How I Rotted

• Allanah Nolan-smith, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2017

I remember the heat of my child’s life in my arms, running through a city of flames. The electric orange that ignited the sky as the mirror plated building lit up in a combustion of terror. The ground feeling like it was disappearing as I stumbled amongst crowds, families, innocent people. The purpling of the man’s lips who laid still, unmoving and lifeless on the footpath I had walked with my child every day. The siren that cried over the city. The children being dragged by parent’s hands, and the ones lost in the tsunami of panic, spinning in circles with heads tilted up to the faces of strangers. A woman running in heels, ankles rolling and black tears staining her cheeks like veins in my father’s hand once had.
I remember the bus driving away without my child. I remember my cries being ignored. I remember my child being sentenced to death as the tires drove away while gun shots sounded like a gavel in a court room, all decisions final. I remember praying to a God I didn’t even believe existed, praying for him to save my child, to spare her from the life she would receive if she stayed. I guess he has a cruel sense of humour. Twisting my words, teasing my strength in a time when everything was lost, when the grass was dying under my feet and the trees withered away. Where hell was on earth. I had no house, no food, no money, and soon I would have no child.
In all the books, in all the movies, in all of society, a mother never forgets what their child looks like. You aren’t supposed to forget the arch of their lips or the dip of their dimples. You aren’t supposed to forget the colour of their eyes or the shape of their nose. You aren’t supposed to forget. But it’s now that I beg myself to remember; to have the photo in my mind forever, a keepsake of the things we love but cannot have. But I can’t. I can’t remember if her nose had a little point to it or if it was as round as her fathers. I can’t remember if she had a pigment as pink as the sunset under her left eye or her right. I can’t remember if her hair was a dark brown or black, or if her eyes were blue with green or green with blue. I don’t remember if the coffin was a mahogany sort of red or a brown oak. I don’t remember if she was wrapped in a purple blanket or if she was peacefully asleep in a pale sky blue.
But I do remember one thing. A definitive crack that resonated like thunder, a bell of finality. Her arms went limp, her chest concaved and I knew my daughter was gone. Blood pooled around her and I couldn’t stop it. It kept coming and I couldn’t stop it. She was leaving me and I couldn’t stop it. No one helped. No one cried. No one cared. We were in a war, and one more life didn’t matter.