Writing to Explore / Imagine / Entertain - "Patchwork Guilt"

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Joseph Fitzpatrick                                       GCSE English creative writing coursework

Writing to Explore / Imagine / Entertain

“Patchwork Guilt”

His eyes were not locked on anyone or anything in particular, but to all those around him they seemed to be fixed on the floor in front of him. The piercing sound of the lawyer’s voice resounded throughout the courtroom, tearing apart the remnants of his hope. He couldn’t see a future in front of him; despondency and dejection were the only things left. A cough echoed behind him and it punctured his spirit – he realised his hand had jumped to his heart, and his trembling became uncontrollable.

The voices in his head became loud and shrieking. He was being told to scream and shout, run away or collapse. His subconscious mind fought with his conscious mind, and as barrages of shells flew across a tattered, war-torn landscape, any desire for peace and serenity that he may have had faded into the background.

Mere minutes before this, the protagonist in question was in a somewhat less commiserable state. Most of the inhabitants of his mind were from races of fear and anxiety. These emotions had found themselves in this unusually pleasant home because of a lapse of understanding within his own thought processes. The gates of his mind were left open because those left with the duty of closing them (a pair of aloof and pompous emotions named pride and affectation) were unable to carry out their business because they were required to attend a meeting near the central hub of the mind. This was a meeting that was held in order to ascertain the truth about why the host was to be tried and possibly sentenced. This would be a disaster for all of the inhabitants of his mind.

During the period in which fear and and anxiety ruled the innards of his mind, our protagonist decided to think through the possibilities of how he ended up in this terrifying situation. The terror rose throughout his thinking process, as it became more and more apparent to him that his fate would not be pleasant. This culminated in the war of emotions that took place in his mind later that day. The early afternoon – known among some circles as the late morning – was selected by unknown forces to be the time of day in which our protagonist was to awake. No memory of the past events was left – it had all been cleared out and disposed of by the subconscious sector of the new host that had taken over his mind. His first terrifying discovery after he woke up was that of the blood in which his arms were covered. Upon this somewhat abnormal circumstance being brought to light, he did what most young, excitable men would do (particularly if they had no memory of the last few days). He screamed.

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While he was still in the process of rearranging his thoughts to suit his situation, the doorbell rang. Much to his dismay, it was the police. This was especially unsettling due to the fact that his arms were indeed still covered in blood. The officers decided at this point that they would arrest this man, so despite his feeble efforts to make them sympathise with him, he ended up on a long spirally road to the courtroom. During the period between these two events, information was revealed to our protagonist on an irregular basis. By the time he turned ...

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