A Delay Equals Extracts

I did say I was going to write my thoughts on children's literature, I will do that Thursday, so instead I've given another extract of my work - just so you guys don't think I'm talking about writing but not actually writing. This is a story that has been on the back-burner for a while and called 'Untitled Romance'. I'm working on a short story called The Cobweb House right now and brainstorming for Cupid's Obsession so this will remain on the back-burner but I've put it here to show I can write other stuff too, well, experimental anyway...

Oliver

I don’t believe in much. I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell or the Inbetween. I don’t believe in good or evil. But there is one thing I do believe in: that there is one person out there for all of us. Your life is basically on hold until you find that one person, until you meet him or her and you can start your life of blissful happiness. Of course I’m not too stupid to believe that everything is great when you meet Mr. Right, I mean he could be a complete wanker but you still love him because you know he’s for you, that he completes you. That’s what I believe. One of the very few things I believe. My mother once told me that believing in something is putting your faith into it, putting everything you find important on this one thing, this one belief.

            I believe in Love. I’m a hopeless romantic, so romantic I believe Love deserves a capital letter. I remember being six years old and overheard Roxanne Brown talking with her friend of how much she loved her boyfriend and wanted to marry him – she was six at the time also – and I found it so romantic. Romance is the key to life, without romance, without Love we are nothing, have nothing. That’s another thing I believe. It’s a fact that all humans Love, all humans feel it and give it, it’s what completes us. It’s part of us.

            That’s what I believe. 

           

Nathan

When my girlfriend of six months told me she loved me I freaked out. I choked. I remember it to be the most uncomfortable, most excruciatingly horrible moment of my eighteen years of life. What could I have done? Lied and told her I loved her back? Whispered into her ear “me too” or do the dreadful “I love spending time with you too”? I was gobsmacked, shaken and bewildered. It goes without saying she dumped me an hour after that, after a loud argument of her saying I was a heartless pig and me trying to defend myself by calling her a girl who walked around with her heart on her sleeve.

            That’s one thing I hate – the person that wears their heart on their sleeve, the person that falls in love with anyone that pays them a little bit of attention. I mean come on, get a life and man the fuck up a little bit. Before that girlfriend, Sarah her name was, I had entered a life of sex and very little commitment. In eighteen years I have shagged – let me think – fifteen girls, the sixteenth didn’t count because we didn’t go the whole way. I’ve been described as heartless, as confused, as cold, soulless, emotionless, basically anything with ‘less’ on the end of it I’ve been called. I try...Kinda.

            I’m just not the guy who falls in love, OK?

            That’s what I said to Sarah during our argument which caused her to end it there and storm out of my house. Ten of the fifteen girls have said they had feelings for me, two said they love me, the first girl was called Anna and was completely off her face at the time so I managed to wriggle my way out of that one, the other was Sarah and the dreaded confrontation that came with it. I’ve liked people, I guess. Yeah, yeah, I’ve liked people just not love.

            I don’t even know what love is.

            How can you believe in something you don’t understand?