not how I was different.

   Sometimes I thought I was the returned messiah. I had heard stories of how Jesus was unaware of his own calling until he was twelve. So I patiently waited to be called upon by God. Other times, I waited to hear exactly which person I'd have to kill to take my rightful place in this imaginary society.

I had a host of imaginary friends. This is how I was able to cope with all those fears that ran so rampant through my self-important, self-destructive imagination. At night, as I lay on my bed, I would push a button on the wall that only I could see. A whole room would open up and I would socialize for hours with all those who attended. There were often scores of people, sometimes the crowd would change, but often it was the same crowd of friends, admirers. Of course none of these were alive or real in the daylight world that the rest of the world lived in.

   Troubled, some may say. Psychotic, I'd answer back.

This was all before the age of ten, before puberty, before diagnosis, before tragedy, before there were reasons for the madness. We could all add the explanations later.

   After finishing the second grade my teachers decided that I was too advanced for my class. Apparently, it was noticed that I had regularly finished my lessons way before the rest of the class and then became bored and restless. I had taken to being disruptive, only because I was bored and it was “too easy” for me. I was bumped up to fourth grade the following year, never attended third grade at all. This was just another reason to feel different from everyone else. Some have said that this was the start of my anti-social, sociopath road, but I know different. I actually began to learn something from this period in my life that would always serve me. That lesson was, just how easily most of the world is manipulated and fooled. I went feeling like I'd won something, like I was better. The powers that be fed right into that feeling and so it stuck. Nothing changed as far as my good grades and boredom. School continued to be easy and boring. I just had one more reason to feel different. I was different. I just never thought about how every kid was different, every child was special. I could only see my own uniqueness, my greatness.

   During the summer of my eleventh year, my mother was killed. Eleven years old. A boy needs his mama. Every boy needs his mama. With me, it was as if the only chance I had of grasping any reality before adulthood was gone. My mother was, in fact, the first reason that I thought I was different. She had told me so many times. Not only did she say it to me but she said it to so many others. I never forgot one time. I believed her in a little boy, wildly imaginative way. I took it to heart in a way that she never meant it. I know someday she would have made it clearer. I know that all the half-lessons that I learned from her, the near truths you tell a child, she would have cleared it up, but she was gone.

   I had always felt different, always knew that I was on a different road than others. Now my only confident, my only hope to have things explained was taken from me and it would be a long, long, time before I got another chance to grow up.

If I were to say that I was devastated, it would be more than an understatement, it would be more an insult to my own feelings. I too, died a little bit. A part of me, from that day forward, would always be an eleven year old boy with no mama, nobody to understand me, except of course, my imaginary friends.

It wasn't long after this that all the trouble started. I was tossed around from group homes, to foster placements, to juvenile hall and every other possible place a troubled, unwanted child can be placed. The people who took me in had good intentions at first. Sometimes I even had my own room or a bicycle or some such thing. Then reality would set in. I'd have a temper tantrum, or I'd hit another child, possibly the child of the Good Samaritan himself. Before you knew it, I'd be out, back in custody, waiting for another try somewhere else.

This is when I really left the world we all live in. I retreated to my imaginary world where I was the star, the main character, the King.

About this time the imaginary friends began to tell me things. I was lost in it. It was more real to me than the constant rejection I was getting in the physical world and I jumped right in with both feet. I began to take suggestions from my friends. Little things at first. I was told to refuse gifts from the folks who took me in. It wouldn't be long before they regretted it anyway and why give them a moment’s satisfaction, thinking they had done something special for the poor little boy whom had lost his mama.

Soon though, the suggestions I got became more serious. “Get rid of their dog.” Which I would do. “Flatten the tires on that old station wagon. That way they can't take you back." Eventually I burned down their houses, I broke all the windows out when no-one was home. One time the foster father came in the room just as I was about to stab the two-month old baby with a fork after shoving crackers in its mouth until it could no longer breathe. Needless to say, I was in juvenile hall for a long while after that awaiting placement. Every incident became more and more serious and made it more and more difficult to place me at the next stop.

This pattern continued until I was old enough for emancipation. I think sixteen years old. All the while I was committing more and more atrocities. I never got caught for anything serious, which only served to fuel my thinking that I was different, better, smarter, than other people. I also began to think that I didn't get caught because I was in the right. That I somehow had earned the right to treat others any way I wanted. Lo and behold... the hell had just started.

 

Author's Note

This is only a beginning. I have the full story in a kind of pre-write on my PC. I'm looking for any suggestions. It is a difficult thing to create because of the level of emotion involved. Difficult to sustain that and still hold a valid story line.

Reviews

[Dave Lounsbury]

nice work, the first person narrative really draws in the reader.

[Tony]

From the history I have read, you have all the characters you need. They are hidden in the history.
You have the capacity to write a killer crime novel. Why are you waiting?