This has been buzzing round my head for a while. Not sure if it's the start of a YA Fiction or Adult General Fiction. Be truthful I can take it!


It’s Cold Outside (working title)


Prologue: 2006


Not everybody needs the company of others.

Some people are content in their own skin.

Listening to their own voice.

Basking in their own silence.

As I approach my fortieth year this realisation has hit me like a hammer blow. The detritus of my existence laid waste before me. The children push past me screaming at the top of their lungs as I silently scream inside. Rooted to the spot ~ in the middle of my own suburban nirvana.


December 1971

The snow fell in droves covering the ground like a protective blanket. I caught sight of it, my face turned away from his. I mentally reached out wrapping its protective coldness around me as the belt strap came down for the third time. Missing my buttocks, scraping a bruising red welt across my lower back. I didn’t blame my dad, once the booze had hold of him he became his own father. Here I was at five years old two days before Christmas, submissive and alone. Subverting my tears and cries of pain in the wonderful falling snow. My imagination the only escape.

Author Kevin Burgess © 2006

Kevin, you might want to post this in the Archive, so that there's a proper structure for people to comment - including the box to tick about how kind or brutal you want people to be.

But it's a very appropriate title for this morning, in London at least!

Emma

Emma,

Somehow it's already there. Not sure how I did that. Does it post in the Archive if you post the piece in a Group Forum? I'm a member of the Children's Group?

I've never looked in the Archive before.

Cheers.
Kev.