Oblivion

• Bethany Riggs, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2020

I hit the concrete with a thump, a throbbing pain immersed my consciousness. My black vision cleared to a speckled grey blur and I could hear a name being called.

"Anna can you hear me? Anna open your eyes," this name reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember why it came across significant.

And I wondered who was calling out…Wait, Anna was my name, someone was calling for me. Desperately wanting to see who it was, I tried to open my eyes. I saw a slit of warm light before a heavy weight made them shut again. I felt somebody’s warm hand squeeze mine and I forced my eyes open. Needles pricked into my arms, stickers and wires stuck to me, a plastic structure entrapped my mouth, oxygen rushing into my lungs, beeping and sirens and lights, sterilizing white lights radiated into my eyes. A rush of reality flooded my unconscious state and there sat a person. She was looking down upon me. I realised she was a paramedic and I was in an ambulance. Compelling my mind into a conscious state, I sat up.

“Anna, calm down, you’re okay, it’s alright,” the paramedic assured me.

I don’t know how long I stared at her anxious face until she laid me back down and an extreme sharp pain engulfed my head. A bloodcurdling scream burst from my throat and I was being wheeled out of the ambulance and into a hospital. Doctors and nurses were looking down on me concerned and assertive. I could hear voices, one of which spoke, “She hit her head badly and we’re going to have to operate on it now.”

A needle pricked my arm and I fell into a deep slumber.

I couldn’t move, the white lights were blinding. My head hurt like hell; I really wanted to die, or was I dead? Why was I here? Was this my afterlife? Soon enough, I realized I was still in the hospital after surgery. A face looked down on me, blocking the light. It was my mum. Tears wet her face and I started to cry.

“I’m so sorry mum.”

“Everything’s okay, as long as you‘re okay,” she replied.

1 week of recovery and therapy later and I was unfortunately back at school. The group of bullies were there. I tried to avoid them, but they came up to me.

“What happen to you?”

“Um, I had to have surgery,” I replied anxiously.

“You’re such a show off! You do it all for attention.”

After that, I felt the weight again, the weight of disappointment, disapproval, disparagement. I had always thought it was my depression. But I knew it was me. I shouldn’t have been in this world and I was just making everything worse by remaining. That afternoon, I walked to the park feeling dejected and distant from reality. I jumped and I hit the concrete with a thump. I was dead, but the pain was inevitable, it demanded to be felt.