Rosalind

ROSALIND: An addictive personality … does it really exist? Her sister thought so and she was probably right. This is a short story about Rosalind ... and she is a self confessed addict. But addicted to what? Well, if you asked her she would tell you … just about every damn thing!

This intelligent, sometimes amusing and sometimes distressing short story of just under 10,000 words, gives air to a tale of woe, the recounting of a journey, one that some would eventually describe as a slippery path downward, an uncontrolled and previously un-navigated spiral leading directly into the open and curiously welcoming arms of total destruction.

Starting with a family who cared but not quite enough, this story ends with a much different, more threatening and even more violent family of individuals, ones who probably needed Rosalind much more than she needed them.

If you think you may be cursed, or possibly blessed, with an addictive personality, then you should certainly take a little time out to read the few thousand words adequately captured here. If you're not, but know someone who is, then this could possibly turn out to be this month's essential reading.

Could it have been blamed on a misspent youth or some sort of early identity crisis? It may well have been due to some psychological issue, the kind of issue her sister would label 'an addictive personality'.

What some would call a headlong dive into a sleazy world of drugs and underage sex would appear to Rosalind simply as a natural progression from smoking twenty cigarettes a day at the age of thirteen; something she would later recognise as her first addiction.

But it would be her final addiction, one that would define the particular woman Rosalind would grow into and one that would affect the majority of lives gathered up in her highly charged personal world of conquest and dominance.

This story contains moments of laughter and moments of despair. It describes how a young, attractive and intelligent individual can be totally defined by her background, the shunning of opportunity and the relentless pursuit of the best ever 'hit' in a world where all control is either lost carelessly or taken away by others and then managed with a frighteningly ruthless vigilance.