Darkness

• Joshua Brodrick, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2013

The flames from the campfire were dancing in front of me as if hypnotized, swerving from left to right, and bobbing up and down. Even though I was wearing a 100% woollen jumper, the warm insulation was nothing to a freezing sea breeze; I just ended up fighting to fend off the almost-supernatural arctic chill. A thick, misty fog came rolling in from the east, mostly blocking off any chance of survival if I were to go that way. There was also the occasional, deafening clash of lightning that would briefly illuminate the sky, and the stormy clouds were full of unborn precipitation ready to pelt down on me, but apart from that, the night sky was as dark as a witch’s heart.
As I clawed my way through the dense undergrowth with my 400 mm machete, I found myself staring into a clearing. Up ahead I could see a brown and green building meticulously placed amidst the trees. Ideas floated through my mind like, I could find help over there or, I might get a fine for trespassing or, well, I really don’t know what to expect. I tiredly dragged myself up onto the doorstep and reluctantly walked in.
The lights were flickering on and off and the stench coming from the half-open lockers polluted the atmosphere. Footsteps were coming my way so I headed quickly down the path that the noise was coming from and jutted right into the beer gut of a ginormous man. It all started to come to me, like a light bulb had just gone off inside my head. This was a top-secret army base in the middle of nowhere. The man shouted something into his walky-talky and put his finger on the trigger of his jet-black machine gun. He carefully took aim and fired it. It was then, when my world turned as dark as a witch’s heart.