alternatehistory.com

Alright, here’s an idea that I’ve been thinking about for, say, roughly fifteen minutes now: a timeline centred on the life and adventures of a completely inconsequential, run-of-the-mill person who just so happens to live in an alternate history. Seriously though, I’ve put little thought into this going ahead, and I may quit halfway through like all my other timelines, but honestly, this is the only original idea that has stuck in my head since I decided to drop all my other works, so let's just roll with it. Moreover; I’m not that good a narrative writer, especially regarding small-scale stories like this, and whether this will fly of the rails and become unrealistic remains to be seen. So, as I go ahead, I hope you enjoy (or not; it’s your choice really) this hopefully original product that I’m cooking up; but keep in mind that it may just drop dead at any point.

Just Another Man

Post #1 - Michael

Michael Leslie Rendell was born on a fairly uneventful day on February 9th, 1986 at the small, but largely pleasant home of his parents in South Hedland, Western Australia. Coming into the world at around 3:28 in the afternoon, Michael’s birth was the third for the family in five years, although his time within the womb was certainly faster than that of his elder sister Emily (aged 3) and his brother William (aged 5); his mother delivering him after only 36 weeks of gestation. As a result of Michael’s birth falling a week under the oft-estimated 37 weeks that comprised a full term, he was quickly carted away by the family midwife and paediatrician for a series of preliminary health checks; these examinations, they claimed, being more significant and serious since the infant was the family’s first child to be born under their own roof. Weighing only 5.8 pounds when placed on a scale, he was nevertheless deemed healthy and vigorous enough to be returned to his parents; Hellen Wallace Rendell (aged 31) and Hudson Riley Logan Rendell (aged 35).

The first few months of Michael’s existence was, in a word, generally easy, all things considered. The newborn, despite his early arrival, caused no major health concerns for the Rendell family in the first year after birth, although he was often prone to crying for up to two hours on end (the eight month smallpox vaccination being a particularly troublesome due to the fact that he refused to sleep almost all night after receiving it). One of the major factors the family had to consider during this period was the fact that Michael had two older, often boisterous siblings that caused Hellen an immense amount of grief at times; especially when their overenthusiasm towards their younger brother resulted in him waking up in the midst of small naps crying. Hellen was no stranger to this kind of behaviour; like most Australian women, she was a stay-at-home wife that tended to the house whilst her husband was away (Hudson being employed as a record-keeper down at the Port Hedland docks), and it was during Emily’s first year in the world in which William caused a ruckus that resulted in long nights for the family; although now having two young children and a newborn was a more struggling experience.

Nevertheless the family’s lives went on as they usually did. Michael himself was never a particularly inquisitive boy before the age of two; he preferred to stay in his crib all day and play with the few toys his parents could afford, or, if forced onto the ground, merely walked around in circles for ages. This phenomenon was one particular amusement for the extended family when they visited during those early days; Michael’s last remaining grandfather, Randolph Newberry, claiming that the kid would grow up to be a mathematician due to his bizarre geometric habits. I wonder, then, how disappointed Randolph had been when Michael’s first proper word was not ‘logarithmic differentiation’, but rather the innocuous ‘mama’; spoken when he was only eleven months old.

By this time, the newborn was settling into his surroundings quite comfortably; and although there remained issues related to the aging family dog (a Yorkshire terrier by the name of Ralf) that Michael had been scared of since he first laid eyes on if, he was nevertheless content (or, rather, as content as a toddler could have gotten). One of the young boy’s favourite activities after his first birthday party was listening to his mother read when she was not preparing food for the family, or cleaning around the house. Hellen herself was an avid reader, picking up the habit from her father before her that she in turn wished to pass down to her children; something made difficult due to the fact that William was less keen of staying inside listening to his mother blather on for ten minutes, and preferred to run around out in the yard with his sister (despite her own growing love of simply sitting and listening to Hellen’s stories). Throughout 1987 and 1988, both siblings didn’t have much to do rather than merely sit and listen when they could (a useful tool when they had to go to church every Sunday); their older brother, now six, being enrolled at Port Hedland Primary for his first year of schooling.

Weeks, months, years; looking back on it, they passed like a bullet propelled out of a gun, Michael growing by the day as he turned two, then three. Whilst the remainder of his siblings were forced to go off to school, the youngest member of the family was still three more years away from that fate, and as lived every day as he pretty much had since birth. Besides listening to this mother’s stories, he was also growing fond of going on visits to some of his closer relatives’ houses; most especially the house of his five year-old cousins Jenna and Drew Sadgrove whom he began to see on a weekly basis. From hide-and-seek to tag and all the other children’s games in-between, those three (with the occasional inclusion of Emily) would run about each other’s houses causing great havoc in their wake, and whilst they would occasionally cause small issues for both sides of the family, they never did egregiously overstep their bounds. Well, until the incident with the urn that is.

During one summer in late-1990, Michael, Jenna, Emily and Drew were running about Hudon’s house playing tag, and during one round in which the four began chasing each other through the lounge, Michael accidently bumped into the stand on which stood his great-grandfather’s ashes; knocking it to the floor in a flurry of dust and dead relatives. As each child began to scream at each other as Hellen walked in to find what the ruckus was about; screaming at all the young boys and girls to go into the kitchen whilst she sorted of the mess. For Michael, it was the first time he had heard his mother, usually halcyon in nature more often-than-not, yell at him directly (by now he had become acquainted to the times in which she would verbally discipline William), but it wasn’t until his father got home that afternoon in which he truly felt the belt that was corporal punishment. As it was Hudon’s grandfather’s ashes that were knocked over (a relic that he claimed was the most valued thing in his household), it was understandable to Michael that he would be so furious when he had learned what happened. What Michael didn’t understand though, was the lashing he got next.

Getting the largest wooden spoon from the drawer, Hudson screamed for his son to put out his arm before beating it about twenty times; enough to leave a big, red welt over the back of his hand that persisted for days. In the same day that he was first verbally punished, he was also physically punished. Michael himself before this was rather ambivalent towards his father; seeing him more as an object from a distance rather than a true member of his family like his mother. Tall and imposing, Hudson himself stood nearly two meters high (in contrast with his wife who was only a hundred and sixty-five centimetres), his distance from his family and his steely demeanour resulting in an ambiance of fear to surround him; a fear that Michael would be forced to live with, especially when his father reached from that all-too familiar wooden spoon that never seemed to strike his sister (a fact that would lead to a growing resentment in the future). After all; if Prime Minister Kerin approved of ‘strict behavioural restructuring’ for children, what was the problem with the family’s patriarch performing his domestic duty?

The year after the ‘urn incident’ would follow along similar lines as they had in the past (the urn itself being ‘masterfully’ recrafted by Hellen). Whilst Michael and his family friends could no longer play inside, or as often (seeing as they were now forced to return to school), they nevertheless tried to have as fun a time as possible; especially considering that 1991 was the final year in which Michael himself would be free from the chains that was to be all-too dreaded first grade. In March, Hudson had managed to wrangle around three weeks off work following an incident which resulted in a fractured left-leg, and during this time he, along with his ever studious wife, began to teach Michael how to read and how to count (lessons that William, now ten and more distant from his younger brother than even, was never granted). Michael himself remained wary of his father after what happened (especially considering that he would now afford a whack with the spoon every time he so much as miss brushing his teeth), and largely congregated around his mother has he always had (his sister, a life-long companion up until this point now having made friends of her own outside of the family). Soon enough, the salad days of Michael Rendell’s young life had come and gone; and on the January of 1992, Michael would have to take his first steps into a world he had never before experienced, a world that he would be forced to live through for the next twelve years; the world of schooling.
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