I And The Village. (based Off The Painting By Marc Chagall)

• Brianna Charlton, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2018

I was somewhere where there was nothing to see. The more my eyes strained, the murkier my surroundings seemed to become. Upon closing my eyes, I saw no difference. The nothingness was the kind that seemed to embrace you, so that you could almost feel it curling around you, like a shimmering cloak. I hardly knew anything, except for that I was meant to see. I had this tugging feeling in my eyes that they weren’t used to such darkness. I felt that this was unnatural and that I had to get out.

My uneasiness grew the longer I sat in this absence. I would not be able to say it was darkness, for that implies the existence of light somewhere. This wasn’t simply dark, this was nothing. Not only in a visual sense, either. I began to notice the same discomfort in my ears. There was nothing to hear. Again I feel that the word silence would not give justice to what I was experiencing. It was not merely a lack of sound, it was somewhere that sound had never touched. Uneasiness turned to panic as my thoughts ventured to what this all could be. The idea of death came into my mind. I thought that that must be the answer, for I could not summon a better explanation. I had died, and this was the afterlife. I felt my heart pounding against my chest. Could I really be dead if my heart was still beating? I didn’t know.

After a while, I started to feel again. It started out small, so faint that I couldn’t have possibly detected it. It got worse and worse every second, spilling down my throat, exploding in my eyes, piercing every nerve in my hands. It twisted its way through my whole body, leaving nothing but searing pain in its absence. It was at once bitterly cold and scoldingly hot. I still saw nothing, I still heard nothing, but I felt everything. I felt burning stabs barrelling into my chest, face, legs, one after another, on and on. I felt tears pouring out of me, stinging countless rivers down my face and neck. I thought I could feel my limbs being torn off one by one. I felt blades running down my arms and digging into my wrists.

I screamed and writhed around, longing more than I ever had for a ceasing of this torment. The area around me felt flimsy, and in my hysteria, I clawed at it mercilessly without a second thought. It fell away like wet tissue paper, returning sight to me. My eyes screamed at the sudden light, and I clenched them shut. As I hesitantly began to open them once more, a person came into focus. The first thing I noticed was the sickly green hue of his skin. He had a long, pointed nose and eyes so murky you couldn’t see the pupils. He was wearing a devilish grin, not unlike that of a child who had managed to slip some candy as their mother’s eye wandered. It was all so unsettling, I knew the torture had only just begun.

“Hello dear,” the man said, his voice reminiscent of oil sizzling on an overheated pan. “Welcome to Hell.”