On my walk home I passed a group of dancing children, they were dancing to Kim Novak’s Oil on Water. They were performing some kind of play in the town centre, the music gave it an eerie and macabre feel even in the bright sunshine. Their small faces were all covered with masks as they played out their roles. I stood to watch for a while but having missed the beginning it was difficult to understand the significance.

The night out with Didi was not to happen in the end. The next time I saw Didi she was in hospital. For both Didi and myself our return homes were experiences we would not forget.

I got back into the room at around five, the house smelt of skunk. I guessed it must have been lingering from smoking last evening but it did seem awfully strong still. I placed my bag down in the kitchen and got a glass of water, my mouth dry with the lacquer of alcohol. There were a couple of glasses, in the kitchen, long vodka tonics, nothing strange about that, mum hitting the drinks early. I put them in the sink and went to shower.

I found them together in my mother’s bed, his bare back visible. It had been so close to me only hours before. I knew it was him, though I could not see his face. I didn’t recognise my mother beneath her face of shame.

Didi I couldn’t recognise beneath the face she had been inflicted. Her mother’s boyfriend had returned to the house drunk. She had tried to fight him off, but if anything this had only made his rage the worse. He had beaten and raped her.

Another Sleepless night for me. She reminded me, the Tracy Chapman lyric. After I saw Didi at the hospital I walked. I walked out of the hospital and away from everyone, but there was never an escape – not from people. In everyone’s face I saw nothing more than a pantomime.

Storm clouds formed over-head. I watched their shadows creep over me. I felt cold.

Critical Analysis

The desire was to do a piece from several perspectives. The story developed from having three narratives to just two, the viewpoints of Jason and Lucy. The use of first person was important because this allowed a build up of character and also meant that the reader would gather the story as it developed, rather than open the story up to early by use of an omniscient narrtor.

Influenced by Huraki Murikami and Brett Eastern Ellis – the Jason character being a development of ideas from Less Than Zero, the story moves slowly and steadily with a subtle plot. Both these writers use simple direct first person character driven narratives in much of their work. Murikami’s work is beautiful in its simple yet poetic language. His work can be extremely surreal (Kafka being a big influence on him). Yet his work has a realism to it that this piece intended to utilise. The aspect of the masks is where the influence comes in. The symbolism of masks, covering ones identity is an idea that people use in their everyday lives.

The song included by Kim Novak is a reference to this, it discusses how we wear different masks for different people. There are several musical references in the piece. These are to help the reader to connect with the piece by referencing music they may well know, and also to add a secondary sensory aspect to the story.

Each of the songs is representative of the scene of the character. The first song by Lamb is a song about pregnancy and the connection between the mother and child. Here the character Jason is alone in his car, however he is lonely and he listens to the song to comfort him. The Killers song is a reference to how Jason feels and also to the situation of cheating later, and the Tracy Chapman Song lyric from Behind the Walls is a reference to household abuse.

The story is weak in that the pace is a little too slow and much of the story is clichéd. The attempt was to write about normal situations and add a secondary more sinister undertone – the masks we wear. However the story does not seem to have progressed to its necessary limit.