Terror

• Danielle Roberts, Grade 5r
• Short Story
• 2012

Jamie waited for Ma with an uneasy feeling. Ma was never late- there had to be something wrong. Ma was incredibly cautious for Jamie; she hated letting her out of her sight. Jamie sat down on the splintery, wooden table in their rickety kitchen, wondering where Ma could be. All of a sudden an ear-splitting roar erupted outside. Jamie rushed to the door, but couldn’t see the cause of the sound. She scrambled back inside and continued her wait.

Ma ran through the smoke, choking and coughing. Darkness was close behind her. She wanted to stop and rest and for everything to be all right. But it couldn’t be. After this, nothing would ever be how it was before. ‘Think of Jamie!’ She screamed in her head. ‘Think of how terrified she is, at home alone’. These thoughts urged her to go on. The smoke suddenly overwhelmed her, but she ran on, blinded by the haze. She crashed into a sturdy oak, its branches illuminating the night with flames that skipped around its boughs. As the frail, old woman came back to her senses, her lungs filled with the taste of burning rubber. She glanced up to the oak and saw a half-melted, burning tyre, attached to a smoking, charred rope. The rope snapped and broke, and Ma only just managed to escape the smouldering bullet. Shocked, she scanned the distance, straining her painful eyes, and made out the shape of a small, cement house. ‘Home!’ she thought, over joyed by the feeling that Jamie was safe and unhurt. Tears in her eyes, she thought, ‘Just a little longer, and everything will be all right. Then her world went black.

Jamie was even more worried that before. ‘Where is she?’ Jamie now knew for certain, that this wasn’t just a one-off. Something had happened to Ma, Something big. Jamie scanned the landscape through the window, searching for Ma’s familiar figure, and gasped. Hundreds of thick, jet-black clouds covered the sky like a gigantic, grey carpet. A huge bolder flew above the house and smashed down on the roof, spraying cement inside and outside the demented building. The temperature immediately dropped and Jamie leaped outside the house. She looked at the sky to see the source of the destructive, grey missile, when her eyes rested on a mountain in the distance. Its peak was covered in snow, and scattered about the surface was streams of lava. Flames flickered up the remains of demolished trees, dancing in the wind. Horrified, Jamie darted into the flames and ash to find Ma.

Ma awoke to find Jamie clinging to her smoky shawl, sobbing madly. She was soaking wet and the tips of her hair were burnt to cinders, but she was alright. Where she was, she had no idea, but she knew she was safe. She hugged Jamie and took a deep breath. She stroked Jamie’s soft, brown hair, smiled and said ‘It’s going to be alright now.’