You Don't Know The Beginning, But The Ending Still Broke Your Heart.

• Lily Buckley, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2022

She looked out the window at the fire that was destroying the only home she had ever known. She collapsed to her knees, broken. I kept screaming. Despite the burning pain in my throat and the constant cracking of my voice, I kept screaming.

They would hear me until they stopped pretending they didn't.

she looked over to me, lying on my back spluttering almost unintelligible words. She crawled over and turned me on my side. Weak and battered, I coughed up thick dark red blood. My eyes shut tight as it spilled out of my mouth. She stared at me, pained by the sight.
I longed to be better. To protect her. To be able to sit up and hold her tight.
But I was dying. I knew that despite her constant reassuring words.

I felt a sudden sharp sting to my neck. I opened my eyes, and there she was. The one that I loved, a blade to my throat and a tear in her eye. She looked down at me, still shaking from her sobs. As she opened her eyes I realised why she had always been so distant. Why she had pretended to hate me. Why she had always refused to be alone with me. Why she was sobbing at this very moment.
She couldn't get too close. For fear of this very situation, she couldn't get too close to me. And I came to a realisation that this had happened to her before. She's had to this, in the past.
I knew that now. And I knew that she loved me. And that was all I needed.

She pushed the blade deeper into my throat. In my last few moments I watched the soft glow of the steel, light up the room ever so slightly.
And that was it. The joy of life, the very thing people spend lifetimes searching for, stolen away. She hugged her knees as the tears poured out. She had lost everything, for nothing.