Whisper In The Wind

• Sonia Redman, Grade 8, The Emanuel School
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'Write As Rain 2014' competition

As the sun waned in the hazy orange sky and the shadows lengthened on the wall, a business owner, his suit crisp and his haircut immaculate even after a prolonged and tedious day of work, looked out of his ostentatious office window, and observed as rush hour descended upon New York City. The streets hummed with the casualties of a tiresome workday while famished masses poured into restaurants and cafés before enduring the journey home. The languid heat from mid-July was dense above the high-rises and crept into every cramped corner of the metropolis. What he failed to witness was the billowing black haze descending from the east, unperceived by the citizens of New York in their hectic unobservant state.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the city, a small girl, her feet barely reaching the floor from the wooden stool she was perched upon, gazed upon the parched grass outside her crooked window. She watched as the house opposite, it’s abundant levels balancing precariously against each other, swayed with the warm breeze. The house intrigued her, it’s roof was pitched at such an angle that it’s point was almost parallel to the field, inhibiting roofers to repair the missing slates that last November's storm had blown off, while it’s excessive chimneys resting in various slanted positions, gave the roof the acquired appearance of an eccentric party hat. Directly across from her viewing point however, was a large bay window, its shattered blinds hanging unstably off the structure. It was in the reflection of this window that the small girl, an inquisitive expression etched upon her petite features, saw the ashen cloud fast impending upon her small village.

And it was so. It was not foreseen nor was it forewarned; the lethal swarm of unknown bacteria that destroyed New York, not slowly like a latent disease, but fleeting and petrifying. They were overrun, the corners of buildings collapsing, edifices crashing to the street, the whole city teeming with a fatal gas that choked citizens and flooding the atmosphere. There was no chance of survival, no hope.

Even now, as gusts of dry wind waft through the maze of ancient structures, where windows have long shattered, boards rotten and brick crumbled in the weakness against that destructive day. Doors hang on the few remaining bolts of their hinges and groan in despair at every sway. Weeds mingle across the splintering asphalt of every road, gathering and chuckling at the deserted and ravaged state of this once functional and wondrous city. There is nothing left.

Not even a single whisper in the wind.