New Beginning

• Sarah Cumming, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2014

Life. What is Life? I have always asked myself this, sitting in the gloomy, small, room that feels like a prison. I have no freedom. I am stuck here and I feel like I am not living. There is a small window so I see a tiny glimpse of what the world is like but it makes me sad to look. What I dream of, what I am longing for is an escape. To escape from this dark, dreadful place and never come back.

My name is Charlie and I have been stuck in this orphanage as long as I have lived. I don’t know my parents, I used to think good things about them but all the suffering I have gone through has made those thoughts disappear; and been replaced with, they must have been horrible parents to leave me here and never come back for me. This orphanage has only a few children but you can’t do anything. They leave you in your own small room and bring food to you. If you could call the gloop they bring you ‘food’. Also you’re only let out to go to the bathroom, that’s it. The people that run it are stinking no-good people that do not care about you at all, they even celebrate if you become adopted and leave so they don’t have to put up with you anymore. (Or so I’ve heard)

But this time I have a plan to escape. When I leave this room to go the bathroom, I will run straight down the stairs, out the door and into the streets. They won’t chase me once I’m lost in the streets. I can hear heavy footsteps and now a key turning in the lock. I like that sound. That is the sound of escape. The sound of a better life. I walk out the door. They are smiling at me. Huge fake evil smiles. I run for my life down the stairs. They didn’t expect that, they are too slow to catch up to me. I open the front door and run as fast as I can out of there. When I’m far enough away, I look back. They are at the door looking around trying to spot me.

I take one last look at the building that has been my ‘home’ for my whole life so far. I’m not going to miss it. As I walk off, I know this is my new beginning.