Richard J. Ronayne
Novels
Drowning Amidst Angels
Drowning Amidst Angels is a planned series of four psychological/horror novels, centred around mental health and psychology for young adults.
This is my main project, which I started writing as a child to first understand difficult issues going on within myself and the world around me. I benefitted greatly from this process and hope it may yet be of benefit to someone else.
Below is the original demo I wrote for publishers.
Drowning
Amidst
Angels
By Richard Joseph Ronayne
Introduction
‘These violent delights have violent ends.
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume.’
“Dear Mother, Sandalphon,
I hope you are well. Please forgive me for not keeping in contact as much as I should, but you understand I dislike modern communication, I find it soulless and uncomfortable. As you well know, I strongly believe that if you cannot say something face to face or in a personal letter then it simply peels away at any weight or substance.
Add to that the fact that I am working nights, when it is your daytime, I rarely have the chance to use the internet, but when I do it is visiting friends and would be rude for me to swallow their limited, comparable to mid-nineties dial-up internet.
More positively though, I know that written hand is more meaningful to you as well as myself, so I have been looking forward to this.
I hope you know I miss you all, especially you and Alexithymic Dysphoria, ‘Alexi’. You two will always have a special place in my heart. I have always believed that Alexi has the most potential of all of us. She has been spared the limitations that the rest of us have endured, be it physical, mental, emotional, innocent or our own snowballing flaws.
She has nothing to do with any of the dysfunctions our family has survived, stronger for, might I add. Also, I am sure that you would agree, to the most part at least, that her character has survived her teenage angst better than the rest of us did. She is still the child you raised.
All in all, I think she is your best work and if you are proud of anything in your life, it should be her. Please always look after her as a priority.
But you, Mother Sandalphon, because I am proud of you most. You are the most chameleon of all the creatures I have ever known. You have unlimited strength lying within your more subtle characteristics, most of which you have learnt throughout my lifetime and continue to learn, finding yet more strengths to my wonder and amazement. But also, to the advantage of us all; as you further your strengths so too do your children, which I think you have come to finally realise.
You are the inspiration behind the person I want to be. From cementing my Bohemian values to teaching me to never stop trying to improve my character for myself and those I love and will come to love. I love you more now than I ever did as a child singing in the kitchen with you.
Which leads me on to explain that a strong reason for my having left now, is because the family is happier and have come closer together than I would ever have dreamt, I would like them all to learn how wonderful a mother they have. That you have many wonderful and important lessons to still teach them about living a happy and peaceful life as I have learnt. I hope you will all continue to grow, together, stronger in my absence as they do not need to solely look up to me or rely on me when they have you Mother Sandalphon, whom they have regularly overlooked because of the past. I know you do not always agree immediately with things I say or how I see the world, but I hope you do understand.
An equally strong reason for my leaving was that I have always given up my life for others because I have always believed in being the best and kindest I can be to inspire others to do the same. But, until recently, it continuously led me into depression, illness, and debt.
Until I met Osmodeus.
Now I feel like Karma is rewarding me and only strengthens my belief of sacrificial kindness as I submit my life to her now, she does the same for me, leading to true happiness and what is hopefully the rest of my life. My ultimate reason to leave is, to quote the film ‘When Harry Met Sally’; “When you meet the person you know you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
That is why we are out here. That is what we are trying to accomplish. Pig Town is coated in so much of my blood from trying to help others, that I cannot stand the stench of it anymore. I want to be a father so badly and most of all I want to spend the rest of my life proving that I deserve these things.
My entire body, inside and out, itches and quakes as my life goals, that I have had since childhood, are so close to being achieved. Thank you, Mother Sandalphon, for always teaching me, challenging me, and expanding my views, even today. I only hope that I have been able to return the favour and that now the others will be able to also.
I love you, Mum. Thank you for everything.
Always your son,
The Nameless."
One
‘It was just that he was all alone.
Always by himself.
Never anyone to share the pain.
A man that lived in dreams,
That’s who he was.’
They say just before you die, your entire life flashes before your eyes. I can tell you this is true, but overwhelmingly understated. It doesn’t just flash before your eyes, you are forced to relive it, every event, every moment, every breath.
Every. Torturous. Heartbeat.
I knew I was dreaming. Still, I could hear the machines with their horrid screeching, each one a knife entering my body. I could feel the blinding lights above me trying to claw their way under my eyelids to swallow me whole. Grainy shadows, flickering as they scurried about me like vultures over a carcass, moving at an impossible pace, the shadows danced with such speed that it made me dizzy and I felt myself fading back into my dream state…
I looked down and saw the floor rise to meet my feet, which were much closer than they should have been. I stood staring at them. Then, I simply knew, as you do when dreaming.
