Prologue : The Man, The Myth, The Me
The hardest thing is always starting. How does one start a story that explains the worst day of their life? I guess all I can do is start with me, my name. My name is Sweet, or at least my surname is. Some of my family members go by Sweet, I don’t. I started with this because some might recognize the name. Whether you know who I am, or my family already, or even if you have just heard the name in passing but a chill runs down your spin, I suggest you not read this. Nothing I can say or do will make you have a positive opinion of me. But for those of you who don’t know me or have only heard the rumors, read on and see what we are really like.
Back to the name; my father goes by Sweetie. Everyone calls him that, save for his late mother, my brother, and me. I think my mother did too, but I can’t remember. She died two years after my brother, David was born. I was only five, hence why I can’t remember. People have started calling David “Sweetie Junior” which I personally think is a cute name. David seems to like it too. I wish people would call me Sweetie, but no one does. I simply go by Lucy.
I wish I could say that Lucy was my given name but sadly I cannot. My excuse for a mother instead named me Lucille. I know it’s bad to speak ill of the dead, but who names someone Lucille. I don’t care if it means light. I have never met anyone who cares what a name means. And frankly I just hate it.
Now if you have read this far after knowing my name, I know that you either have never heard of me or don’t have any opinion of me. I congratulate both readers as I almost never know who people are and I don’t like having opinions of others. Anyway, you can only go so far with my name. You don’t know me or my family. All you know is that I am Lucy Sweet. Until just now you didn’t know that my favorite color is emerald green, or that I’m very bad at styling hair, or even that I’m recording this as a way to finally express how I feel. So I’ll tell you what you need to know about me.
The first thing you need to know about me is that I have no friends. Sure I have a few acquaintances and such, but no friends. I am not just saying this to sound different or to try and make you pity me. It is just who I am. The closest thing I have to a friend is my cousin, Mary. Yet her and I aren’t even that close. All I know about Mary is that her mother doesn’t like the boys she keeps in her company and all Mary knows about me is that I drink more than she would like it.
The second thing you need to know about me is that I drink. To all the conservative and law abiding people who just read that and clutched their chest while gasping, it’s 1923 girls are going to drink. I know a few of my female classmates are going into work after school, times are changing and who cares if I drink. If you say that I shouldn’t drink because of Prohibition, I bet President Harding serves alcohol at the White House. But you should know this about me as it is the reason for all my arguments with Mary and that every single member of my family has a certain ‘special’ connection with booze.
The third thing you need to know about me is that my family is bootleggers. Truthfully I can’t stand that word. It just sounds dumb. My father had always been a gambling man and had made somewhat of a business off of that. But then alcohol was banned and Father saw a business opportunity. To anyone who is curious, we do not make our own stuff, we smuggle it in from Canada. We do have our own speakeasy though. Although I have never been, I have heard it’s quite fun to go out on the lake while smuggling. Personally I have always liked a bit of danger. But that is all I’ll say about business dealings as I don’t know a whole ton about it in the first place and I don’t want to get my family in more trouble than they already could be in. Also for this reason, I have changed everyone’s names. I kept mine in the spirit of honesty, but let’s just say that David and Mary are not named David and Mary.
All these facts are important to my story. And you may be asking yourself, “Lucy, what exactly is this story you want to share? All you have said is that it was the worst day of your life.” To you I would say yes, this is the story of what happened that day. But in due course the details will be shared. For now all you need to know is that vendettas are terrible things and that every night you should pray to never be apart of one.
I think the prologue works with this kind of Memoir as it states the delivery of the story. I'm not a huge fan of writers using "you" in their book as it takes me out of the story. Also, introducing the character's characteristics by telling us doesn't deliver a strong impact in the prologue - such as her drinking and whatnot. Unless it's directly to the plot, you can just show us in the story. Just make sure when you're telling an audience information that you don't digress into something else and then jump back to the topic at hand because it makes me want to skip reading those sections. It's a good start, but it's something to keep in mind.