Heaven

• Naomi Kuhle, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2017

The girl lay there in the dark, panting, and gasping for breath, sweat trickling down her forehead and onto the damp grass on which her trembling head rested. Her parched dry lips trembled as she whispered broken words. With a moan of anguish, she turned a pair of helpless despairing brown eyes up to the sky and murmured a plea for help to someone, anyone, but no one came. The very wind seemed to howl and mock her agony and pain. Her thin face was pale and frightened, and her eyes clearly showed the agony and torturous pain she felt.

Lightning flashed in the sky and thunder boomed nearby. As she lay there helpless injured and alone, the heavens burst forth and rain came down in torrents, wetting her parched dry lips and cooling her feverish body. A scream escaped her lips as a wave of pain washed over her body and left her moaning in agony. There she waited, staring up at the sky, hoping and praying for help.

Why did no one come? Questions and fears racked her brain so much that it seemed to her as if bombs were exploding inside her tortured head. Weeks, months, years. Surely it must have been years that she lay drenched and dying. Trees waved and bowed in the wind, and the rain made a ghastly patter of tiny feet running through the shadows and gloom around her. She clenched her hands tightly and bit her lip so hard that a single red drop of blood appeared. But it was soon washed away by the torrential rain.

Her breath started coming in scratchy, rasping uneven gasps. Clenching her hands together she raised them towards the heavens, and with a last cry of despair, her hands fell limp and white to the ground, her moans and, prayers stopped and the painful heaving of her chest ceased.

It seemed as if all hell had been let loose. Thunder crashed and boomed above her motionless head now no longer in pain. Lightning flashed in the sky and a blast of angry wind roared and screeched over the lifeless body. Rain pounded down in sharp sheets of cold cruel rain. Her life was gone, finished with the pain and misery of this world, gone forever from the heartbreaking cruel place it had known all its life. Away from the jealousy, the hatred and the contempt that seeped into everyday life on this planet.

She had gone forever to a better place. A place where there is no fear, no pain, no anger. A place with no tears and frowns where there is only joy, peace and harmony, a place called Heaven.