Pain

• Morgan Willox, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2019

The screams were all consuming. I raked my fingernails down my face, having started at my temples. The relief it brought was short lived and the screams continued to press against my skull. I started to scream too, though not understanding why, joining the horrible chorus of high pitched noise. Suddenly it all stopped. With the silence I stopped. I opened my eyes - stunned. It took me all of five seconds to clear my vision and have the feeling return to my body. I sensed no one else near me so I tried to get up from where I had curled up on the cold, concrete floor. I looked around - taking in my surroundings. Everything was covered in a haze of black. The orange glow of fires shone in nearby buildings whose walls had collapsed and mainly held rubble with only a few remaining walls. People were running past me, their screams of terror or shouts for help completely lost on me. I turned in a slow circle and saw everything was decimated. Dead bodies covered the ground; some with crying people hovering over them, others half covered in the rubble of one of the many butchered buildings. A hollow feeling filled my body and I started to sob. I stood and walked around in a daze; seeing but not seeing; thinking but never forming true thoughts.

I stopped in front of a house, completely un-touched by the thing that had destroyed the rest of the city. The slated tiling of the roof pristine, the cream walls un-marked. The casement windows gleaming in the darkness.

I walked straight up to the mahogany door and pushed it open.

I chocked on the congested air and shuffled down to the basement. My feet making a rhythmic tap as I descended. I unlocked the trapdoor in one of the corners, completely invisible to the untrained eye. I climbed down the ladder and flicked on the light switch next to the last rung. The warm light stuttered and finally filled the space. Before I could turn around I felt a cool metal pressed into the back of my neck. I let out an involuntary shudder.

“Move and you die,” whispered a coarse, unfamiliar voice.

At first I thought it was my Mother, playing some kind of sick joke on me. But as a large hand clamped down on my shoulder and turned me around I saw that it couldn’t possibly be Mum. She lay on her side against the far wall, a pool of blood pouring out of multiply holes in her back. Next to her lay my little brother, blood spreading from a hole in his stomach. I moved my gaze from his stomach to the face of the sweet little ten year old who had been robbed of his life.

I started to scream again, only this time I knew why. I dropped to my knees, the hand on my shoulder no longer there. The only family I had was dead. The people I had spent countless birthdays with; the only people who had cared what I got in my exams; the only people who had ever truly understood me were now dead. The pain which that knowledge brought tore me apart. My screams increased and the room was lit with a warm glow, which increased in heat and brightness. The glow was coming from me though, not the light. Suddenly the globe above me smashed. The next thing I saw was total blackness, but I was not unconscious, the room was simply dark. Instantly something cold struck the base of my head and I felt myself fall. My head hit the cold concrete floor. Hard. Before I was swallowed up by unconsciousness, I heard a door open and footsteps.

“She’s the one,” I heard someone whisper as the blackness consumed me.