MHSHS Reading Group discussion
Alternate Endings 2010
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Georgia Sackey March 31, 2010MHSHS P1 English
Redemption Through Blood: Alternative “Kite” ending
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a great novel. It was written beautifully and it had a decent ending. However, to change the book I would change the ending. Of course The Kite Runner wouldn’t be the same without its ending but this is my take:
Amir and Soraya gave birth to their baby boy in 1989. The fact that he was alive and healthy gave them a great deal of joy after the possible chance of the baby having Down Syndrome and not being able to walk. They brought him home and for the first time in nine months, they slept peacefully being parents to a boy named Rostam Hassan. Amir came up with the name Rostam from the book Rostam and Sohrab and Hassan evidently from his best friend’s name. Rostam had the face of his grandfather (Amir’s father) yet the calm brown eyes of his mother Soraya.
Eight years passed and Soraya was dressing Rostam for school. Amir received a call from Pakistan. It was his old friend Rahim Khan calling asking him to get over as soon as possible. That day Amir bought the earliest ticket that would take him from California to Rahim in Pakistan.
* * *
“There is a way to be good again,” said Rahim Khan.
“If it is about money I can give you the money! I don’t think I can do it Rahim Khan. I have a family to take care of. What if something happens to me over there?” Amir replied.
“I will not be insulted. It isn’t about money. It never was! I am asking you, Amir. I need you to go to the orphanage and pick up Hassan’s son, Sohrab. You’re father told me once that, ‘A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything.’ I wonder is that what you've become?”
“I guess it is what I’ve become. Rahim Kh-”
“Amir, I have to tell you something,” Rahim interrupted. “Ali was sterile. Hassan is not his child. You’re father is also his father. Hassan is your half brother! Does that change anything? Sohrab is your nephew.”
“What do you mean Rahim Khan?”
* * *
Amir spent five long weeks in Pakistan. He encountered so many problems trying to recover Sohrab. It turns out that Assef (the childhood enemy of Amir and Hassan) had taken Sohrab from the orphanage. Amir had to fight Assef for Sohrab. That ended with Sohrab using his sling-shot to throw a rock in Assef’s eye. They got away safely despite Amir’s broken teeth and bruised face.
Sohrab and Amir came to America one week after Amir met with Assef. He met Soraya and her parents and found a place in all the hearts of them. It was no surprise that Rostam Hassan became like Sohrab Amir’s older brother. Sohrab was younger than Rostam by exactly eleven months being that Sohrab was born in 1990. They started school, Rostam being in third grade and Sohrab being in second grade.
One day at school during recess Sohrab was being teased by one of his classmates.
“What are you going to do about it? Huh?” He teased while also shoving him into the brick wall behind him. “You’re a wimp and you’re helpless.”
“He doesn’t need to do anything about it because you’re not going to do anything!” said Rostam going near the boy and Sohrab.
“Who are you?” the young boy said, surprised that anyone was even there.
“I’m Rostam, Sohrab’s brother and I advise you not to do anything to him unless you want me to do something to you.”
“Sorry,” he said as he walked away shocked and embarrassed.
The two boys hugged each other in the school yard and together started throwing rocks to see whose could get the furthest.
I really liked your kite endingit was really sweet
1. All submissions must first be peer edited by at least three other people.
2. Final edits must come through me before publishing on this site.
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6. Every scholar is required to publish a story here or within the other Storytelling sections (Poetry or Alternate Endings).
7. Deadlines: April 1, 2010
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9. LOCAL COLOR, DIALOGUE, SENSORY IMAGERY--a must.
10. NOTHING published without my prior approval.
11. All submissions will have a presentation element-perform your story or portions of it-just as I have demonstrated with "Maliki's Heat" in P6 and P7 back in mid-February. .
Have fun!!!
