Fear

• Riley Mcmahon, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2018

The scent of fear reeked throughout the city as Kirby made her way home from school. It was a long walk and in this world a long walk on your own is the last situation you would ever want to find yourself in. She could feel sweat dripping down her face. In this world, she was more likely to be killed walking home than she was to make it home safely. The circumstances of that day were bad enough, however, things were about to get a whole lot worse.

Kirby did not remember anything about her surroundings; maybe she had taken a wrong turn on Harrington street or even kept walking too far. This wasn’t very difficult to do as she had been looking over her shoulder more than she had been looking where she was going. Being lost was stressful enough in this city, but the area she was lost in looked like the worst possible neighbourhood for this to happen. “It’s okay,” She thought to herself. “I’ll just retrace my steps until I find the right turn off.” She turned around and began her walk, careful retracing every single step she had taken. However, she did not make it very far before a man stopped her in her tracks.

Kirby glanced at the man’s watch. The time read 6:01, just past the curfew. This was bad, very bad. “Now where do you think you’re going?” asked the man in a menacing, booming voice. “I was just going home, sir,” said Kirby, a shy and timid tone in her voice. “I didn’t mean to be out so late I swear, I’m really sorry, I’m lost, I got lost on my way home.” The man gave her a smirk as if to say, “not good enough.” And, at that moment, the man grabbed Kirby by the arm and dragged her away into a nearby house. He made sure to cover her mouth so as to prevent anyone from standing in his way. Although even if people had seen what the man was doing there would have been nothing they could do about it. Men like him were untouchable after the curfew.

Kirby never spoke of that day to anyone. In fact, she hardly ever spoke at all after the events of that day. She never even spoke to her parents about it, although they knew something had happened in that time because she had bruises and scars to show for it. She was traumatised, frozen in a state of fear. She was hardly even Kirby anymore, she was a completely different person if you could call her human at all. The only issue was that neither Kirby nor her parents could do anything about it so they saw no reason to act upon it. This was the law and they could not fight it. They just had to helplessly let their daughter suffer the harsh reality in which they were forced to live, a world of fear.