Victim Of Innocence

• Ellie Fordham, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2014

Malai laid in agony and distress as her tired eyelids collapsed, provoking her eyelashes to entwine. Flies polluted the dense air as her lungs heaved through the humidity, skipping breaths as she coughed and spluttered in reaction. A malleable tube inserted into her nose and bandages wrapped around her premature limbs. A new-born soul trapped in a dying body. The once white sheets beneath her were smothered in dry crimson fluid as the heated air contaminated it generating a smell of metal loose in the air. Similar to the smell of the chunks of metal that are gruesomely removed from the skin of the citizens. The innocent and the corrupted.
Malai wakes to reveal two hazel spheres, blinking away the dust gathered in the curvature of her eyes. Dark wispy hair falls over her rubicund cheeks as a nurse walks in her direction. She begins to frown creating crinkles above the bridge of her nose, which are stained by two adjacent freckles. The nurse rests her hand on the damaged trolley positioned opposite her bed where old swabs and blood stained bandages sit. Agonizing silence fills the air as the buzz from the insects grow louder, polluting the air with pain-filled screams, similar to those of the citizens. Malai sits up in distress. Behind the curvature of her chest a wounded heart pulses a sabotaged beat. The lump in her throat thickens and the wrenching ache in her thigh grows. The ceiling starts to move like a kaleidoscope of stars and eccentric shapes until her eyes weaken in the light of desperation.
Her body was a battleground.
Her heart was a haven.
Innocence is a dangerous state.
And she, she was dangerous.