11 - Your Swann

Exercise 11: Patterns/Used-Literature/Your Swann: "Write a letter from one of your fictional characters to another. In this letter, tell a brief history of another (third) character over many years who plays at least three significantly different roles over the letter writer's lifetime [...] 500 words."

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Letter from an unnamed secondary character in one unnamed story to an unnamed objective character in another unnamed story.



Dear XXXXXX,



I am sending someone else soon. A man. Found him by mistake during one of my shows. He caused a rift under hypnosis, frantically ranting on the inconsequential nature of life. I had lost control, and was afraid of losing my audience for good. It is under control now, you will see him soon.


But this man is not the primary reason I write. You certainly must have noticed that my mother showed up. Or at least, I assume you noticed an older woman. I suppose there was nothing to indicate she was my mother, but maybe you noticed a resemblance. Probably not.


She was losing herself and I couldn't stand to see her just give up. She wanted to see the man with whom she had conceived me again. I think so. I found details in old letters from the attic. She cried nights. I don't think she was desperate, just missing. It was maybe some sort of mental deterioration, what have you, she was certainly delusional. I knew if I sent her to you she could find something that would be temporarily satisfying, perhaps enough to be forgotten.


As a boy I was blind. You know this. She cured this blindness by suggesting I wasn't, refusing to concede to the fact that her only child could not see. It was through her that I learned how to harness the motion of submission. She never had to teach me anything: all I had to do was bask in the power of her refusal, understand that the time my sight returned was after my fall, after she had spent 45 minutes telling me I would see, I would see. She was holding me, asleep in her arms, and her voice crept into my ear: at the final moment, my soft frame collapsed onto carpet, she was raised her voice in screams but continued with the hymn: "You will be able to see when you wake up."


And I did, and I loved her for it. But I was still a bastard, and this was occasionally a source of embarrassment. She couldn't care in the slightest: she loved the man, but he never loved her in return: there was only me. As a teenager I had complete control over her, between being the symbol of all she adored & my rapidly developing talents of hypnosis, she was utterly lost to me. I will admit that I abused my own hold on her, her submission, but the folly of youth prevents considering utter remorse.


She has affected me throughout my life, I mean that. And I hope her transition to the walls was pleasant for all involved. I hope there was a spectacle, passion. I hope you could feel her words, I hope you could see. I hope she lit up and spectraled.



Sincerely,

XXXXXXXXXX