THE WORLD IS FULL OF LAUGHTER BOOK EXTRACT
opening chapter
I’m self-hate surrounded by
mirrors.
Not the many glass ones I have shattered, ensuring I have no good luck for
the next thousand lifetimes. No, the mirror of the eyes that constantly watch
me. Mirrors with names, smiles, souls and lies.
“You’ve got your Daddy’s eyes and your Daddy’s lies.
Cut them out!” The voices tell me over and over again.
Can memories turn into psychosis? These are memories that touch me with the
insistence of a branding iron. Writing this memoir, I have to make sure that
it doesn’t turn into a suicide note.
My father was an actor and musician, so I grew up in the entertainment industry.
My father also thought of himself as a comedian, but you didn’t hear
much laughter in our home.
The first film I remember working in as an extra was ‘The Empire Strikes
Back’. The film set was the interior of a space station and there were
all kinds of monsters walking about. I didn’t know it was make-believe
– I thought it was a documentary. 20 years later my mind had left planet
Earth too.
“You’ve got your Daddy’s eyes and your Daddy’s lies.
Cut them out!”
I’m standing over my sleeping father with a knife in my hand. Because
he is a demonic alien plotting my destruction, he has to die; I am going to
bring down the knife down on his face. “Look who’s laughing now,”
I say. It doesn’t matter to me that I am heading for a special hospital
or eventual suicide. As a mental health professional said to me: “Dolly,
your next stop is Broadmoor.” It didn’t matter because I did what
I had to do to survive. Can’t people understand that?
As he sleeps, I watch him, waiting for the right moment to kill. Waiting.
Waiting. His awful body odour, the old food in his beard, the spit marks on
the floor, just makes me angrier and angrier. I raise the knife, ready to
plunge it into this fucking waste of a human being. Another set of eyes is
staring at me - from the wall. It is a picture of me as a child, smiling for
the camera. I try three times to stab my father’s skull, but a child
is watching, and I can’t do it. “I’m sorry for turning you
into a murderer,” I say to the photo. “I used to be a child once,
I used to be a little girl…"
The
World is Full of Laughter is available from www.chipmunkapublishing.com
or www.amazon.co.uk
Or through by order through any bookshop
ISBN: 09542218 1 8