No longer Hogmanay but "Jennifer" rewritten.

Jennifer

The Snow was falling deep and fast as I gazed from my closed, dirty, window out onto a white winter's dream. There were children playing, building snowmen, throwing snowballs, their faces and hands red with the cold where you could see them, where they peeked through the layers of canvas and wool and they looked beautiful, they looked new, just as the world from my window looked. The snow fell upon them like a cold blanket, a funeral shroud, covering living red faces with a pale alabaster glamour. They were as angel statues found in a graveyard.

Everything had changed, everything was new, everything was white. Some were walking in the snow, some pushing prams, others scraping car windscreens, wrapped in Scarves, wearing hats and coats that were too big for them. All looked like rather drab snowmen, I thought, laughing to myself.

Snowmen are always fat, the round rolling of the snow maybe to echo the roundness of clothing and coats that people wear when the real chill sets in. Many of the adults had red noses, jack frost or Jack Daniels was to blame, no wonder you used a carrot as a nose for a snowman. In the shadows, under the hats you could not see their eyes, everything looked black in winters shadow, so use coal for the eyes of the snowman. Pull branches from a tree, wild and gnarled and stick them in the side of the snowman, It looks like he is going to grab you, his stick fingers draw you to him and hold you tight.

Black eyes staring into your own, orange carrot nose touching yours the little roots tickling your nose, the carrot smell entering your nose. Crying, I try to break away but the stick fingers hold tightly; my shoulder, back, legs, I cannot get free.

“Jennifer”, “Jennifer” the voice broke my reverie and the thought of snow and snowmen slowly disappeared from my mind.

Well I don’t like to talk about it but the doctor told me to. He said that if I could keep track of the thoughts in my head by writing them down then I would not get so angry.

He is not a real Doctor of course, my real Doctor just listens to something in my chest, puts a swimming aid on my arm, pumps it up and gives me pills. The other Doctor is not a real Doctor, He just talks and listens.

What sort of a Doctor tries to save your life by talking and listening? He doesn’t even put the swimming aid on me but I don’t mind. What use is a swimming aid when you are not in the water? Useless, I say. I will write about my arm being strangled as he blows up the flotation aid. I bet mummy felt it just the same when I put my hands on her throat and pushed.

It is very uncomfortable and I often complain to the real doctor when he puts on the arm band. Mummy never complained, though I think she was angry. Her face turned red and then kinda purple but she never said anything just made some snorting noises, I thought they were funny.

I think that she is annoyed with me. She has never visited me even if I wait for her every day. I look out the window and see the snow, and the fat people. I look out the window and see the skinny girls in bikinis when the sun shines, I see the lives of others but only from my window. They do not let me out my room since I told them of my father.

Jennifer?

I pushed the big knife I found in the kitchen drawer right into his chest. Bodies are tougher than you think, I had to push with both hands and put all my weight upon the handle for it to slide in. My father always smelled bad but opened up he smelled even worse, he smelled like chicken that had gone off. My mother was screaming and I was supposed to be going to the park. The silly bitch could not take me as she had been cheeky and my dad did not like cheeky, he hated cheeky as I had found out too many times to tell you of here. He called me “silly bitch” just as often as he told my mother that she was.

Jennifer?

I opened my eyes and saw the doctor sat across from me in his grey chair. “Always the same chair”, I thought; “always the same room”, “ always the same window that looked out on the park”. “The same snow blessed scenes and summer filled brightness”.

“Jennifer? do you remember now? he asked quietly, in his calming voice, “do you remember your father taking the knife from your hands when it could not pass the bone?

Do you remember that the snowman is nothing but frozen water and other hands grasped you and made you do things that you did not wish to do? “Do you remember that it was not you but he that killed your mother” strangling her as you lay upon the floor unable to help.

Jennifer?

I could not hear what he said, there was thunder in my head and I just wished to look out my window again. To see the children playing in the snow, to see the fat people with red noses again. There was no one to hurt me here.

My room, my window, I was home, glad to be rid of the bitch and her dog. It is good to be small, female and innocent. I was only two of these things. One day they will set me free. When the silly doctor that is not a real doctor has talked enough and the real doctor with the flotation aid finds me “safe” for release. I will rejoice as much as my captors and then I will kill again. I like it.