Hi! I'm working on a fanfiction about The Mentalist but I have a problem: english is far from being my maternal langage so I'm looking for a beta reader. I wasn't gonna look for one until I had time to actually work on said fanfiction but I just wrote that little one shot and thought it would be a good test to see if I'm that bad with english...I know the story is not that good but it's mostly to see if I'm an hopeless case or not ^^
So if I'm not that bad (I know the worst is the grammar...) and if you think maybe you could have some time in the future to look at a fanfiction and help me with the mistakes can you send me a review or a message? You would instantly be on the top 10 of my favorite people of all time. At least :p
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Life is like a drawing. At the beginning that has difficulties in taking shape, we don't really know what we want to draw, nor how we are going to manage to draw it.
Patrick Jane was in his memory palace. A midwest carnival circuit. When you know how to use your own memory palace it's as easy to remember things as looking into an old photo album. From poker cards to simple daily memories. There he was holding his first pet. That one? His first day of school. On this one it was his 6th birthday. He remembered one of his dad's friends leaning and telling him: "Hey buddy! You're all grown up now! Soon we'll be celebrating your marriage". He had taken his imaginary sword out of his pocket and began running around in circles swearing he would never be married and that girls were stupid. Classy. If only he had knew, maybe he would have taken the celibacy vow a little more seriously.
And then, the first true knocks of pencil come. The drawing takes shape with more or less success.
Sometimes it was nice to go over all those memories. It calmed him. Some days it would even help him to go to sleep. Even if it was for a few hours. First school parties, first real friends, high school, first flirts, first love...
But there are always knocks of pencil which we miss. So we erase them and begin again.
Still, real pictures can be misleading. Looking them over, you could think that everything has always been a pretty little pink bubble. Which is never the case. Everybody has rough patchs. But how weird would that be to take pictures? Nobody took a picture the day Jimmy Denron pushed him in a mud puddle in kindergarden. Nobody took one when he broke his arm falling from a tree when he was 7.
But most of all, nobody took a picture when he came home that night, read the note adressed to him and opened the door. Except it was all in his memory palace.
Only, arrived at an ultimate blow of pencil, due to erasing and beginning again, the tracks of past, until then almost non-existent and forgotten, add up to leave us only with the only henceforth indelible track.
There were pictures he didn't want to see anymore. Fairs he didn't want to go to. Memory he would rather destroy. But he couldn't. Every single time he passed the fair with the big threatening red flag with a bloody smiley at the entry, he couldn't help but see his complete past life passing by his eyes. First date, marriage, house moving, maternity hospital. When one of his friends ask his daughter on her 5th birthday what she wanted to do when she would be a grown up, her answer came instantly "I will be a dancer or a secret agent. And I'll have a nice husband and 3 littles babies I will name Leonard, Rusty, and George!".
But that memory was fatally followed by a scarlet floor with an inanimate tiny form lying in the middle.
Some people prefer to abandon there, saying to themselves that their drawing is not worth it anymore, that it's lost.
Really close to that fair were one he would rather forget to. He still wondered sometimes how exactely he managed to survive that night. He would have died he wouldn't even have seen the difference. The tiniest smile was a struggle and tears weren't any comfort. He was empty. Hadn't he been taken care of by professionals and a lot of drugs, he probably won't be here now.
But sometimes, we prefer to hang on to our drawing, thinking that it's not too late and that it would be a shame to waste the other parts of the drawing which, them, are a success.
"I find it kinda funny I find it kinda sad, the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I ever had". It could have been him singing that except at no point did he find that sad. It would have been a relieve. But at some point he finally accepted the help. He would probably never thank Sophie enough for what she did. The changes in his behavior were the slightest but it was still there. It took him over a year to get out of his permanent transe. And even after that he still wasn't sure he could trust himself. But now he had a new aim. Revenge. As simple as that.
Even if in the distance the drawing is great, by looking more attentively we see that it is far from being completed. But it belongs to us to try to fill these imperfections which will always be there.
Simple but not easy. He couldn't have found better than the CBI though. Everyday he had a reason to wake up. It wasn't always easy even if he had a grin on his face most of the time. He had to face other kids murdered, other wives murdered and he would be on his dusty memory road again. But he was making progress. He knew it. One day he would find Red John and give him what he deserved.
A drawing is not made at one time. By making efforts, we can all make a beautiful drawing.
"Jane. Jane! I just talked to the victim's brother. Are you insane?! Jane! I know you're not sleeping. Move from that couch. Right now. You're not gonna get away from this one with a simple smile."
Out of his thoughts, Jane left his midwest carnival circuit to follow Lisbon in her office and when she slammed the door behind him, he knew he was in trouble. Still he couldn't help but grin at the red rosing to her cheeks as she was shouting at him, getting more an more mad, and think that maybe he could find another reason to wake up in the morning other than revenge.