No Hope

• Grace Brockett, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2011

Through the blackness the stars gleamed like glistening teardrops. A comet rushed by, turning the blackness into a milky white. It plunged towards the Earth, its tail spreading behind it. As it sped through the atmosphere like a bullet a sound could be heard. A moaning, wailing, screeching sound that would make one scream.
But no one was there.
Through layers of gloomy grey sky the shrinking comet descended, and then through the even gloomier layers of skyscrapers. They seemed as if they were having a race to reach the heavens, all vying to be the first there. The comet at last crashed to the ground, making a small crater in the bitumen of the narrow street. A few metres away was the source of the noise.
The last human.
Her grimy face was pinched into concentration and her golden eyes welled with unshed tears. Her head bobbed and swayed with the grieving rhythm. Her bare feet tapped harshly on the ground and her red velvet dress elegantly swayed with her movements. Her fingers moved swiftly and nimbly to their correct positions on the finger board of the cello. The bow slid across the strings like flowing water. The sounds were bittersweet and mellow as she thought of her life and then sliding to a high and shrieking rhythm as she felt anger. She was obviously a beauty before she became so full of grief and sorrow.
For her past, her future and her present.
Her past was spent as the odd one out, always disadvantaged and excluded. Her only comfort was music, music that made her spirits soar high with the clouds. Music, the sounds that would lull her into her own world where she was supreme and everyone loved her. Music, that gave her hope and passion and became her best friend. But one day the earth shook and rejected the humans that had ripped and torn the blanket Mother Nature had given them.
But she survived, for she was a friend of all creatures.
Her future, as she knew, was to be spent grieving for the animal races that had long ago been poached and slaughtered. She would be to grieve for her lonely past. She would grieve for her race and wonder why they had defied the laws of nature so often. Yet most of all she would grieve for the wonders of the healthy past she would never see.
For she was a friend of all creatures who had known none.
Her time was always spent telling stories with her cello, telling stories of her grief and sorrow, anger and loneliness, and of her passion for music. Although she has her musical passion she is useless.
She has no hope.