Demented and Damned

Picture this, a story so excellent, so bizarre, so full of fantasy and wonderment that page by page as you read, you immediately retain what has just happened. This story has everything! Struggles that make you really identify with the main character. A love story that at points brings tears out from their hiding spot in the corner of your eye, to being front and center perched on your lower eye lids. The tears staying perfectly in place as your eyes race from word to word, your mind processing and imagining each scene faster than blue fin tuna snatching bait fish from the sea. From my experience in life, I have learned that there are many different reasons why people love a story. Some love it for the story itself, they will say it’s because of the lessons it teaches or maybe because the story inspires them to push forth. I have even heard of people saying they like a story because of the way the authors words paint every aspect of the scenes the words are depicting. For myself, I often find most enjoyment from the characters.

The fact that I enjoy characters most, brings me to my top reason this was the greatest thing I have ever written; it is the main character! Look, whatever qualities a person could want in someone, the main character has them! They are strong, intelligent, tenacious, caring, loving, empathetic, and most importantly virtuous. You want to talk about someone getting into wild situations while merely trying to do what is right? That’s our main character! For example, he was walking down a dark forested path when he noticed, through the trees light from a fire. He cautiously approached it, then as he got closer, he saw the fire in the center of a clearing. Creeping closer and closer he finds the fire surrounded by people wearing robes and chanting in a language he had never heard before. Scanning across the opening, carefully studying the ones encircling the fire. Then he notices, locked in a makeshift cage at the edge of the light across the clearing, what appears to be a fair maiden in (what he thinks) desperate need of help. After some more reconnaissance work, our mighty main character decides on a plan and executes it. After the battle has been waged and our lone hero the main character is left covered in the blood of his foes do we find that the fair maiden in the cage is actually a Gorgon. But because our main character so heroically rescued this Gorgon, she demands that he allows her to join him as his companion. Page after page you are left wondering what is going to happen next. With each word you read you start to feel like you are really there, standing alongside our courageous hero and his band of ragged renegades. One page its monsters on the high seas in a ship beaten by gale force winds. Everyone on the ship, our main character included, are exhausted, hungry, and thirsting for a drop of precious water. After hours of fighting, fighting off monsters, fighting off the sea, and fighting off the desire to just give up will leave any person longing for a drink of cool clean water. Yet by the next page the storms have calmed, the monsters returned to their peaceful existence deep beneath the waves, happily cradled by the eternal darkness of the deep ocean. Our main character and the others on the ship have been able to eat their fill of hacked off sea monster tentacle chunks. At this point in the story when we start to get properly introduced to the other characters and find out what brings them all together.
Would you believe me if I was to tell you that the way our characters were all brought together was the number two reason why this is the best thing I have ever written? They all came together in a manner that was wrote in such a way that it has you thinking how there must have been divine intervention. It leaves you wanting to know more, more about the details of their lives, their looks, their attitudes, and their hopes for the future. Throughout the writing piece you learn more and more about each of the characters. For example, the Gorgon our hero rescued is named Anne. We find out that Anne was captured by the people in robes because they had mistaken her for Medusa. As Anne and our main character go along on their travels, she tells him all about how horrible it is to be constantly mistaken for the famous Medusa. Along hard journeys, as all of our characters fight, bleed, and hunt, they most importantly begin to open up with each other about their pasts. We learn how all of our characters connected to our main character, the effects this connection has caused, and what is to come of their futures makes this something I just want to keep reading over and over. Our main character quickly becomes the glue that holds everyone together. Telling tales and becoming closer after every storm they weather together, closer after every battle they successfully come out of, and even closer after months of being in tight proximity with each other they develop a bond like family. Like an expert seamster I sewed a tapestry of the characters histories. Each and every one of them connected by nearly meaningless circumstances yet brought together on what turns out to be a grand odyssey. While you find out how everyone is connected, where they all have crossed paths with each other, and where they are going, you are left wondering why the main character is there. It is not until the very end that you find out the key piece of information needed to tie it all together and understand what is actually going on. What we find out is that our main character, the hero of the whole story, the mortar between the bricks, is alone locked in a dark damp dungeon deep under a massive gray stone castle. The other characters that joined him along the way? Merely the rats and roaches that crawled around his feet and over the chains around his ankles and wrists.

That is why this is the best piece I have ever written. This piece took a lot of imagination, you see this is only my second semester of college, before that the last time I was in a classroom was twenty years ago. I cannot remember anything I have ever wrote, nor have I ever attempted to write anything of warrant outside of the educational system. So, I just did what I thought was a good idea. I hope it was an enjoyable read.

This is something I wrote for my college composition class; the prompt was to write about something we previously wrote that we are most proud of and why we are most proud of it.