Life’s hard for a street urchin. Life’s hard when you’re persecuted through no fault of your own. People don’t understand what it’s like to be like me, raised with nobody, by nobody, to be a nobody. I’m a bum, an under-class plague, the plight of the cities; I have lots of different names… I’ve tried sugar-coating my less-than-insignificant role in the modern society, calling myself a ‘free spirit’ or a ‘soul in the wind’, but alas, the constant knowledge of my ostracism from society overwhelms me.
My name is Ronald ‘Ronnie’ Jensen, and I’m 34 years of age. Contrary to the widely believed stereo-type, I have an education, a rather good one, but still, I live… no, endure on these streets. After I finished College, I lost all motivation. My adoptive parents were torn asunder because of me, and so I simply accepted that fate had predetermined my life to be an example of misfortune and misery.
My mother died giving birth to me, and consequently, my father chose to end the perpetuity of his suffering. He didn’t give me up for adoption before he did it, rather just left me, in my crib, wasting away, probably hoping I would die too, like it’s some sick form of retribution for murdering his beloved. I was found by a worried neighbour, who hadn’t seen my father in or out of the house in 3 days, and so he let himself in, and found my skinny, malnourished body. After that, I was put into an orphanage, where I was later adopted by Mr and Mrs Jensen.
My life, so it would seem, was looking up, as if fate could have possibly taken pity on me. How wrong I was. I lived soundly until the age of 8. Until Mr Jensen, revealed his dark, perverted intentions; He approached me under the cover of night and raped me, in my bed. I had tried to blank it out, I tried so hard to pretend it was all a dream, but I wasn’t fooling myself. I was contemplating killing him, until my violent thoughts finally seeped out of the cracks in my ever diminishing sanity. By that time, I was 14. For six long years, I had repressed my inner hate, my inner cynicism. I started cutting myself, letting out my hate in a juxtapositioned symphony of relief and unbearable burden. This continued until I was 16, when my stirring blood lust was quelled; Mr Jensen was killed.
He was stabbed by a child’s father, who had claimed to see Mr Jensen raping his son. Mrs Jensen was in utter disbelief, finding out about her husband’s less than normal sexual preferences; When she found out, he had also raped me, her grasp on this realm of sanity started to slip away from her; After being reported by concerned neighbours for apparent heavy drug use, she was admitted to Broadmoor asylum after several dead small animals were found all throughout the house, as well as notes expressing her desire to kill me; and so fate returns.
I saw out the rest of my education, where I studied Literature, before inevitably giving up; dropping my façade, and letting life do what it will with me and those who are unfortunate enough to entwine their paths with mine.
This is my story. This is the literature of the insane. The incessant ramblings of the raped soul.




The piercing chill of the wind gripped me beneath my makeshift duvet, tormenting me out of my slumber. Defiantly, I tried to ignore it, but it won in the end, it always wins. I stretched my scrawny arms and struggled to my feet, stooping below the roof of my château; a rusted metal awning. My clothes, torn and stained, radiated a terrible stench of blood, sweat and tear- whisky.
I scratched my straw like beard, yawning simultaneously, before taking off my old woolly cap and vigorously scratching my infested scalp; when one doesn’t wash, what can one expect?. I kicked my bag of possessions underneath the dumpster, a few feet away from my master suite bedroom. I didn’t have many positions, only what I needed; a large knife, the decrepit remnants of cheap whisky and a photograph of my deceased birth mother. The bag, stained in my blood; I used it to clean my self-inflicted wounds, and my knife.
Sometimes, I would sit engulfed in the photograph, feelings of self-blame and self-pity would overwhelm me as I looked upon her golden locks of hair, her beautiful green eyes, her oblivious smile and her pale, delicate skin. I often wonder what life could have been like, if I wasn’t cursed by fate; loving parents, a good education, a wife to bare my children…
I looked down the desolate back alley onto the bustling high street of London’s city centre, watching the oblivious masses pass by, and so I made my way to my holiday home, my home away from home, the sidewalk of the main road. My legs were stiff, as if I was stricken with rigor mortis in the few hours of sleep I manage to get in between night terrors and the pondering of evil deeds.
