B is for Bugeyes.

Posted on Categories A to Z Blogging Challenge, author, bizarre, blog hop, book exert, dark Fiction, Horror book exerts, unuusal, wit humor

Bugeyes REDUCED

We live in a world of body image stereo types, which are perpetuated by the media. Those unfortunate beings, born with abnormalities, could face a lifetime of cruel jokes, and in this story’s case rejection.

You can’t but help but feel for Bugeyes.  He is born with oversized eyes and is consequently ruthlessly mocked.  Besides being mocked , he is sent away  from his biological family’s grand estate,  almost as soon as his mother sets eyes on him. Not a happy start to  life.  Bugeyes is one of my favorite characters in my book of  short stories,  it covers the life of an outsider, a reject.  The character does not speak much, he is like a shadow.  It is a story about revenge,  Bugeyes is not stupid,  he has a sharp calculating mind, as well as being curious to discover the truth of his true origins.  This curiosity finally leads him to confront the family that has rejected him and to claim his rightful inheritance.

 

BOOK EXERT (Bugeyes)

Bug-eyes was destined to a life of toil. As his mother, Lady
Harriet Lombard, remarked gruffly when holding her swaddled firstborn,
“He has disproportionate eyes,” adding tersely, “the child’s
abnormal.” As she handed the squalling reject back to the doctor, she
decreed, “Drop it down the well for all I care.”

Dr. Shady, a tall, thin, nervous practitioner from a line of doctors
who had served the Lombards for generations, wasn’t given to
infanticide. After some negotiations with Lord Lombard, he concocted
a plan, which, despite being highly irregular and grossly illegal, at
least allowed for the child’s preservation. The shrieking infant, who
should at this point have been profiting from his mother’s milk or at
least that of a wet nurse, was promptly dispatched to the periphery of
the estate where the infant’s upbringing became the responsibility of
the Lockjaws, who Doctor Shady had known were desperate for a
child.
Ralston Lockjaw, the Lombard estate gamekeeper, and Hettie, his
barren wife, lived in a poky ramshackle cottage. The infant was was
welcomed heartily by Hettie. Ralston had his reservations, but wisely
kept them to himself. A sizable pay increase on the promise of total
silence sweetened the pill of having to feed another mouth and tolerate
the strange bug-eyed infant. Lord Lombard determined to keep the
secret of the child’s whereabouts to himself, while his seething wife
continued to bitterly rue her “cursed luck,” blaming the abomination
squarely on her husband. In fact, some odd physical defects were
known to exist within the aristocraticly inbred Lombards. Lady Harriet
had more hoped for a healthy heir to grace the front cover of many a
society magazine, like her society friends with their offspring, not
some kind of monstrosity with a conspicuous defect. In disgust, she
took to noting the overly protruding eyes present in the line of
Lombard portraits looking contemptuously down on her in the
corridors of the huge manor house. The infant’s “death” was officially
pronounced by Dr. Shady to all the world, the reality being otherwise.

 

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Published by Francis H Powell

What better way to put all my angst into short stories. Born in a commuter belt city called Reading and like many a middle or upper class child of such times I was shunted off to an all-male boarding school aged eight, away from my parents for periods of up to twelve weeks at a time. In such an institutions, where I was to rest until my seventeenth year, there was no getting away from the cruel jibes hurled at me from taunting tormentors. My refuge was the arts room, where I started to find some kind of redemption from the stark Dickensian surroundings, whose aim was nurture the army officers, businessmen, and gentry that dominate the class ridden world I was born into. The seeds were sown, I was an outsider, Happier times were to follow, I went to art school, where I attempted to exorcize my time spent at school. At eighteen I turned my back on a parentally enforced weekly visit to church and my head was filled with a range of nonconformist ideas. While at my first Art college through a friend I met a writer called Rupert Thomson, who was at the time in the process of writing his first book “Dreams of leaving”. He was a bit older than myself, me being fresh out of school, but his personality and wit resonated and despite losing contact with him, I always read his latest published books with not only great expectation and unabashed admiration, but also a fascination for a person I had really looked up to, his sentences always tight, shooting arrows that always hit the mark. My yearning to be creative stayed strong and diversified, from my twenties through to my thirties and forties I made electronic music, doing concerts, in front ecstasy infused crowds, at a point I was making videos and short films. When the age of the internet arrived I was really able translate my creative endeavors into something really tangible. To earn a living I have worked as a teacher. I moved to Austria where upon I thought I would try writing. It is sure that my writing at that time was rough and rugged and without direction. I dived into a story about immortality, the story remains vegetating on some dusty floppy disk. Then tried short stories for children with illustrations to go with them. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-forties that my writing took shape. I was at this point living in Paris, France. I spotted an advert for short stories. The magazine happened to be called Rat Mort (dead rat) I sent off a short story, in the hope it would match the seemingly dark world the magazine seemed to embroiled in. I got no answer. Not put off I sent two more stories. Finally I got an answer. It seemed the magazine editor was a busy man, a man prone to travelling. It seemed my first story really hit the right note with him. His name was Alan Clark. He had a flat in the Montmartre area of Paris, where he seemed known to all, especially those who frequented his favorite drinking haunts. He offered me many words of encouragement. I was writing stories that were coming into my head at regular intervals, as if a monster had suddenly awakened. I was writing them on scraps of paper, less I would forget them, while I travelled on the Paris metro, going about my teaching work with staid business types. I had found a format for writing that worked, as well as a hunger to write about the demons of my past that still haunted me. Moving closer to present times, the desire to put together an anthology seemed to resonate in my mind. The Flight of Destiny evolved slowly. Many trans-Atlantic exchanges between myself and two editors seemingly far away. This evolution took my writing to a new level and the stories more depth and resonance.

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