Paper Cut

• Amelia Budiawan, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2010

Paper cut

My name is Julie Horlow. I’ve been journeying around this world of mine for quite some time now. The atmosphere is so quiet and very, very still with a sense of lingering decay. I want to get out, but it won’t let me. So here I am, wandering the endless plains of this forbidding land, feeling as empty as a dark, deep abyss- kind of like the one I fell into when I started this journey. I miss variety; the many different smells and tastes, sweet and tangy to absolutely putrid. There is nothing alive here in this world, only inanimate objects which I fear I will become too if I don’t escape soon. I don’t want to be like this, but all I can think about is being lifeless, hollow and falling into an enormous endless void for all eternity. Eternity! Hah. What a great joke. Nothing lasts forever, I’ve learnt that much.

I’m not sure what my body is anymore, I feel that it is just a thin fragile shell yet heavy and motionless. Huh. Reminds me a bit of how my mother was when it was sucking the life out of her. I feel unclear and cloudy about everything right now. Everything is hazy and I don’t even feel myself physically here. I have no idea what I’m doing. This is all so perplexing and I feel as though I am lost in a maze; a maze of my thoughts.

Suddenly I feel something. A touch! Something I have not felt in a long time. Something light and paper-thin is gently falling to my... my hand! That’s part of my body! I remember another thing; the thing touching me was paper! Of course! I had described it as “paper-thin” anyway, hadn’t I! Oh joy; I’m regaining my senses back into a warm, lively world full of beautiful, bustling life! Oh, but no once again I can feel the darkness closing in on my newfound senses, swallowing me up.

As despair comes over me, I am instantly determined to fight the darkness of my cold, blank world. I remember my lovely mother and thoughts begin gathering. I know what I have to do. Above all things, my mother hated most this annoying little thing. If I want to get out of this maze I have to do this one little thing.

At once a burst of brilliant red rushes into my vision, into my world; drowning it as I weep all my tears of sorrow to be gone forever after this moment. When my eyes finally clear, I see a new world, well rather, the old one I have been previously lost to. It is the beautiful, vibrant world that I had longed for so often and loved. The one my mother belonged to but was now gone from. The memory of her reminds me, and I look down at my hands, to my finger, to see a small red mark.

Paper cut.