1:5 How Evil Came Into The World

Your task is to take the story about how evil comes into the world, the story King tells about the Witches’ convention in Chapter One of The Truth about Stories, and change it any way you want, except the ending. You can change to place, the people, the time – anything you want. But, your story must have the same moral – it must tell us how evil came into the world and how once a story is told, it cannot be taken back.

I have a great story to tell you. Great not in the form of laughter and love but in the form of a warning.

Rachel slowly opened her eyes and tried to take in the world before her. Everything was blurry. Red, blue, and yellow dots replaced what usually would have been her living room: filled with the couch she falls asleep on at night as she watches TV; the coffee table covered by a puzzle that was only half way done because her daughter’s bedtime always arrived before completion; and the book case filled with children books, self-help books but most importantly pictures of her late husband, cuddling the children, but never cuddling her. Slowly the dots began to fade and the eerie silence that had been there since she woke was now all she could hear. Something was wrong. She looked all around her and realized that what she believed was the soft touch of her couch – her second bed – was in fact the soft curls of the living room rug. Her left hand was stuck grasped around an empty bottle of whiskey.  The bottle’s lid was across the room and as Rachel looked at the contents; only one drop was left, and as she moved the one drop fell from the bottle and landed with a great thud on the rug. The silence was so grand that the drop of liquid was echoing.

Thudding, pounding and buzzing then took over the silence. These deafening sounds were happening within her head but now the screams and laughter of the neighbourhood children walking to school grew louder and louder. She quietly prayed that her daughter, Molly had not entered the living room as she left for school. Usually Molly would stomp from her room, making sure every step on the stairs was heard by her mother, slam the kitchen door as she left with a piece of toast in her hand. However, the power of the whiskey was stronger than the force of Molly’s temper. Rachel slowly rose from the ground and was struck by a flash of memory. An image in her head appeared: all she could see was darkness but at the end of the darkness was a light, the light was moving. The light was moving quickly away from her, as if in fear. The closer Rachel would get to the light a cry would eject from the light, the closer she got the more the cry sounded like a scream. Rachel could not understand this image, where had it come from and why did it leave her feeling scared. Scared to move and scared to accept why she was feeling the way she did. As the image passed, Rachel’s vision was now focused on the two empty whiskey bottles that laid on the kitchen counter. She was hungover. She felt sick at the amount she had drank and the state she was in. Fear over powered her and she was scared to look any further to see what else lays within the house that could remind her of her behaviour from the previous night.

Rachel promised Molly she would no longer drink. That she was off the substance that Molly deemed as evil. Rachel lied. She began to walk in circles trying her hardest to remember what she had done the night before. The awful feeling she felt began to build and build, she must have done something. Her body was aching but it was not the same kind of ache she usually felt after a night of drinking. Something was different. Did this have something to do with the image she just had? She remembered that Jack the local dealer had offered up his place to stay if she wanted to get drunk. She rejected the offer but had not rejected the bottles of whiskey she bought. Jack was the reason the evil came into Rachel’s world last night but he was not the reason it first came into her world.

Finally Rachel pulled herself upstairs to the bathroom so she could freshen up. On her way to the bathroom she passed Molly’s room, and as she did she stopped at the door. Molly’s bed was perfectly made which made Rachel question what she was seeing. Molly never made her bed so Rachel knew in that moment that Molly had not slept in it last night. So where did Molly sleep? Rachel assumed her daughter was acting out again, like she always did, so she let it go and continued on to the bathroom. As she went to open the bathroom door her entry was blocked as the door hit something. Rachel pushed the door hard to make enough room for her to squeeze in and as she slipped through the gap between the door and its frame, Rachel stopped and screamed. There on the bathroom floor laid her baby. Molly was passed out, covered in blood, bruises and cuts. The first thing Rachel saw was the cut across Molly’s cheek which was so deep you could see the bone. Rachel began to cry out as she held Molly, praying she was alive, she leaned in and heard a shallow breath and knew she had to get help. Quickly Rachel got up to run to the phone but caught her reflection in the mirror. She froze and feared what she saw. In the mirror Rachel saw herself, saw an evil she had never seen before that she knew was created by a greater evil. Rachel’s clothes were covered in blood, her left hand was bruised but most importantly Rachel could not stop staring at the scar that sat on her own cheek. The scar she could never forget, and most importantly never forget who gave it to her, but now lay upon the face of her daughter. In this moment Rachel came to the realization that Molly was the light and she was the darkness. The malevolence that created Rachel’s scar now had taken power of Rachel and continued its journey. Rachel knew she could never take back what had happened, what happened to her was now not only her past but now her daughter’s future. Her story had now propelled forward instead of ending.

I have never created a story and then told it to others so this was a new experience for me. My boyfriend was the first to listen and he soon asked me where I got this idea from; so I want to make it clear that I am not a child of an abusive or alcohol family, this was merely a creation. Although that is not to take away from the many families that unfortunately experience this. As I retold my story what was made apparent to me was that the story overall did not change, but the smaller details altered every time I told it. Understanding that I the creator of the story, could not keep every component of the story the same which then made me question all the stories we have been told and how many of these are actually close to the original story. Storytelling only works as the story is passed from generation to generation, and through this passing no one know how many times the story is retold. So in fact no one actually knows the original story exactly. It is important to understand then that storytelling includes the act of trust and accepting that stories can change; however, never taken back.