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Link: The Road to Hell Title Page and Description
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Josh's eyebrows scrunched up in confusion as he opened the box and looked inside. His fifth birthday party had been fun so far. The cake, while not his favorite chocolate, was good, the bicycle his parents had gotten him was just itching to be ridden, and the other toys he'd gotten were exactly what he'd wanted. Now in utter confusion, he could just stare at the last gift he'd opened.
"What's this?" he asked innocently.
Melanie Ryan smiled at her five-year-old. "What does it look like, Josh?"
Still confused, he looked up at his mother hesitantly. Her narrow face was still smiling at him expectantly; her short sandy blonde hair pulled back by the headband she wore. Likewise, her brown eyes, so much like his own, looked at him curiously to see how he felt about the toy. "Um... a doll?"
Fred Ryan nodded at his son as his five foot nine, thin-framed body towered over the boy. He smiled gently at his son; his dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and his green eyes looking at him expecting to see him equally happy with his last toy as he was with his first. "That's right, Josh! Isn't it nice?"
Picking up the doll from out of the box, Josh stared at it as though it might suddenly grow fangs and try to bite him. "Why do I get a doll?"
"Why not?" his mother replied happily as she got down on the floor with her child. She knew from her child psychology courses that her five-foot six body standing over him would be too intimidating to really connect with him as an equal. "I had dolls when I was your age! You used to love your old Raggedy Anne doll! You slept with her for years! Isn't she pretty?" Reaching out, Melanie ran her fingers along the lace of the doll's pink dress.
"I guess." Josh replied confusedly. Setting the gift aside, he walked on his knees toward his mother and gave her a hug, just as he'd done after opening each of his other presents. "Thank you, Mommy." he stated, but without the enthusiasm he'd shown earlier. Getting up on his feet, he repeated the procedure with his father, Fred. "Thank you, Daddy."
Still perplexed, Josh looked back at the doll, shrugged, went over to it, picked it up, and examined it. He had to admit it was a nice doll, but it held no interest for him. Why did they give me a doll? he wondered. I didn't ask for one... and I know I don't need one... He puzzled over the question as he took the doll to his room. Putting it with his other gifts, he shrugged and turned to go get the bike helmet so his dad could teach him how to ride his bike. Parents are weird!
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Comments
Apologies
I had hoped to get this up hours ago, but I was having difficulty getting the final draft converted to HTML for posting. As it is, I still have more chapters to finish formatting and converting to HTML for posting. (I'm having to do it by hand for the most part... gotta love software issues!)
Anyway, as with the Lost Faith series, I will be posting up a new chapter every Thursday, Saturday, and Monday, the entire story completely posted by the middle of April, barring disaster. ::fingers crossed::
This is a very difficult story to get through with very serious themes. It was originally inspired by Heather Rose Brown's short story, I Ain't Gay!, but taken further and expanded into a full novel-length story. Like almost all of my stories, it does have a happy ending, but The Road to Hell is a hard road to get there. At times it may seem like there's no way for the ending to be happy, but there is always hope.
I hope everyone enjoys the destination, if not the journey. This was the most difficult story I ever wrote, taking nearly a year to complete due to the depressing turns it had to take to get to the end. I simply had to walk away from it for a while in order to have the strength to finish it. I hope it was worth the effort.
Hugs,
Roberta
The fact that you, the author, felt compelled……
To walk away from the story due to depressing turns does not bode well for how I, the reader, will feel while reading it. I can definitively say that your work that I have read has stirred deep emotions within me, which shows the power of your writing - but I too have had to walk away from your stories in the past. Sometimes because I was crying in anguish at how the main character was feeling, and sometimes because I was crying out in anger at how the main character had been treated.
The problem with this, is that taken piecemeal as your stories are posted here, it has made me want to simply give up as I cannot stand being left feeling that way waiting for the next posting. Perhaps if I wait to read the story in it’s entirety I wouldn’t be as bothered. I guess only time will tell.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Putting up piecemeal
Originally these stories were posted in their entirety as PDFs, but they garnered little interest due to people not liking that format. As I cannot post up all the chapters at once since that floods the home page, and readers are turned off by overly large postings of multiple chapters per post, and since Erin asked me to restrict posting to 1 chapter every 2-3 days, that's the limitation I have to work with.
Yes, this story gets very depressing at points, and having to wait to find out what happens next is difficult. We've all had to sometimes wait months for an author to post the next chapter in a story that left the reader hanging by their nails, so I hope knowing that this entire story is already complete and has a set schedule of release helps. I put that information out there so that any readers would be fully informed before embarking on this arduous journey. It's worth it in the end, as far as I believe. It's probably best if sensitive readers wait until the entire story is published before beginning the journey though, so they aren't left feeling the downswings for 2-3 days at a time. Comments after the story is finished will still be responded to as I monitor all my stories for activity on a daily basis. (usually several times per day)
I do always promise though that my stories eventually have happy endings... and usually the harder the journey, the better the rewards at the end. I'm no masochist, nor a sadist. I don't enjoy torturing my characters or readers, (or myself in the writing process) but sometimes pain is necessary to allow us to grow as human beings. Difficult subjects require difficulties, unless you just want Pollyanna storytelling where the main character faces no real difficulties and the reader just gets a fluffy and fun story. (which there's nothing wrong with that story style, and is one that I enjoy very much reading from time to time, but that's not the style of writing I'm called to do)
Comments and criticisms are always welcome. My stories have been thoroughly edited multiple times by multiple editors each, so very few if any errors or omissions (grammatical, contextual, or continuity) should remain, but any that are spotted the reader is encouraged to speak out about. (either via PM or comment, whichever the reader prefers)
Hugs,
Roberta
Parents are weird!
yep. even ones who want to do good for their kids can mess up.
It's hard
To draw much of an impression from such a short snippet of a story. But it appears as if the parents are playing mind games with their son. Hardly a fair challenge, two mature adults against one very immature five year old child.
Based on that, I doubt I'll read any more of this as it seems very distasteful.
They know they can survive
Mind Games
Josh's parents aren't so much playing mind games as operating under the belief that they know better what he would like than he does. It becomes clearer in the first chapter, explicitly stating what's going on, but for the Prologue I wanted to only hint around at it.
Primarily I just wanted to use the Prologue to introduce the principle players in this story so Chapter 1 can just jump right in to telling the story. (in actuality, Chapter 1 was written first, then I went back and wrote the prologue to introduce the players after the fact, since I felt general descriptions of the characters were missing, but didn't want to change Chapter 1 as I feel that it flowed well the way it was)
If you don't care to read on, that's entirely up to you. Not every story is for everyone. I'll miss your commentary though.
Hugs,
Roberta
Child psychology courses does not bode well
Oh boy, parents who think they're child psychologists, and using inexperience in the field to raise Josh. This can't end well for Josh.
So far, Josh seems to be the sane one in the family, or the mature one. Questioning why he was given a doll shows his ability to think on his own, something that might not be allowed as this story progresses.
Others have feelings too.