I knew the year was 1996 and I was nine years old. I knew I had just finished the day’s school as my Father, Maalik, rounded me and my siblings up, walking us to the nearest pay phone. As we waited tensely outside the phone box, I could see my siblings were confused too. I could see on their faces that they knew something wasn’t right. They could feel the nervousness in our father’s voice. They knew that Father Maalik picking us up was odd. They could also feel that something was wrong, and they worried where Mother Sandalphon was.
I wondered if they had also noticed that he was trying to hide tears from us as well. Covering his face with the phone against his shoulder, head down, he could scarcely look at us at all as he hung the phone up and took minutes before taking the coins it spewed at him. I had never seen him cry before. He finally stepped out and we stood frozen as he brought himself to speak.
“It’s Grandad Jhudiel, Mother Sandalphon is with him now in Culture City. He is…not well. I’m sorry.”
He was sorry. I wondered why for a long time, and I think that he was sorry because he knew it was the first time, we had ever felt real pain. In that moment, I just felt a strange twisting sickness in my stomach. As if some evil creature living inside me had been stirred from an ancient slumber by its first feeding.
I suddenly realised the wind had been howling this whole time. The kind of wind that hurts when it hits you, leaving tiny cuts upon our tiny faces, when I could have sworn that it was silent and eerily still before he spoke those words. He told us that he will take us home to pack and then we were all to stay at Nanny and Grandad Jhudiel’s house.
My happiest memories as a child are when my parents would drop me off at Nanny and Grandad Jhudiel’s house in Culture City for the weekend. We would play cricket in the garden with crab apples and lay in front of the television on giant teddies watching the same handful of VCRs’ over and over. We would take it in turns to play their ancient Amiga computer and read comic books. We would devour Nanny Jhudiel’s special scrambled eggs (ultra-salted and buttered) or fail to juggle slippery pizza pies from room to room. Every night staying up late playing card games like Old Maid to decide who would help with the washing up and donkey to decide who gets to sit on Grandad Jhudiel’s back as he does laps around the house on all fours.
On this occasion however, I don’t remember anything that anyone did or spoke to me during our stay. They didn’t take us to see him at the hospital, we stayed at the house with Father Maalik, as Mother Sandalphon and Nanny Jhudiel took it in turns to visit him. If I try hard to remember, all I can see is the blurs of their motions, whilst, I had no motions. I simply sat, still, trying to comprehend what was happening.
Then he was gone.
It didn’t seem real. I knew their words were the truth and that they were trying to protect us, but the first time I felt real loss was the first time I felt real regret. Regret, for not saying goodbye. He was the kindest man I would ever know. No matter how young I was I understood that his capacity to love was a great gift. He will always be a great man in my eyes for that. I am honoured that my parents chose my middle name to be his, but I felt a connection with him deeper than names or even blood. I found him fascinating and chose, at an incredibly young age, to learn from him, though I do not know if he was aware that he was being studied. He simply loved. All of us. Unconditionally, and will forever leave a hole in our lives. Always.
On the journey home, I felt awakened, yet as if I were in a dream. My mind was sharper and things that were once important just simply were not anymore. I saw the world in a different way; through older eyes. I felt colder and more calculated. As if I had become self-aware for the first time. I realised that none of us were the same person we were just a few days ago. That events in your life like this change you, change the course your whole life was on.
I wondered how it would affect each of us. I looked at Father Maalik. I studied his face as he drove. I saw a weightiness to his eyes that was never present before. He somehow looked older now. I thought about what he must be going through and I tried to put myself in his shoes.
Father Maalik was in the Great Sky Force, he had set out from Junkville, Valleyland, when he was younger with nothing to his name. He started from the bottom and worked hard to push his career as far as it could go. He was well respected for this, but not by me.
The GSF took all his time and so Father Maalik is barely present in my childhood memories. We lived in the house that GSF Tiny Cultureshire Village had provided for us. Just outside of the main base in the adjacent village on the outskirts of Culture City. I loved that house and I return there in my dreams often, for better or for worse. When he was not on the base or on Protestant Island or the Penguin Isles, he would try to focus on us and spend time with us before he was off again. He would write letters often though and we enjoyed all the pictures that he sent. I loved Father Maalik, very much, but I always felt that it was Mother Sandalphon and my older sister Abandoned Child Syndrome, ‘Abanda’, that raised me.
Things were different though; he was the only man in Mother Sandalphon’s life now. He was the only person looking after her now and, I think, he realised this as well. They were on their own now as other family members lived too far away to really be able to support the seven of us. To relieve any of the pressure from Father Maalik’s shoulders.
