The secret writings of Oasis Carpella
-
Melissa
Holden, September 2012
Prologue
Stories like
this are needed in the world. Not to depress us, or enlighten us for a moral
high ground, but to highlight the truth in everything. The cliché of it all.
How people never change. The silver lining of it all. The mundanity of our
lives.
I don’t
expect to change anything with this story, but only to have it known to myself
that I tried.
If you know
me personally, you will know why my focus is pain. If you don’t know me, I hope
you never figure it out. Writing isn’t to make people understand you; it’s to
help them understand themselves and the chaos around them.
1
I have
wanted to be a writer since I was a child, but my father always said “Writing
is for people who are clever. Not for girls like you. Just get married and have
kids. It’s better that way”.
So, I
married. Here I am, years later, a 20 year old with three unruly children and a
husband that can’t see through his fog of intoxication, and I am finally doing
it. (Well, I’m hiding with my laptop in the bathroom – but I think it still
counts). I will never write a novel, it’s not my style. Instead, I shall
explain how I got here.
2
Fiction
makes people feel inspired and want to experience life in a new way, at least
for a short while. When I read Before I
Die, I wrote a list of what I wanted in my life:
-
To write a novel that will change
someone’s life
-
To never be alone
-
To be able to have children
-
To find the truth of it all
-
To do something crazy
-
To feel true love
-
To have my family back
As you may
have noticed, I have not completed my list.
Jamie, my
husband, is a brute of a man. He smells of Sterling cigarettes, always smokes weed,
and necks cheap beer from the corner shop on our street. My children, are
incapable of quiet, even the youngest, Clara, who’s only 1, finds time in her
busy day of sleeping and soiling herself to scream with her hearts content.
Non-stop.
You must
think this is my fault, that I am a bad wife and a terrible mother. To be
perfectly honest, so do I. He is my husband.
They are my children. I chose this life.
I will,
however, explain WHY I have to hide my lust for writing on a secret laptop that
I hide in my topmost underwear draw, and why my children hate me.
For you see,
one person’s fiction, is another person’s reality.
3
My twin
sister, Ocean, was a strong, independent girl of 18 before she died. As far as
twins go, we are very different. We may both have written our feelings down,
but she expressed her deepest, darkest secrets, whilst I spoke about social
ineptitudes.
I remember
finding Ocean’s diary one night when we were fifteen. We had recently moved
from our beautiful suburban house to a shoddy flat in a busy and unfamiliar
town. Due to the move, we now, after fifteen years of blissful separation, had
to share a room. I distinctly remember feeling the amusement any fifteen year
old girl does when they find a diary. Somebody
else’s secrets. Somebody else’s pain. Instead of tear-stained pages, I
found hastily glued in photos of Ocean and her friends, at the park, shopping,
at sleepovers, the normal locations of a teen. Then I found something else, a
photo that rocked me to me core. Ocean, my beautiful innocent sister, strung up
with black leather ropes, unconscious and alone. Her pale skin on show for the
world to see. On the back of the photo were the words,
I had a great night babe, we should
do that again.
And if we don’t, I WILL find you.
J.
Xxx
I was
speechless, was my sister being raped?
Did she love him? Had she told our parents? Why hadn’t she told me? I had no clue. My Ocean would never
do anything like this; she was a careful girl, wasn’t she?
I read the
page opposite the photo, and once again found myself silenced.
“This is the
photo Jamie sent me from last week; he says the camera LOVES me! I can’t wait
to do it again, but I don’t want to tell anyone, they will get the wrong idea.
I love Jamie and he would never hurt me – I know it.” A week later, I found my
sister crying on her bed, clutching that very photo. He had sent it to a
magazine and all her friends had seen it.
I wish that
had been the worst of it.
Now my
sister was as outcast as I was. I didn’t like it one bit, so I decided to
change, to prove them all wrong, and hope she followed in my path.
4
I published
my first article in the school newspaper the same week, talking about
stereotypes and the way teenagers behave around each other. The isolation of
our age, our generation. We can’t confide in our parents, they won’t
understand. Our siblings will only tease, and our friends will always judge us
– no matter how close you think they are to your heart.
The bullying
stopped for Ocean, because she did exactly what I expected – she judged, and
teased and hurt me. Just as every other girl did. I didn’t mind. I was used to
it and it was worth it just to see her smile again. We only had a few more
months left of GCSE’s and then it was college. I wanted to study Writing and
Ocean had a new found passion for beauty. She got in with a new group of
people, and I thought this time things would be different for us.
Alas, even
when we had started college, I noticed she was acting different, much like she
had before when I found her distraught and alone. I soon discovered Jamie was in the picture
again.
This time,
it was drugs.
She was on
something. She was addicted. I could tell by her face. She was pasty and aloof.
Her eyes red-rimmed and her hair knotted. She started skipping classes and
spent most of her time in our bathroom, sometimes she took Jamie in there with
her, sometimes it was girls from college. She would come out with an expression
like a frightened deer, caught in the headlights.
Over the
next few months, she became more aggressive, yet fragile. She was never home.
She missed our eighteenth birthday party because she was hospitalized after an
overdose. It was never enough for her anymore.
