Notes on “The Walrus” V1

For a while now, I’ve been devoting half of the time in my head to a novel. I came up with the story “The Walrus” nearly a year ago, and since then, it’s been the one thing I’ve been dreaming to publish one day. Unfortunately, as my life turns to its end, I’m afraid I’ll never be able to finish to novel as I planned. So, I decided to share all the notes and ideas I’ve been taking since I started to write the story. 

I got the name “The Walrus” from the Beatles song with the same title. I thought it felt the story well, as the song is a total psychedelic experience of social matters, drug use, and just completely total mess. That itself could cover the whole plot completely. I took a lot of reference to the Beatles when writing the story.

 [ The premise of the story follows as this: Roy is an 18 year old orphan who lives with his girlfriend, Lucy. The plot is set in the 1995, Rockford IL, and it’s the summer after high school graduation. 

At the beginning of the story, Roy is bland, and fairly simple in personality. Most of his time is spent following his girlfriend around at parties.

On one of these occasions, Roy is faced with an accidental high from taking an innocent sample of marijuana. In the middle of his very intense and confusing high, he meets another boy named Jude. Coincidentally, Roy has been having various religious nightmares including Jude, and being interested in his character, Roy makes a move on him, and they make out. 

They form a formal relationship a few weeks later, and although Roy is pretty disgusted at himself for making out with another dude, they both form a bond together.

Drug abuse is a very important aspect within this story. Jude, for example, sells drugs like ketamine and meth around the city, while also abusing them and other hard drugs from the beginning. Roy himself had bad habits including smoking cigarettes and drinking, and as he gets curious to Jude’s behavior, he begins to abuse drugs alike to those as well. 

These events lead to a change of both characters, but mostly Roy. He becomes both mentally and physically aggressive, and at one point, threatens to shoot Jude. Jude encourages him too, and when Roy pulls the trigger at Jude’s shoulder, the bullet simply falls out of his skin.

This when it is revealed that Jude is not human, but a deity from another Planet. Jude explains he takes drugs and whatever he can find to return back to where he’s from, as he’s been stuck on Earth and in his body. ] 

• I’d stop there and just sum up the rest in a few sentences: Roy and Jude start a heavy romantic relationship with another, run away and live in Roy’s abandoned home, sell drugs around the city, make out with each other every now and then, get high and drunk in nearly every page of the story, beat each other and fight over drugs also in every page, make out again, Lucy finds them making out one time, Jude sheds his entire skin and runs away to live under a bridge, Roy comes home and thinks Jude overdosed and killed himself, Roy carries this dudes presumably dead body around the city for 3 days looking for a cemetery, Roy finds Jude, now like 7ft tall and alien looking, they make out once, Jude has to shed his skin again and kill the world, Roy runs away in fear, accidentally kills his sister, kills Lucy while he’s high, runs back to Jude, they lay down and make out again, Roy wants to die before Jude kills the planet, “commits suicide” but it was really just Jude who shot him in the mouth, Jude steals Roy’s cigarettes, and the end! 
  

Obviously I mean there’s a lot more to that and the characters, but i’d like to focus more on the main characters and the topics surrounding them.

Apart from the drugs, Catholicism is a huge part of the story. Jude comes from a religious planet near Earth, who have studied Catholic religion from afar, creating their own version of the gospel and the story of God.

Jude is the deity that is the personification of God, Jesus, and Judas (Judas replaces the Holy Spirit in the Holy Trinity). His “real” body or “first form” is really a massive black gas star, with 3 rings similar to Saturns resembling the Holy Trinity. The rings are made up of human eyes, organs, teeth, and blood. His body is nearly 5,000x larger than our star, which is what causes him to kill our solar system when he sheds his final skin.

He goes through multiple forms throughout the story, starting with this one. When he is forcibly trapped to Earth, his body immediately adapted to the surroundings. His second form is a human body, with several added limbs starting from his head to his torso, hair around 13 ft long, antler ears on his back, and a constantly open eyes and mouth. 

His third form is the one we see mostly in the story. A recognizable human.

His fourth form is a taller, scrawnier, longer haired version of his “human” form. He has mouths on his palms, and one extra eye on his knee. He wears a tunic that resembles Jesus.

Jude is one of my favorite characters I have written. He was much different when I first decided on his character,. but i’m happy with what I came up with. 

I find the characters in this story to be the most special to me because they reflect myself and other people I know. I understand people more when I write them down, and that’s what draws me to create characters like Jude. Jude is very obviously not someone I created on my own, I think if I got the chance to fully explain his character, then it’d be easier to see how much he resembles somebody undoubtedly real. 

