The Real World Book Project: An experiment in fiction

One of the most interesting things about living in the ghetto-like Eastern suburbs was the constant danger that real crime was around the corner, and you just never knew if a predator was waiting in the bushes or a flasher was around the next street or maybe even a rapist. It was a real roll of the dice.

Paradoxically, the place where Kimberly lived was filled with trees and a massive park was next door. It was developing and property from around the corner was selling at prices that were eight times was the average person could afford. A very strange place indeed: on the one hand the worse crime area in her fair city and on the other it had made many yuppies and rich people ever richer. Moving around was like walking through a part of Heaven that Satan owned. It was a good thing it was this way because previous to living here, Kimberly had been in a place with ‘white padded walls’.

Inside her mind, which was a place that scared most of her therapists, was a world of her own creation. In this world, she created the day or what the day would be like if she wasn’t incapacitated by her medication. She saw herself, stroking her long red hair without thinking that it was going to fall out, she saw a great smile on her face as she sat playfully in her boyfriends (or husbands or whatever) lap and flirted with him. Often, she dreamed that she could go out in public for extended periods of time without worrying about what other people might be thinking. As her mother always said to her, ‘they can take your freedom away but they can’t stop your imagination. As long as you have that, you can achieve anything.’ Mum was full of crap though, because they can take your imagination, especially when you must take these drugs.

Kimberly looked at the wall with fierce concentration again to see if it had more moving parts that she could amuse herself with, and it appeared as if the shadow had stayed put. Suddenly she began to feel very light headed, yet another effect of the drugs, as she stared at the wall. What was worse, she was now feeling disoriented. Kimberly looked back at the wall, and again that damned shadow appeared to move from one side of the picture to the other. On the wall a homeboy was pictured with a big smile on his face carrying a couple of guns and a thick gold chain around his neck.

How typical…

The shadow began moving again but not like the last time. It began to extend itself off the wall taking on a third dimension. Kimberly didn’t like the feeling of losing control, she blinked and then it was gone. Not believing what she had just seen Kimberly looked again and the shadow had been where it was originally drawn – at least according to the way the sun was positioned in the sky.

‘What the hell was that,’ she said uneasily, ‘shadows can’t move like that … I have to stop drinking so much coffee.’

Isolation does funny things to the mind you know—funny things it does, like what happens when you hurt people—you hurt them and they die.