The burning eyes of the gentry working class, judged me, as they do every morning. I sat down outside of a book shop and took off my hat, laying it on the ground, an open invitation for pity. People would jeer as they walked past, a seldom few dropping so much as 10p into my hat so that hopefully, by the end of the day I could afford more whisky, to repeat my perpetual cycle, beg, drink, cut, cry, sleep.
Sometimes, I could remember a few faces, the fast talking businessman who always drops £1, the bus driver who always avoids eye contact with me while he is waiting at the traffic lights; perhaps he has a guilty conscience, what does he know?. There is one face that yearn for; the young girl, working the book shop right next to my base of operations. She doesn’t look at me, or utter a word to me, or even drop a penny in my hat, but something about her fixates me, I can’t quite seem to define what it is that I’m obsessed with, perhaps her beauty; her golden locks of hair, her beautiful green eyes, her oblivious smile and her pale, delicate skin. But I fear there is more to it than that.
I caught a glimpse of her nametag once; Grace is her name, a quiet elegant splendour about it which is epitomised in her beauty. Even though I’ve never spoken to her, and I probably never will, I feel her presence, compelling me to touch her, to nourish myself upon her; to feed at the tit, to bask in her embrace… Someday.
My hopes and aspirations keep me right where I am, I’m not going to say they keep me alive; to be alive, one must live a life… I endure a life. I hope that someday I’ll be able to touch her. I hope that someday I’ll be able to breath simultaneously with her while I move inside of her, feeling her sharp nails dig into the flesh of my back. I hope.
Perhaps I should approach her… nothing risked, nothing gained I suppose. I know she comes out for her breaks to smoke a cigarette in the back alley where I reside at 10’o’clock, I’ll approach her there. But what should I say? ‘Hi, my name’s Ronnie, nice to meet you’, ‘Hi, I’ve been watching you for a while… you’re beautiful’. I knew that speaking confidently to her would be an impossibility; every time I see her I am stricken silent by her beauty, as if no words can express the whirling storm of anxiety that knots in my stomach. 10’o’clock, time to fly Ronnie.
I left my station at the front of the book shop and reluctantly made my way down the alley. Nerves pulsated through me like clockwork, my hands shook uncontrollably and my knees felt as if they would collapse under the enormous pressure of anxiety, but I owed myself this. I had to talk to her. She caught a glimpse of me as I awkwardly held my hands together, shuffling towards her, her forced smile slowly changing into a perplexed look. I inhaled.
“He-… He-… He-“
“Are you okay?”. Her eyebrow raised to show her suspicion of my approach.
I wasn’t okay; every time I tried to speak to her, I felt the moisture escape from my mouth, and my throat closing up. Her expression grew to that of impatience.
“Excuse me, are you going to say anything?”
I managed to utter a few words, my voice cracking like a pubescent teenager “I- I’m Ro-nnie. You’re Gr-Grace.”
She looked scared, fearful of my evident conversational instability. Her body language changed to immense discomfort
“Look… I should be getting back inside now”
“No!” I screamed, my face reddening.
I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away from the door, throwing her down to where I spend my nights. She screamed before her head smashed against the floor, knocking her unconscious. I have her, she can’t go anywhere, so can’t judge me, she can’t scream. Under the cover of a crowded back alley, Satan as the only audience, I began to fulfil my dreams. My hopes.
I removed her innocence, item by item, ran my fingers through her golden locks of hair, gazed into her beautiful green eyes, kissed her oblivious smile and caressed her pale, delicate skin. I basked in her embrace, as she lay in a morbid serenity. This was heaven. I moved in her, and as my ascent to heaven was nearing completion, an overwhelming sense of grief gripped me. The curse.
Fate is a cruel thing, my life has been a testament to that. Fate had brought a young girl to bare my fate. The cycle would repeat itself. I stood up, horrified at how I had played straight into the hands of fate, allowing it to breed the children of the curse.
Grace lay on the ground, her head starting to move. I couldn’t let her scream, or see the state she was in. I kicked her in the head, allowing her to sleep obliviously. I wouldn’t let fate win. Fate has done enough to me, and millions like me. The Benevolence of fate stops here. Grace may bare my seed, but she will not live to birth it.
I got out my knife from my stained bag and stooped down; brushing her fringe off of her bruised face, and kissed her on the forehead and shed a tear of remorse. I slit her throat quickly, and instantaneously broke into hysterics. I looked down the alley, to see a few prying faces investigate the screams. I gripped my knife
This is my time for revenge.