I would watch on as he suffered silently, for years. Slowly drowning, slowly losing himself. I wish I were old enough to help him.
I turned to my older sister by three years, Abanda. A pre-adolescent at this point, she loved Grandad Jhudiel most. I would stay around Nanny Jhudiel’s house many more times after this, but I don’t think Abanda ever did again. This was the day she started to grow distant, pulling herself away from all of us. I knew then, staring at her sore and puffy eyes, I had lost her whom I had considered my best friend. She suffered almost as much as Mother Sandalphon did.
Mother Sandalphon was my hero as a child. She had her father’s infinite capacity to love, but she was not as learned in the application of it. Almost always on her own with five young children vying for her attention, things didn’t always go smoothly. But we always knew that we were loved. That we were lucky. My incredible affections for Mother Sandalphon, even at nine years old, were not because she was an immovable superheroine, because she was not. I loved my Mother Sandalphon more than anyone as a child because she was not afraid to show us that she was only human. She had flaws but would work through them, with us. If she struggled, she would speak to us about it; admitting her weaknesses and mistakes honestly with us was her greatest strength. In doing so, we would be able to learn and help her, and by showing she was grateful for our help we felt loved, loving her more in return. It was a beautiful cycle.
She taught me that perfection must include imperfections. Otherwise, it could not possibly be perfect as we fall in love with both strengths and weaknesses. Mother Sandalphon was perfect to me. It was killing me to see her in such pain.
I had three younger siblings too; Gray Matter Compensatory Narcissist, ‘Gray’ was four years younger than me. Intermittent Explosive Disorder, ‘Explós’, only three at this point and Alexi, who was just a baby. They did not seem to understand the events happening around them. I smiled and wished I could have traded places.
I did not speak about any of this to Abanda or Mother Sandalphon, because they refused to. They could not bear to, and I understood even at that age. I spoke to no-one.
Except Anael.
Anael…I couldn’t…
I didn’t mean to…
…I’m sorry.
Two
‘Suddenly, I knew nothing.
And all life within me
Came undone.’
“She’s dead…” I heard myself say as the nurse woke me.
“Are you ok son?” She asked, with a tone of real concern underlying her happy go lucky Irish accent.
I didn’t reply, I was trying to ascertain the reason as to why I was laying on a hospital bed, when I realised, she was staring at me, “I’m sorry?”
“You were having a nightmare son, thrashing and screaming and everything.” She said playfully, but with more concern in her eyes than I understood.
“Lay back down and rest whilst I go get you some water and tissues to wipe those tears away. Then when I get back, perhaps you can fill out some personal details as we’re very anxious to know what your name is and maybe contact someone who might want to know you’re here.”
She brushed past the curtain lapping my bed and looked sad as I caught her glancing back.
I put my hands to my face. My hands were heavy, and my face felt further away than felt right. When I finally found it, I indeed had tears streamed down my cheeks. I wiped them off and thought to myself; “Not again.”
This was my third visit to the hospital like this. Though I do not know how I got there this time. Some kind men brought me in the first time, when I collapsed walking home from work.
The second time someone called an ambulance for me around the corner of a night club, hidden away from friends whom I left in there.
This time was worse though. My memory was struggling. Where was I when it happened? How did it happen, what set the pain off this time? I felt groggy and alien in my own body. This time I struggled to even sit up, let alone get changed back into my clothes. I was even tempted to stay and maybe actually get this fixed. But a voice rang through my mind; “I deserve this.” Reminded me that this pain is nothing compared to the pain I had inflicted on others.
I agreed, crawled out of bed and stealthed through the curtains. Taking in my surroundings to make sure I was clear, then, as I had on my previous two unwanted visits, I casually walked straight out of the nearest exit I could locate.
The hard part was stumbling home for four miles, but I thought myself lucky that the route was always quiet and mostly separated from the road. I knew I would be ok if I could just get home to bed. Though, I first had to calm the screaming pain in my chest.
I stopped for a while at the local lake, not even one mile into my pilgrimage. It seemed like an age to arrive there, but I found the spot that was my favourite. I sat back on the grass beneath a pair of Cherry Blossoms, leaning my head against the prettiest, watching the petals dance upon their newfound freedom before silently floating onto the surface of the nearby pond, seemingly having mistaken the crystal-clear reflection to be the sky above. I waited for the medicine to wear off. Feeling only numbness, but as if something were still gorging upon my innards, I felt myself slipping into darkness.
Cherry blossoms had always been my favourite plant. I have always found their beauty to be inspiring. I knew a girl once who loved Cherry Blossoms almost as much as she loved the Moon, which was presently sneering down at me, knowingly. We would spend hours staring at both as she tried to teach me beauty. Holding hands.