One thing I hated about "Twilight" was that Myers refused to let other characters tell their OWN stories. Everything was through Bella's warped perspective. So, here, I've altered the part where Carlisle has Edward tell Bella Carlisle's story and, instead, I have taken on the voice and POV of the doctor/leader of the Cullen "family".
Welcome to the Carlisle EX #2
by Lanier Carson
My fathers were demons. Both killed the innocent indiscriminately, without compunction. I, too, have become like them, killing the innocent…feeding on them. The only difference, I had remorse. I had compassion. And later, after many, many, many decades, I finally taught myself a little self-control. Scratch that, I have become accustomed to an extreme amount of restraint. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
London 1658
“Carlisle, you must never flinch in the face of danger,” Cullen, was a righteous and stern man. “Be sure to drive the stake completely through.”
I held the sharpened, three-foot wooden spike above the squirming woman on the table.
He was my father, my sole caregiver, the man that stood only for truth and justice. Yet, I couldn’t quite see the justice of killing this “witch”, in this manner.
“Why, if she were truly a witch, didn’t she simply cast a spell upon us to…?”
The back of Cullen’s fist crashed across my face.
“Why do you think I have drugged her with arsenic and gagged her? Look how she still writhes. No mortal could withstand such a dose.”
Stunned, blinking back the tears, I glared into his black eyes.
“But, what proof do we have that she is a witch? Perhaps it’s the affects of the arsenic that are causing these reactions.”
“If you can not be the man,” he said grabbing the wooden mallet and stake from my sweating hands and shoving me to the muddy floor, “I will show you what must be done to rid this pestilence from our beloved city.”
Before I could recover, he raised the mallet high and brought it down upon the worn, ragged end of the stake. It pierced the woman’s breast, her bones audibly cracking.
“Forgive me father,” the woman screeched as the bondage around her mouth fell away in her writhing, hands clenching to break free and her head snapping from side to side.
“You blaspheming demon, how dare you pray to my God,” he said bringing the mallet down again and again, blood spattering his gown, some reaching me as
I rushed to this poor victim, but too late.
“…for …I have…sinned,” the woman spasmed several times, and moved no more.
I would not forgive my father for many years after that night, as I still cringe thinking of my lack of fortitude in preventing her demise.
I have done far worse, so I cannot condemn him too severely. Yet, perhaps if he weren’t so adamant about ridding the world of so-called vermin, my turning never would have happened.
August 13, 1666
I remember the day clearly, for it was the day, or rather the night, my father created me. My birth-day, if you will. His name, I came to learn years later was ____________. (469 words 2,600 total spaces)
Your assignment, finish this part of Carlisle's history...
OR FINISH OR IMPROVE UPON this: Remember, this occurs after the attack...
The Great Fire of London (Storytelling EX #3)
by Lanier Carson
I was turning and everything I did to stop it was futile. You may have heard of the Great Fire of London, that was me. It was legendary. It was unfortunately, and quite inadvertently, my doing. So you can you see why I am guilty of killing the innocent. Oh, the horrors of that night began hours before the burning children. The smell of flaying, searing flesh. I would never wish this catastrophic nightmare upon even my worst enemy. And there are a few, but not even they would ever be deserving of such memories.
Once again, I have gone on ahead of myself…
The hunger was rising within me. Within my very capillaries, I could feel a fire, lava jack-knifing along the highways toward my dying heart. I had to feed. Yet, I mustn’t.
“Forgive me father,” I sputtered, sweating a sort of acidic slime. My eyes itched. My skinned crawled. I could no longer hold myself accountable.
The priest’s beating heart was in my ears, pulsing with mine as one. Our eyes locked and he was helpless as I flew faster than I’d ever moved, even on the football pitch. I had covered the small sanctuary from my chair, dove over his desk and was upon him. Papers, a Bible, some Eucharist wafers were airborne with my attack. The lantern upon its cradle near the ample bookshelves swayed, creaking to and fro.
“My child, what has become of you?” his eyes flew open in his last moments of understanding.
