About the Book
-
Author:
- V.C. Andrews
Prologue
Drinking Game Tally: 2 drinks, 1 chug, 0 shots
Creep Award: V.C. Andrews
Chapter 1
Drinking Game Tally: 20 drinks, 8 chugs, 15 shots
Creep Award: Daddy Dollanganger
Prologue
“What’s past is prologue.” – W. Shakespeare
Number of Drinks Taken: 2
Number of Drinks Chugged: 1
Number of Shots: 0
Chapter Summary
Good golly-lolly! This is a book about incest and mean parents!! It’s totally true, y’all! My mom is a mean lady! I’m going to tell my story under a fake name and hope someone publishes it! My story is really long, though, cause it involves being locked in an attic for years, having two siblings die, being raped by my other sibling, becoming the teenaged girlfriend to a middle-aged doctor who adopted me, being a prima ballerina, having my toes broken by my abusive husband, having two sons, seducing my stepfather, whipping an old lady, setting fire to a mansion, having my mother try to poison my son’s mind, setting fire to her house, growing up to marry my brother, having my kids hate each other, having one son steal the other son’s wife, having one son paralyzed, and then more fire. But for this book, let’s just focus on the first part! Hooray!!
The Creepy Award Goes To
V.C. Andrews, obviously!! Er, I’m sorry. To “Cathy.”
Notes from the Margin
And as I begin to copy from the old memorandum journals that I kept for so long, a title comes as if inspired. Open the Window and Stand in the Sunshine.
That title is not inspired. That title is shit.
Certainly God in his infinite mercy will see that some understanding publisher will put my words in a book, and help grind the knife that I hope to wield.
Understanding Publisher should have demanded rewrites.
Chapter 1
“Daddy happy shiny five dollar now?” – D. Sedaris
Number of Drinks Taken: 20
Number of Drinks Chugged: 8
Number of Shots: 15
Chapter Summary
Daddy travels every week because he is a super-special PR person for a computer company! Every Friday he comes home with presents for me!! First I have to kiss him and shower him with affection, though, cause Daddy’s sort of needy. Then my mom, who spends all of Friday getting her hairs did, makes out with Daddy in front of my stupid older brother Chris and I. It’s not gross at all! I want to be just like Mommy so I can make out with a handsome man like Daddy too!
And now Mommy’s pregnant! She’s having twins! Great, now my creepy daddy isn’t going to want me anymore! But he makes me feel better by buying me something shiny! And then the stupid babies come and they smell but then I like them because I am a Female and so I must love babies.
And then the babies grow up a little and we have a birthday party for our wonderful Daddy! Only he’s tardy to the party! Whoops! Turns out he died in a tragic car accident on his 36th birthday! And now mommy is all depressed and I have to heat up casseroles and it’s so boring and then the debt collectors come and mommy explains how we’re living the American dream by financing our upper-middle-class lifestyle with credit. And she can’t pay the bills cause she’s not Destiny’s Child and also because she doesn’t have any training/doesn’t want a job. Cause she’s a lady, duh! Ladies aren’t supposed to work!
So Mommy tells us that we’re going to live with her super-rich mom and dad in a mansion in Virginia! Wow! That’s going to be awesome! Hey, I wonder why she’s never, ever mentioned her parents before and why they’ve never once visited us or sent us a letter! Oh well, I’m sure it’ll be fine!
The Creepy Award Goes To
Daddy Dollanganger! I guess it’s only right that everyone in this fictional family is creepy, even the dead ones, but boy, let me tell you: Daddy Dollanganger is CREE.PEE. I mean, one would expect some mild creepiness from a guy who married his half-sister/half-niece (spoiler!), but I think Garland Christopher Foxworth, Jr (aka Chris Dollanganger, Sr) really goes above and beyond the standard acceptable levels of mouth-breathing and staring at you while you sleep.
In what ways is he creepy, you ask? (I heard you asking in your head.) Well. First of all, I mistrust someone who works in PR for a computer company in the 50s. What is he doing for them? To whom is he publicly relating? The only people who used computers in the 50s were MIT nerds and spies, and neither group gets out much in public. He travels Monday through Friday, sometimes even overseas, which makes him not only mysteriously employed but also an object of my envy. And every Friday he comes home seeking to buy his family’s affections with material goods he can ill-afford and demanding to be kissed and cuddled like a hero coming back from war. Check it:
“Do you love me?-For I most certainly love you; did you miss me?-Are you glad I’m home?-Did you think about me when I was gone? Every night? Did you toss and turn and wish I were beside you, holding you close? For if you didn’t, Corrine, I might want to die.”
Um, I am sorry, but that? Is creepy. Creepy, passive-aggressive, needy, daddytouchedme behavior that grosses me right the heck out. Coupled with his demand for displays of affection from his daughter when she hurts his feelings and his overwhelmingly Aryan features (the entire family is like a poster for Hitler’s Youth Army, which is unsurprising, given that they all share the exact same DNA.), this is a man to run away from! Not marry and cling to!
Notes from the Margin
“It’s freezing outside, Momma! . . . I wouldn’t live down south where it never snows, for anything!”
Good!! We don’t want you!!
“Go away!” I yelled I already hate your babies!”
I ALREADY HATE YOUR BABIES TOO!
I thought I would hate them both, especially the loud-mouthed one named Carrie . . .
Oh. You will. We all will.
” . . . but a piece of machinery had fallen from another car, or truck, and this kept him from completing his correct defensive driving maneuver, which would have saved his life. But, as it was, your husband’s much heavier car turned over several times, and still he might have survived, but an oncoming truck, unable to stop, crashed into his car, and again the Caddilac spun over . . . and then . . . it caught on fire.”
JESUS. Worst. Delivery. Ever.
Yet I hated it every time someone asked how he died, and what a pity someone so young should die, when so many who were useless and unfit, lived on and on, and were a burden to society.
Okay, Glenn Beck!
She paced, her long shapely legs appearing through the front opening of her filmy black negligee . . . our mother spun around and the black chiffon of her negligee flared like a dancer’s skirt, revealing her beautiful legs from feet to hips.
In. Appropriate.
“I can’t even type. I can embroider beautiful needlepoint and crewelwork stitches, but that kind of thing doesn’t earn any money.”
It does on Etsy!
