Slow Chemical -- Introduction

I will be posting the full Slow Chemical story here over the next few weeks. I've gone back and modified the chapter that has been published elsewhere and added a new introduction, and I'll post the latter now. I will add chapters of Slow Chemical between every regular Blog entry until the full story is up, and I will try to do this in a somewhat quicker fashion than usual. For those who don't know, the basic idea behind Slow Chemical is to be a vampyric metaphor for the worlds I'm driven by in all of my writing: politics and the arts. Enjoy.

My name is Cloven Malcolm. I am a twenty-three-year-old student at the University of British Columbia. I was born and raised a few towns over in Chilliwack, where my mother still lives. She is alone now, with my being at school and the recent death of her husband of sixteen years. He wasn't my father, and I honestly never even liked the guy, but she has been very depressed and hopeless with him gone. I'm going to stay with her for a couple of weeks just to be sure that things are all right and maybe just because I miss her, and the country.

My friends would probably describe me as a man of few words, but they don't know all that I want to say. The words are there, they just don't come around when I need them. If it were left up to me, I would call myself a man of action -- I know what I want and will always strive for it without exceptions; never willing to settle. I lived a lot of my life as a pushover until I got out of high school, so now I'm eager to lock horns, even if not so much with words; my actions scream.

My earliest memory is of falling into a blackberry bramble when I was just three years of age. I lay in agony with thorns stuck in every part of my body, completely silent for fear of burdening anybody with having to rescue such a stupid child. I watched dozens of people pass me by for hours as I bled, and wept as quietly as I could. When day turned to night my family came looking for me -- I watched them pass as well. The following day I heard my grandfather calling out to me from nearby, begging for me to come home, and eventually I summoned the courage to let out a sheepish, embarrassed, "I'm in the bush..." Gramps came to me and pulled me out of the bush, and asked if I was okay. "I'm fine," I told him, "but I was stuck in the bush for a while." I nearly died, but felt bad for taking up a bed at the hospital.

My rebellious years were less exciting than most. The worst thing that I ever did was steal a Ninja Turtle toy from a department store, and nobody ever found out about it. However, after a few weeks I returned to the store, racked with guilt, and snuck it back into its original spot on the shelf; I hadn't even opened the package. Once that had been corrected I took up mowing neighborhood lawns and soon saved the money to buy a whole set of action figures, and to this day I still have the lot of them in their packages.

I met Ashley that same year. I was thirteen and she was a sophisticated fifteen. I remember when we were introduced by our friend Adam, who put her up to slapping me across the face in place of the customary "hello" or a handshake. Somehow, I admired her for doing it, and in an unprecedented bold move I told her that I found her "real cute." We've been together since that day; I plan to marry her when I'm done with school. Adam still thinks I'm gay.

Well, the bus is about to set off for Chilliwack, so I'll pick this up when I get back from my visit. It should only be a couple of weeks.

-Cloven :)