Character Sketch: Juliana Ritter

Every week for my writing group, we are given a writing exercise.  Since my group leader is swamped with other things right now, I have offered to help her out by finding some  prompts for the exercise for the next few weeks.  I did a bit of searching on the Internets and found a few good sources for inspiration for writing and other creative endeavors.  One of the exercise options this week was to expand upon this prompt:

Juliana Ritter, 53.  She is an extrovert but gets easily depressed. 

This is what I came up with.

Juliana Ritter is 53 years old. She has never been attractive, but was considered a handsome woman by those her knew her before her confinement. Her hair still retains its reddish luster; her teeth are straight and white and emphasize her generous sensual mouth. Her face betrays only a few creases borne of worry.

She sits calmly these days behind the library desk, hands folded primly in front of her. She smiles at every woman who enters the tiny library, even if it is one of the women who has in the past harmed her in some way, slight or large. She greets many women by name and suggests a book they might enjoy or points out that a new issue of a favored magazine has arrived.

Julia is praised by her attendants as being extroverted and well adjusted to her situation. They could never guess that inside her head, Julia is a seething mass of raging disappointment, anger, sadness and pain. Beneath Julia’s calm smile and warm words the snake of madness lies coiled, ready to strike at Julia every night as she tries to fall asleep. The snake has never truly gone away, Julia has just learned to tame it somewhat.

Julia is afraid to tell her attendants of this wily snake, afraid of what might happen if she does. During this most recent confinement, she awoke naked, sweating under the bare bulb encased in a wire cage far above her head, disoriented, dizzy, dry-mouthed. The room was small, about five by five, and its walls and floors were made of a soft cushioned material. It took Julia several hours of concentration in her Thorazine-muddled brain before she figured out where she was: the hospital. She must have had one of her spells again.

That was nearly two years ago and Julia senses she is close to being released, or being deemed "well". She contains the snake of her depression and sadness and puts her friendly extroverted smiling façade forward, eager to face another day as a normal person. At least on the outside.

Comments

[ronni]

...tap...tap...tap...

(chills)

[Nadine]

Madness, coiled like a snake ready to strike.

Goosebumps!