- Just Another Girl -

• Tiana Denny, Grade 8, Haileybury College - Castlefield Campus
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'Write As Rain 2014' competition

-1943-
The brick came hurtling through our window, narrowly missing Mr Spot, my teddy bear. The glass came showering down all around me, my dad brakes through my door leaving it hingeless and ruined on the glass fragmented floor. I am wailing from the pain that the glass fragments caused, cuts all over my body. I am scared, petrified...scarred. I am roughly hoisted up off my bloodied bed and tossed over my dad's shoulder. I search for my family, I wonder if they are still alive. I can't stop crying because I can't see my older sister, I can't see my older brother and I can't see my mum.
I smell the smoke before I see the flames, engulfing the front door. Our house is ruined, furniture upturned, wood splintered and blood everywhere. Multiple bricks are lying on the smoking carpet with holes in windows the size of bowling balls. I see them...the white hooded figures taunting me with their bare eyes and hooded faces. Their billowing cloaks, smoke stained and ripped, but what scares me the most is what they have in their hands...torches, lit torches, charging towards us.
I am heaved out the door with those dark eyes boring into mine. I am shoved into the car still crying, inside I see my family huddled around each other and my dad starts the car and he zooms around the corner as if nothing could stop it. I wish I was like that, no I wish my mum was like that.
I look out the window trying to decipher what is going on but all I can see is a blur of red, orange and yellow...fire. The ghetto is alight. I stare into the eyes of my mother seeing the shock and horror upon her face. It is now that I realise what an abominable world this really is. I cry. I whimper and sob until there are no tears to fall.
My eyes are caked with dried, salty tears, I am exhausted, my mother is doing her best to calm me down by rubbing my back. After several hours I can't keep my eyes open much longer and I gently nod off, the horror of those masked men haunting my dreams.
I crack my eyelids open and see the silhouette of my mother's face directly above mine, her eyes worried. I am panic stricken and I can't move. I am frozen in fear.
The tears build up when I finally find my voice.
"What happened?" I croak.
"Chloe, last night...we were attacked...by the Klu Klux Klan." She answers.
"Why? Why would they do this to us? What have we ever done?!" I scream back at her.
"Honey we aren't like them, they are scared of difference," my mum replies.
"Where is dad?" I ask cautiously.
"Chloe, I am so sorry...I thought he was different...he tricked us, the attack was a diversion. We are in their leaders basement..."