Consumed With Darkness

• Ogai Gul, Grade 11, Marsden High School
• Short Story
• 2012

Finalist in the 'Far Out 2012' competition

Another stab of little knives against my cold cheek, I grab the sides of my jacket and try and pull it more around me. It’s a vain attempt, it’s too small.
Ever since mother died it’s been like this; wondering around the streets, looking for somewhere to stay.
I look around me, I need a place which is sheltered, able for me to endure the night.
I’m standing in the middle of the streets, there’s hustle around me, everyone trying to get home, some tripping over the stones of the road.
The street is lit with the fire burning in the lamps, shinning onto the tall buildings. The windows inside are alight.. The buildings are connected, as if they have been built against each othe. Plain they all were, brick homes with no colour. All of them stacked neat, straight and regular. These could not even be called homes.
I, had a home.
A warm place, my mother by the fire with my little sister, Roseland, my mother combing her hair so she didn’t get a cold, my little Roseland sipping her tea with a flush against her cheeks, her little hands barely reaching all the way around the cup. My sweet little Roseland, with.... CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!
Blinking furiously, I’m brought back to realise were I was.
Not paying attention, I turn onto the next street, it’s empty. Walking through I noticed red marks on all the doors in the street.
*FLASHBACK*
“NOOOO! Mother!” I scream and scream.
Strong arms grab me from behind and drag me back. “AHHHH!” I struggle, flay my arms around. “Let go of me!”
With a quick jerk, I’m thrown backwards. A man turns around and looks at me and say, “Flee boy! It is not safe!” and thrusts his hand in a dismissing motion.
Breathing hard, tears running down my face, I cannot leave!
I make a charge for the house. My home.
A man grabs me again and pulls me towards a carriage. He pushes me in and tells the man at the front to go.
I bang and bang against the door! We start moving.
Frantically moving I look out the carriage window.
What were they doing to my home?!
I see a man carrying a tin towards the house, he stops in front of the door and takes a brush coated in red out of the tin and quickly strikes the door with a large, red X.
My eyes widen in shock. I fall against the seat. It’s cannot be! NO! I refuse to believe it! Mother and little Roseland were not that sick, they couldn’t have been.
*END OF FLASHBACK*
I can hear heavy breathing, and I realise it’s myself. I didn’t even realise I had fallen to the ground on my knees. My head covered in salty dew. I close my eyes and swallow.
My eyes open to the house on the street, all of them marked with the red X. All of them abandoned, empty and lost.