Rise Of War

• Liam Parigi, Grade 5, Antonio Park Primary School
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'Write As Rain 2014' competition

In a deserted alleyway, surrounding an anonymous tower, sits a small nine year old boy who cares little about the world around him. That is, by no means, to say that the boy is selfish, there simply is little for him to care about. Every day the boy plainly observes the tower: at full light he sees sharp, metallic angles; at dusk he sees rounder stone-like structures. On this particular day, however, the boy wonders whether the tower has anything to do with the empty city. And it is with this very thought that the boy vows: “I will enter the tower and find out why the streets are deserted”.
Buoyed by curiosity, the boy rises to his feet and the alleyway suddenly breathes a glimmer of life. But the boy’s heart beats dangerously fast as he anticipates his quest. He suspects that a guard will defend the tower at entry. So the boy returns to relative safety of the alleyway to find a weapon. In an abandoned slaughter house, he spots a dagger which he grabs and tucks under his belt. He then walks towards a bakery and, as the rats scurry away, hungrily seizes a loaf of bread as hard as concrete. With the dagger’s cold blade against his skin, he steadily gnaws at the loaf while waiting for dusk.
Moving through the shadows, the boy glimpses a large figure in medieval armour: the guard. Before the boy can even question how he will face this bulky force, the guard is pressing him against the cold blue-stone floor. Under the guard’s suffocating weight, the boy instinctively stabs at the guard’s neck, but with no effect. The guard stands up, turns his back on the boy and begins to walk away. It is at this very point that the boy notices a gap in the guard’s armour, and takes aim at the guard’s neck again. At first the impact seems minimal, but just as the boy is about to lose hope, the guard falls to the floor with a heavy thud. The guard lays motionless; torrents of red spill across blue.
The boy catches his breath and starts exploring the tower. It is now as deserted as the surrounding alleyways. He enters a chamber, and stands before a dusty gold-leaf mirror. He asks himself “why am I here?” “I am here because I am curious to find out why the city is deserted” the boy reminds himself. “So, is that what led me to take the only other remaining human life?” Silent, the boy looks at the ground. He slowly loosens his grip on the handle of the dagger. He hears the sound of steel impacting on stone. And it is at this very moment that the boy is convinced that there simply is nothing left for him to care about.
In towns around the deserted city, word breaks that the last resident of the tower is dead and a hero has emerged.