Freedom

• Madison Telfer, Grade 9, Pimlico State High School
• Short Story
• 2012

Excellence Award in the 'Legendary 2012' competition

As bombs fly from the sky, I am trapped in my small cell near the Sydney Harbour Bridge. They like to give the prisoners nice big, windows so they can enjoy the view of the destruction and the pieces of debris that fly through the air as if they have wings. The thin but strong bars don’t help either. The piece of concrete the size of my fist that hit me in the back certainly didn’t improve my situation. Pain shoots through my spine as I give a little yelp. I grind my teeth together to stop myself from calling out and hope to god that the guys in the cell next to me didn’t hear it.

The other men imprisoned here don’t have time for wimps, except when they bash them to a pulp and make an example of it. The guards don’t care about it that much. Sometimes they join in and help out. When this happens the victim never survives. Once, one did and he was crawling along the ground whimpering with his body parts twisted at weird angles and his blood pooling underneath him. Steve, the biggest, dumbest brute there, walks past and smashes the poor man’s head in with his foot. Then wipes the brains off his shoe and gets on with it.

Even the thought of it makes me shiver. I look around for something to take cover under. The room is as bare as can be. Except for me. I dive down just as another round of bombing comes. The reverberations from the explosion throw me around the floor. I roll into a ball and try to ignore the pounding in my spine. I need a plan and quick. The bombings are getting closer and I have a sense that with my injuries, I won’t be surviving this set. There is a pause in the bombing which gives me time to drag myself into the corner near the window. I figure if I stay here, most of the bigger chunks will miss me. I start to feel light headed as they start again. I curl into a ball and prepare myself to wait it out.

That was the last thing I remembered before the wall collapsed on me. Choking on the dust in the air I struggle to claw myself out of the rubble. My finger nails tear and blood runs down my fingers. I gasp as I grab the biggest piece of rubble off my leg and just sit there calming myself down and trying to ignore the screaming pain all over me. I crawl over to where the window was, now there is only a gaping hole, and haul myself up. Where the Sydney Harbour Bridge was being constructed is now an empty space. Pieces of metal and rubble lie all over the place and float in the water. Then it dawns on me.

I’M FREE.