Roy is a character I use to better understand myself rather than others. He’s a funny guy, and he’s very much inlove with Jude, but he’s shitty, he does and he says stupid things, he’s rude, he has heavily internalized homophobia, and really he’s a dick if you don’t catch him in a good mood. Whenever I act a certain way, a way like that, I let my feelings out with Roy. He’s a lesson to me, especially when it comes to his drug abuse and love for Jude. 

Before I finish this off, I would like to show a page of notes I did on this story a few months ago. There are things that are out dated to the new story, but I thought it would be a better insight to the characters and plot.

THE WALRUS: REVISIONS AND NOTES (APRX APRIL - JUNE 2024) 

[ Roy is an 19 year old boy living in [SETTING]. A senior in high school, he lives with his girlfriend, [NAME], after the death of his parents (though, his aunt has custody of him). 

Roy has a good reputation and an overall simple and kind personality. He has a few friends, and usually spends his time following his girlfriend around.

After being invited to a party along with [NAME], Roy is accidentally drugged with a heavy dose of marijuana, and is introduced to Jude during his high. Jude and Roy make out in the bathroom, while Roy experiences heavy and confusing hallucinations all throughout. 

Jude and Roy eventually formally meet the following week, with Roy upset upon remembering what happened. However, they form a friendship when Jude expresses morals that they both align with. 

The more they hangout together, the more Roy learns about Jude and his past. At first, it’s revealed that Jude is an extremely heavy drug abuser, who makes a living on the streets selling [HEAVY DRUG NAME]. Jude doesn’t influence this behavior on Roy, but Roy is intrigued either way, and slowly follows into those habits as well, while also starting his own. He begins to smoke cigarettes, drink, and take some of the drugs that Jude uses. 

Roy begins to show an extreme change of character after these events. He becomes more aggressive (both physically and mentally), and distant towards [NAME] and generally anybody other than Jude. 

At some point during a fit of rage, Roy threatens to shoot Jude. When Jude encourages him, the bullet doesn’t directly go into Jude’s skin, but simply falls out. 

It’s revealed that Jude is a god from a religion far out in space. In simple terms, his body got accidentally sent to Earth when he experienced extreme frustration within himself. He was able to adapt into a physical human body, and his goal now is to escape Earth and return to his religious duties. He states that he abuses multiple drugs because it allows his human body to go into a state similar to his original one. He believes that state will help him in order to “spiritually escape” the Earth. 

Jude and Roy soon become closer, mostly due to the Roy’s curiosity. They form somewhat of a romantic relationship together, however it is never taken seriously (though, it’s obvious they would like it to be).  The relationship they have together is not the overall best, seen as they both have abusive behavior due to the heavy drug abuse they share. They both live in Roy’s abandoned home, where he and his parents used to live. [NAME] visits a few times. 

One day upon being kicked out earlier by Jude, Roy comes home to Jude laying “dead” on the floor. Roy notices multiple needles across his body, revealing the Jude must have overdosed. 

After breaking down in sadness and anger, Roy decides that he will bury Jude’s body near a local graveyard by himself. Since Jude’s body is seemingly intact, Roy picks him up and carries him on his back, and begins to walk out to the graveyard. 

Nearly halfway in his journey, Roy picks up a bag of [DRUG] near a small beach, that is used very often by Jude. When Roy searches the beach, he finds an extremely thin man sitting there, with completely black skin, white hair that reaches below his feet, and a loose tunic that resembles one wore by Jesus Christ. Roy founds out that it is actually Jude. Apparently, after experiencing all the drug abuse, Jude’s body “shedded” into a new form, one that is closer to escaping Earth. 

Roy and Jude begin to become close again. Jude explains that when he “sheds” into his final form, the Earth will die due to his mass and gravity. In fear, Roy runs away to [NAME], where he preaches her into following Jude’s Testament and proclaims his love to her. He then murders her in order to salvage her soul to Jude.  *This is not explicitly revealed, it shown that Roy “saves her”, but after an ounce of [DRUG] falls out of his pocket, her murdered body is shown in the background. 

Roy meets up with Jude, where they make out in an abandoned car on the beach. Jude tells Roy that the end will only be in a few hours. In those hours, Roy and Jude lay together in the sand and speak about spirituality, morals, and their feelings for one another. 

Just a few minutes before the end, Roy sits up and kisses Jude. When he lays back, he closes his eyes with a defeated face, accepting his fate. Jude pulls out a gun, slowly putting it into Roy’s mouth, and a gunshot is heard. Jude returns the kiss shortly after he kills Roy. He reaches into Roy’s jacket and pulls out a case of cigarettes. He lights it and puts it in his mouth, while he slightly looks down and his eyes stare at the viewer without blinking. The scene ends with him smoking the cigarette without any movement. ]

END OF v1 NOTES