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Chapter 8 : Nightmare by Biev


Fainting Spells, Chapter 8 : Nightmare, page 15. Abusive father, drunk mother, and a boy who's made his decision.
 

Pretending-to-be-Joshua Biev says :
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Friday, November 30 @ 3:46 pm

Dear readers, first I have to apologize for throwing child abuse in your faces! The scene was getting long, and it just sort of became clear to me, all of a sudden, that this needed to be shown now. I get this crazy feeling sometimes, and I just can't ignore it! I hadn't planned on showing you Joshua's parents, but I think it's better this way - you understand how Joshua is feeling now. Here's a little more background information for you.

Joshua's parents are, I suppose, your typical deadbeats. His mom, Melissa, isn't the brightest of the bunch. She started dating Josh's dad when she was 17. Even though he treated her roughly, she was desperate to tie herself to him since she thought he was so good looking and "cool". She "forgot her pill" on purpose, got pregnant, dropped out of school. Since her entire family and friends disapproved of this relationship, she eventually cut ties with all of them. Eventually, they got married, and all the yelling, nagging, and mocking comments managed to crush her self-esteem so completely that she could never think of leaving this nightmare that she chose. During the day, she sells cigarettes. At night, she drinks cheap beer and dreams about winning the lottery. She usually neglects her son unless she's playing "good mother" to impress someone - he has failed to bring her the dream life she wanted.

Josh's dad, Andrew, has a violent temper, yes. Everyone was surprised when he married Melissa rather than running for the hills. He is a truck driver, and is gone a lot. He's actually doing a good job of providing for his family, and secretly has high hopes for his son, but thinks it's his job to teach the boy discipline and the mom's job to do everything else, which in turns makes him even more angry with Melissa for not taking good enough care of the kid. Andrew started hitting his wife when she was pregnant, but he always apologizes in the morning, since he was of course drunk each time, and she had of course done or said something unreasonable. *rolls eyes* He hasn't actually hurt his son very often, but he's lost it a few times when Josh tried to protect his mom. Each time, Josh also got punished by his mom the next day for intervening in what didn't concern him, so he is extremely bitter about it and has pretty much given up on helping others.

I was also going to talk about the "romance" in his relationship with Aude, but I think that's enough text for the moment.

~Biev

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©2006-07 Geneviève Gartenmayer. This is one of those "look, but don't touch" situations.