The Last Night

• Kaviya Senthilvasan, Grade 6, Greystanes Public School
• Short Story
• 2016

Excellence Award in the 'Word Zone 2016' competition

Ominous, menacing clouds played violently in the sky. Thunder growled like a pack of ruthless wolves eating off a deteriorating body. Clash! Lightning struck in a chaotic, random order with torrential rain pelting the ground. Debris drifted to a world of unknown that lurked beyond the dense forest. I gazed at nature’s beauty, admiring her relentless frustration released here. I was trapped in this horrid place where mold bred underneath the sink and disgusting but intricate cobwebs smothered the decaying ceiling. Rotten floorboards gave the eerie sound that reminded me of a haunted house and was decorated with outdated furniture. The house has a life, but a life of continuous struggles and misfortune defeating hope. There is no escape.
My parents were whipped to death, but I just watched. There was a raging fire burning inside to just fight back, punch, kick, anything but I just watched. I mustered all the strength to attack, however cascading waterfalls surged out of my eyes. I still remember the malicious grin smeared across his face, satisfyingly. Following the usual routine of bread, water and sleeping, the doorknob unexpectedly turned and it hasn’t turned in a very long time.
My blood curdled. The dark silhouette, muscular and focused, held a loaded gun. It was him. As he was clomping upstairs my face turned pale, mortified, with pangs of shock stabbing me everywhere. I shrieked, screamed, and yelled, anything to alert someone out there in the unknown. There he was. He wore ripped baggy jeans complimented with a blood stained white t-shirt after his earlier kill. Against his tanned face, only one eye was red with the other a pale tinted blue providing the coo-cee feeling. Things are about to be ferocious!
His cracked lips formed the awful same smile resembling cruelty, flooding gruesome memories back through my head. A lion rattled the cages inside of me where anger just boiled away of the past. As if I was a puppet, something came over me and I was attacking in the most brutal way. Deep scarring lashed across his face and the gnawing of me teeth ripped flesh and skin with fresh blood oozing out that blood trickling down the side of my mouth. Was I a vampire? I whacked him in the most uncomfortable places and pulled out tufts of hair but this could not prevent the unavoidable truth, death.
He staggered, battered and bruised, but managed to lock the bedroom door. He abused me as I slammed against the crib, where the dusty family photos laid. I stared at him with wrath. My insecurities overwhelmed me in the past, hindering the real me to evolve but now I’m a new person. I freed my emotion. I freed my spirit. I consumed these feeling to emerge from my shell; into the brave person I am now, ambitious and fighting for justice.
“Any last words, Sophia?” he smirked pitilessly
“You’ll never take my soul,” I whispered. “Plus, get the name right. It’s Josephine.”
Bang!