She moved on
to harder stuff, as I found out when I came home from a date with Eric Life, to
find the needle still thrust into her arm as she lolled on the bedroom floor. I
phoned an ambulance and our parents. Later on that week, my parents reported
Ocean to the police. They discovered four kilos of cocaine powder in clear
white bags. She
was to be imprisoned for a twelve year stretch after a three month stay in
hospital for possession with intent to sell. She was covering for Jamie, who
was dealing at the time and to avoid raids, stashed the drugs with Ocean.
Whilst in
hospital, she had the typical withdrawal symptoms of any drug addict; she had
crashed, and then started to crave the drugs as if they were vital for her
survival. When that was denied, she stopped eating, stopped living. In the end,
she stopped being herself.
My mother, a
frail Italian immigrant, fainted when she saw her youngest daughter (a full
hour younger than myself) hooked up to breathing machines and numerous tubes.
Her beautiful olive green skin covered in bruises; once bright blue eyes sunken
into her skull. She was a corpse, and she would stay that way.
I spent
those three months by her side, alone and ashamed. Our parents had abandoned
us. They couldn’t handle a drug addict for a daughter and a failed writer, a
wreck of a child, barely out of college, who had quit her job, life and
boyfriend, Eric, to take care of the fragile life form that lay dying beside
her.
After about
six or seven weeks, she woke up. I left a voicemail for our parents, but it was
never returned. Shortly after that, my father came to tell us that they had
moved, and would not be telling us where. We were abandoned and alone. No
parents, no home, no money.
A week after
that, our mother killed herself. Father blamed us, but I think it was her own
guilt that got to her in the end. She had never wanted to leave Italy, neither
of our parents did. It was only for the money and the lifestyle that we ever
left. My father returned to Italy the same day as the funeral.
In the end,
it was the lifestyle and the money that killed Ocean.
5
As you may
have noticed, my life sounds somewhat similar to what Ocean’s would have become
if she had survived.
Then again,
it technically is, for I am Mrs Ocean Brenner, wife of Jamie Brenner, mother of
three children that aren’t genetically mine.
That was the
thing about me and Ocean, as long as you didn’t know us very well, you could
never tell us apart. I never thought Jamie Brenner never knew my sister very
well, but I was wrong.
You see, as
far as anyone knows, it was Oasis Carpella, aged 18, that died at the hand of a
drug dealer, trying to protect her bone idol sister and save her soul, but in
fact, it was Ocean that died.
6
Perhaps, I
should explain?
Ocean
convinced me to switch places with her one night in January. It was snowing
outside, and she wanted to feel it brisk coldness of the air before it was too
late.
As Ocean had
been deemed too sick to even eat, there were no policemen guarding her hospital
door. It was only ever me with her. I was the only face she saw for three
months. But I wasn’t the last.
Ocean
betrayed my trust. That is all I know. I don’t know how it happened, or how she
did it, but she ended up with an ex-boyfriend that night. Another drug user. He
hooked her up and within minutes, she went into cardiac arrest. Her body was
too fragile to cope with the drugs. The boy stabbed her to death in fear. It
was later discovered that he had been taking been on heroine the night she
died, a very powerful drug, especially for someone as unstable as her, and had
overdosed. He was imprisoned for six months, before released later for good
behaviour.
“Good
behaviour”. That’s what I read in the local paper. Good behaviour. Clearly my sister’s murder did not count towards his behaviour.
I was
unaware of what had happened that night until a friend of Ocean’s came to see
me. Still in character at this point, I greeted her with warmth, as Ocean would
have. Her face told me something was wrong. Was it my father? Had something
happened?
The friend
then proceeded to tell me that Oasis had been stabbed to death after being
attacked by a drug dealer. Everyone
thought I was dead and that I was Ocean in this bed, supposedly dying from her
drug abuse.
Only I knew
that the dead body in the morgue six floors down, really was Ocean’s and I was
still alive. A police report later informed me that Ocean had taken my jacket,
with my ID cards in it. No one was the wiser and now I was trapped. Alone, a
liar, and was about to be imprisoned for three years. I had no way out other
than to tell the truth. Or so I thought.
Then something
strange happened. Jamie came to the hospital. The drug ridden boyfriend of my
now deceased sister. He knew Ocean better than I thought. He knew who was
really dead. He gave me an ultimatum, which I have to admit, I saw no other way
out, than to follow him. I scrambled out of Oceans hospital bed, got dressed,
and escaped.
This was the
action I regretted the most.
7
I hope you
understand - I felt I had no choice. I was an innocent girl from a small town.
I wasn’t ready to go to prison. Alas, karma has reached me and I am now
imprisoned in a loveless marriage and a life that isn’t mine.
Now I bet
you are flicking back to the first chapter, reading the age, how many children.
Then flicking to the part where I confess how the children aren’t really mine.
Now you are realising how old Ocean was when she died.
I am writing
this book two years after her death. It is how I will grieve for her, how I
shall miss her and how I shall escape.
Jamie beats
me every day, to punish me for Oceans death. Some days I feel like I deserve
it. Today I don’t. I’ve been hiding for over an hour. It’s almost dinner time
and I can hear Jamie’s children screaming downstairs. But I don’t care. This is
my sanctuary and I shall not leave it until I am dragged.
This will
never be published, and I know it. I just hope that if it is, my parents shall
read it. I want them to know what happened to Ocean and myself. Why we suffered
as we did. Why she died instead of me. Why Ocean has never contacted them. Why
I lied for her. Why I am stuck in her life. In her marriage. With him. Why I am
miserable and Jamie loves it.
THE END
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