I thought to myself, to die beneath them would be a nice way to go.
I took one final sigh and surrendered to the serene beauty of it all. Thinking of the blossoms. Thinking of her. I wondered how she might look now. Her long wavy red hair would be blowing in the wind, dancing with the blossoms. She would stand perfectly still for as long as it took, waiting, silently. Then she would gently hold out her pale hand, raising it softly into the air and a blossom would dance straight into her palm. She would look back over her shoulder at me and smile.
In my dreams, one eye was purple. The other gold. I would try to shout to her. But I could not produce the noise, so I would try harder still. Until I was screaming it; “I’M SORRY!”
Over and over. But no air would escape my lungs. And she would just stand there smiling at me. Not hearing me. As a light behind her grew in brightness until the licking hell fire swallowed her whole and I couldn’t even see her shadow anymore.
I would cry. Then the flames would come rushing towards me and this time the words would come out. I would scream them into the sky above me, at the moon, as the light would consume me fully.
“It’s OK.”
What?
Suddenly I was standing in a small field, on the corner of my old suburb in Tiny Oxfordshire Village. It was dark and starry. The moon, absurdly close, stared furiously down upon me. I looked around and saw no one, asking again, I cried, “What did you say?”
The only answer I received was a chilling gust that began picking up speed, vomiting dark clouds towards me, covering the stars, and smothering the moon, my only light sources. It was dark now, but still a stirring movement caught my eye. Darkness within darkness. An inky black nothingness was growing upon the steps of the nearby apartment building. A void of emptiness began expanding, silently spilling outwards, swallowing everything within its path until it encompassed the whole field before me; stopping only a few feet away from me, but surrounding me none the less.
I could not keep my bearings; the void was everywhere. I could feel something watching me, something intelligent, familiar.
Then, it spoke to me, from within its impenetrable shroud. It’s voice like nails drilling through my skull, turning my blood to ice.
“I said it is…OK.”
The voice was infinite. It was everywhere.
“That is what you want to hear isn’t it? You want to be coddled? Embraced like a child and understood. You even dare to dream of forgiveness?”
Its tone was oppressively mocking. I did not dare to argue, I knew my soul had lost all value and it was foolish to dream of making amends.
Ignoring the creature’s questions, my hope already extinguished by them, I exhaustedly replied; “What are you? I feel like I already know, but the answer will not come.”
“I am what you want me to be. You created me to lead you into the oblivion you deserve. But it is not yet time. I have been watching. You have not suffered enough! There is much more pain to feed from and I FOREVER HUNGER!”
Its voice was undeniable, it knew the truths of my deepest denials and it knew I was too weak to resist it’s indomitable will.
“You are the doom that I seek. The torturer to spend the rest of my days flaying my soul until the universe sees fit to finally grant me mercy and let me find peace at last.”
The creature’s laughter was like knives scraping against my bones, forcing me to fall to my knees in agony.
“That is correct. But you pathetic boy, your final peace is far from now, if you ever find it. I will feast on your pain and suffering. FOREVER!”
At that last word, a pair of shining eyes slowly opened and gazed upon me. One exotic purple flame, the other the most brilliant piercing gold; moving closer.
It swayed and grew, revealing its immense size as it stalked towards me, stopping only to produce a great lion like snout. The creature’s skin, the same as the inky void still engulfing the beast. It was the void. Its grin turned slowly into a horrifying snarl, lowering into what I realised was a pounce. But I was too consumed by self-doubt and fear to move or to even stop screaming silently. It boomed its laughter at me once more as I could feel it’s hot, sticky breath upon me.
Then it pounced with ferocious speed.
Pushing its entire form out to ensnare my body whole in its colossus jaws…
Three
‘Cold water surrounds me now,
And all I’ve got is your hand…’
“She’s dead…”
I read out to myself in the deepest, darkest corner of my consciousness. I tried to shout it at the heavens so the echo would ring through space for all the ages of time. But, instead, my dying breath came out as a whisper that only echoed through me. Nothing more than a vessel to the very words that struck me down.
On the day I died, my bane approached me through my post, slithered its way onto my bed and patiently waited for me to return from school. Barely aged eleven. I remember it perfectly; it used the familiar effervescent, yet musty smell of the home of my love, to lull me into opening the cage imprisoning it and took that love away from me. The sense of excitement I felt at the prospect of news from my distant love, swiftly, burnt to ashes.
All the life in my eyes, the innocence of my spirit, the joy in my world, was crushed. Ruthlessly. Effectively. Mercilessly. Frozen and lifeless, through many years of emptiness and loneliness, a ghost ship, cursed to forever drown in the cold harsh waters of life.
