The Sound

• Sophie Clark, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2019

My eyes were blurry as the drowsiness of sleep hugged me like fog hugged a town at first light. The world was mysteriously quiet, there was something missing, something that was always there but we never notice it. Now, it was gone.
I stared at my ceiling for several minutes to let my eyes adjust to the morning sun that streamed into my room. Gradually, I pulled my legs over the side of my bed and stood up. The chill of the floorboards seeped into my feet and with an aching body from a bad night sleep I got dressed and ready and walked out in a daze to the kitchen to pour myself a coffee.
My brain buzzed with theories of what was missing. As I took sips of the coffee, I strolled out to the veranda. Dropping my coffee completely, I realised what was missing.
Life was the thing that was absent from the world because as I walked outside, nothing was there. Silence echoed through the street, everything was still and quiet. Until…
A scream bellowed through the town, the only sound for k’s. My breath fogged in front of me as I sprinted towards the echoing scream. My legs took me to a barn not far from where I lived. A young girl crouched in front of a basket filled with clothes that was sitting under a clothesline, a shirt that was half pegged the only thing that was swaying on the rusty line.
“What happened?” The sobbing girl looked up at me as I said this.
“My mother… she was right there… just a minute ago… and then she was gone.” She said in between weeping breaths.
“What do you mean she was gone?” I asked, confused on how this could all happen in the matter of minutes.
“She just… disa–” She struggled to say the final word. “–disappeared.”
I hear a rumble of a car drawing closer to us. Questions filled my head. How could this happen? Why did this happen? Who was responsible for this?
I am.
I turned around to see who the source of the voice only to find the girl still sobbing on the ground.
A car pulled up in front of the barn and soldiers began to pour out of it. I tried to warn the girl to run but she was shot blood streaming down her face. I turned to run away but I skid to a stop when I see who is in front of me.
The person that haunted my dreams, my thoughts and my life has come to finish me.
I try to dodge away but he already made his mark. The needle slid into my neck, oozing the contents into my bloodstream.
“I have come to finish the world. I am successful.”
My eyes were blurry as the drowsiness of sleep hugged me like fog hugged a town at first light because that was the only thing that was left.