Falling

• Gabriel Mallinson, Grade 4
• Short Story
• 2015

Falling

Dedicated to the magpie I loved.

Eleven-year-old Phoebe Schneider sat, very precariously, on the window ledge, on the forty-third floor of the old abandoned RedRoof Industries.

A thought came to her, if she were to sit here a little longer someone may open the window (she knew they opened outwards) and it would be bye-bye to this world, but that wouldn’t happen, would it?

She thought too soon: the window flew open and Phoebe sailed down to earth. As she approached, she looked at the place her life had been set.

Phoebe saw the theatre where she had once watched a play of Snow White who lived with the seven dwarfs and who had the prince. Phoebe was small back then so she obviously loved the princesses and their stories. She thought it must have been fun when she was tiny – just three or four years old.

There was also the swimming pool where the volunteers running it was so generous they gave free lessons, but she payed because kindness took the better of her. And now, Phoebe could swim very well. But she wouldn’t need that information any more.

She watched the kind Butcher who was standing outside stocking up the poultry and delicious beef. It had always been delicious, it just had. When Phoebes’ parents cooked it you could smell it from the upstairs bedrooms, the aroma was so strong.

Finally, the eleven-year-old looked at her beloved home, high on the hill. Phoebe imagined she could see her parents through the kitchen window cooking beef and preparing salad. She was going to die and no one was would know how or when. It was useless: Phoebe didn’t have a chance of living.

Phoebe had fallen her forty-three floors and was luckily realising she was going to splashdown in the fountain just metres away. She was going to live.

And she splashed, relieved, into the cool blue water.