I awake from dreaming too often, wishing I could trade realities, I reach out, trying to grab hold of anything as I feel myself falling, waking. A desperate attempt to hold myself in that world where I am in control of my destiny, or to steal something away with me to this realm to prove that this is the dream, that any day now I shall awake from. Few people are reserved to this feeling. Life doesn’t work the way they tell you it will. Stories from your childhood rightfully try to make you reach higher plateaus of happiness. Their positive intentions to make you appreciate whatever you hold dear, too oft just makes you bitter.
As the lies sink in and you realise you were unprepared for what lay baited in your future. It is through loss and sadness that you can only truly know what is important in life, I guess it just doesn’t make a very nice bedtime story.
But all souls, chained to this dream world, find solace in one single element of life. The rarest of all things; Love.
I believe there is no logical purpose to life; but, to love. Everything else is but a distraction and becomes unimportant once you see the truth. Which, everybody does eventually. It is the sole purpose of my existence, my continuation. It is hope incarnate and my single impetus to simply endure. Although every fairy-tale speaks of love, true love rarely has a happy ending. True Love is little more than a glorious kamikaze, but to such a poetic and beautiful an extent that it can move oceans and make the stars themselves weep forever in the timeless voids of space.
It is rare to find someone that you can be so free with, whom you can love with every fibre of your very soul, feeling safe and completely open with. For a child, wracked with such pain, lowering your defences, allowing yourself to be vulnerable to such an extent that you will never recover. True Love. It is the one power that can truly heal, any wound. To find someone you can entrust with your past, present, future, your body, mind, and your very soul is a truly rare occurrence in the cosmos. So, to find more than one such person in one lifetime is unheard of.
But I found many.
“Her name was Anael. And I loved her as much as an eleven-year-old boy could. It’s easy to love before you learn the pain of losing it. I often wonder how she would be now.”
I painfully reminisced to the ever patient and curious girl to my side, leaning in eagerly to learn more about me for some reason. She comforted me, as my eyes, not my words, revealed everything to her.
I continued, trying to fill the silence, “She had beautiful long red hair. The perfect number of freckles and what seemed to be silver, more than blue eyes. Silver like the moon at night. I could swear they glowed when I stared into them. She was in love with the moon. But that is all I really remember about her now, which is the worst part of all.”
I paused for a moment, and she immediately placed her hand on mine, encouraging me to continue. I explained that; “We technically went out for five years, even though we didn’t see each other for most of it as both of our fathers were in the RAF. We weren’t often in the same place at the same time. I would always think of her, and we kept finding each other; my childhood sweetheart, the kind you read about in novels.
Then, I moved to Pig Town, and I was just a stupid kid. I couldn’t just let her go, even when she knew it was for the best. She couldn’t persuade me to agree with her and gave up out of fear of hurting me. We wrote each other all the time and she was supposed to come and visit me in Pig Town one day…but she never made it…and I did not hear from her again. I didn’t understand, so I kept trying to contact her for a time.”
The girl was staring at me intently now, trying to read me frame by frame, making me suddenly aware that I was staring blankly into my past.
I continued, “Then I received a letter from her mother…explaining that there was an accident. Her father was driving her to Pig Town to see me, but a coach collided with them and neither survived.”
Goosebumps shot up across my body at that sentence, my breathing became very heavy, and I could feel myself shaking as I forced the words out of me for the first time;
“It was my fault…I killed them both...”
At this, she flung herself at me, tears streaming down her face as well. I wrapped my arms around her as she pushed her head into my heaving chest. We just sat there in silence for a while, until she whispered; “I love you, Nameless…” and all my pains were healed, in her eyes.
It felt incredible, to be honest and truthful with someone and to know that I really can say, with complete honesty, broken no more; “I love you too, Raphael.”
This was the first time I had opened to anyone in eight very empty years. As I continued to tell her my story; how I completely destroyed myself because the pain was too much. I couldn’t resort to cowardly physical harm, not for desperately wanting. I believed that I deserved worse; I stayed the knife I often held to my throat, and I instead killed myself mentally. The child that suffered such pain is nowhere to be found.
Make no mistake. He died. Very painfully. I made sure of it…
And so, I floated through secondary school, a completely empty vessel. Oblivious and uncaring to everything around me. This is the sole reason I survived through the meltdown of my family.
I always dreamt of someone like Raphael to come and save me. To heal me, so I could spend every waking moment I possibly can sacrificing myself for her.
To use, as my own personal penance…
--------------- End Of Demo ---------------
Richard J. Ronayne 