From the very first years of his life,
Norman Atelon was a very peculiar man. He was always avoiding situations, which
would cause him to ruin his appearance, such as playing in the mud or during
the rainy season. From the moment he learned to read, he spent his time doing
just that, inside the house, in his room. He didn’t really like the company of
his parents or of any other person. He’d rather have his stories and his
imagination to go with it. That was more than enough.
Norman developed this love of stories through
his upbringing and eventually became one of the most renowned authors in the
world. For some reason, he had dedicated himself to writing children’s books.
His family saw this as odd behavior because he didn’t like people, and children
were his very least favorite. He thought they were obnoxious and repetitive,
not really taking any interest in the real interesting things life had to
offer. He thought they were dull and dirty.
However, the author once explained to his
mother that he loved to write simple stories and that’s why his creations were
considered more suitable for children. He didn’t agree at all but he knew it
was best not to argue too much, because he did want to be taken seriously by
other authors and by the world in general. For a person that didn’t really like
people, Norman had a real need for people to be acceptant of him or, at very
least, of his literature. And the world answered in a big way.
His first book was a recompilation of short
stories and it sold like fresh baked bread. Mothers and fathers all over the
country fell in love with his imaginative creations and the kids really took to
it too. Social media was a very good promotional platform for him, as many kids
that liked his stories loved to paint or draw their favorite characters and
then upload the pictures online. It was all made as a contest by the company
publishing the books and it earned him a lot of money.
So
much he earned, that he became a rich man by the age of twenty-three, when most
people are barely coming out of university, trying to enter a world hostile to
their wishes. The irony was that Norman had never really wanted to be part of
the world. He couldn’t care less if his stories made money or not, he just
wanted to be out there, his name with all the other great names of literature.
That was his achievement and he wanted to feel he had made it big. However,
despite all the success, he didn’t get the recognition he wanted, only the one
he didn’t care about.
That’s why he made an effort at keep getting
better at his craft. He studied, educated himself further abroad and, of
course, he kept writing, almost every day. He lived with his parents for years
until he decided he needed to get out of there but not because he was too old.
He had realized he had to be fully alone to be able to create things that every
other author would be jealous about. So he left his parents in a huff, not
really feeling anything else than the burning desire to be considered a great
author.
His new apartment was small, very small. But
it was located in a very wealthy neighborhood, with everything he could ever
want not very far away. Not that he ever went outside for anything. He hired a
maid to do those kinds of things for her. Food was a waste of time in his mind,
so he dedicated the least amount of time to it, even reading through his meals
or interrupting them abruptly when an idea came to mind. He had always been
very skinny but he soon acquired an additional greenish hue on his skin.
His parents and people he saw for work noticed
this right away but they all knew him too well to say a word. Norman wasn’t the
kind of person to care a lot about personal appearance. However, his mother
convinced him to go to the doctor once. He complained about losing time of his
daily schedule but he went with it. The doctor found him to be a bit underfed
but, aside from that, he was healthy as a horse. It was incredible but he was,
so no one could say anything about it anymore.
The maid was ordered to cook better meals and
he accepted to spend at least twenty straight minutes to breakfast, lunch and
dinner. But he kept reading through the meals, because his mind had to be busy
every single second of the day. People that met him thought it was exhausting
just look at him go through a normal day. Norman was not a normal person at
all; he was very unique in a very particular kind of way. Maybe that was the
reason he didn’t like people that much.
Friends, he did not have. He didn’t have any
use for friendship or love or sex. As far as everyone that knew him was
concerned, Norman was still a virgin and had never bonded with anyone else in
his entire life, not even with other authors. People thought he wanted to be
accepted by them but the fact was he wanted to be considered a true writer, a
member of the group. If the people in the group liked him or not, he didn’t
care one bit. That made people very annoyed by him, even if they were meeting
him for the very first time. Norman was one of a kind.
Ten years passed from his first publication.
He lived in the same apartment, being cooked by the same maid and with his mom
coming in every Sunday, as she had done since he had moved out. However, his
father had died fairly recently so she had to visit alone. But Norman never
seemed to notice his father was not around anymore. He did go to the funeral
but he read a book through the ceremony and during the burial. People were very
angry about it but his mother kept everyone from doing a scene.
However, it was her who made the scene one
day, one of those Sundays she visited her son. She served the meal left by the
maid, as she always did and looked at her son as he ate fast to go back to his
writing. He was working on a book about a young girl and her relationship with
a magical cow. Or something like that, his mom was never that aware of the
stories he made. No one really seemed to be, except his editor. The meal had
gone by as usual except for one little detail.
The mother burst into tears. She had never
done so, not once in her whole life. Not on her childhood home, no in the house
she had bought with her husband and least of all in her son’s apartment. She
just couldn’t keep crying, tear rolling down her cheeks and nose. But that was
not all that happened. Because, as she dried her face, she noticed that her son
just left the table to sit on his table and keep on writing. Then, her sadness
turned into rage, a feeling she had been repressing for many years.
She yelled, as no one had ever yelled at
Norman. Of course, there had been people who had had altercations with him. His
way of being was off-putting to many. But that time, he seemed to actually care
about the person who was yelling. It was his mother and, no matter how his
personality was, he couldn’t just ignore the person that had brought him to
life. She claimed she had been caring for him her whole life and he had never
shown her the slightest sign of affection.
For the first time, it seemed he didn’t have
the right words to say. Norman had developed a very sharp and fast tongue. But
that afternoon, all words seemed to leave him for good. And there was a reason
for that: she was right. He had never shown her affection or any other feeling
for that matter.
He stood up and tried to walk up to her but he
couldn’t. His legs wouldn’t budge. That feeling for her mother, whatever it
was, was being overpowered by his personality. And she noticed. That’s why the
woman grabbed her purse and her coat and never spoke to him again, not even
when he was finally recognized as he had always wanted.