I ripped his shirt and collar to shreds with long yellow claws I’d never noticed before and plunged my mouth powerfully, into his rapid, beating heart.
Moments later, or it could’ve been days, I recovered from my momentary and wanton lapse of reasoning only to awaken to the nightmare. The lantern’s flickering glow cast light upon darkness before pivoting, returning darkness where light once was.
Blood covered me and the floor before the priest’s desk. A globe spun, standing upright on the bookshelf behind it. The glow of the lantern illuminating Australia then South America and returning to the South Pacific once again. I rose slowly, afraid of what I might find and praying that something else was responsible for whatever was behind that desk.
My feet were weighed and every step was agony. Finally, the maimed body came into view and the glut I’d just swallowed threatened to come back up again. Eerie shadows grew longer across the dead man’s disfigured torso. A wolf. A lion. No, only me.
“Forgive me father,” I gasped. “I must do away with this feral thing that I have become.”
I rose, picking up his body gingerly, as if I could hurt him even further. I brought him down three flights to the sepulcher and pulled aside a stone door that was the vaulted entrance to several coffins of the ancients. It must’ve been at least 25 Stone, or roughly a quarter of a ton. It was a paperweight to me. I carefully placed the good man of the cloth atop the acrid dust of another venerate Man of Acton and replaced the stone, closing them within for all eternity.
In an attempt to invalidate my crimes I walked the cobblestone streets of London, rubbish and debris fodder for the scurrying vermin that own the night. I among them. It is true what they say in your new expression, “the guilty always return to the scene of the crime”. For, I found myself at the Southwark Cathedral again. I was longing for absolution or anything to invalidate my existence.
“Though I have not the strength to plunge a stake in my own dark heart,” bantering to myself. “I must do my father’s bidding one last time before I do more harm.”
I thought I could end this agony, this thirst that would only grow again, and perhaps grow even stronger, this need to feed.
“I am the only one that can end this,” I said, resolutely, climbing the spiraling stairwell to the belfry.
The city that night was the most splendid of sights. Steeply slanted roofs, reflected the full moon, even as wispy clouds drifted by, as if the eye of the night was hiding its shame of my deeds. The oblique, muddy roads that were quiet in these early hours carved up the city like a madman’s attack of a canvas. Like mine, on the unsuspecting priest. The Thames, murky, dark and brooding rippled beyond the cathedral’s walls one hundred and fifty meters further below.
“I am cursed.”
I threw myself out from the tower of the cathedral, “I am cursed, no more!”
The thrill of falling was exhilarating. I would never have believed the sensation could be so inspiring. I was awestruck. I began a futile prayer with the dark city-scape blurring in my water-filled eyes. Yet, strangely, everything became clear and bright, though the moon had once again refused to acknowledge me. Things passed, not in a rate of normal acceleration, but it seemed to almost slow down, bringing every brick in the stone wall toward which I was approaching and every ripple in the river into greater focus. It took quite some time for me to finally hit and, needless to say, the impact was quite a jolt, though not in the least fatal.
From my sprawled and temporarily maimed body, I spied the spire from which I had just flung my decrepit dead body at its total height as though it were only inches away. Snapping a few dislocated limbs back, including a pelvic joint swiveling around to meet its ball and socket—like your legendary King Elvis—I got up and walked away.
“There must be a way to kill the animal within,” I pondered disdainfully.
____________________________________________________________________________
Now the Great Fire of London was a real event that took place in the early hours of September 2, 1666. It started in a bakehouse on Pudding Lane at approximately 1 a.m. The fire spread to the Star Inn, on Fish Street Hill. Finish this story of Carlisle’s attempt to kill himself with fire…before saving himself? Or being rescued???
Include dialogue, other characters and something that evolves this plot.
http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedi...
Have fun!!! Now you do the same with "Kite" or ANY other book where you thought the plot went off the tracks or one you thought could've been even BETTER had the author asked YOU!