Purgatory

• Abby Wong, Grade 9, Danebank Anglican School for Girls
• Short Story
• 2021

Finalist in the 'Play On Words 2021' competition

Purgatory is a quiet place. Utterly, jarringly silent. It is tranquil and serene; it is pure and white. Colourless grassland stretches eternally, with rippling streams of crystal slicing jagged paths through the earth. Diaphanous light trickles from the heavens and dapples the ground, which, regardless of the tinge of apparitional shadows, maintains its ashen appeal. Purgatory is an instance of serendipity. I sit and smile, for I am content.
The landscape withstands the trials of time, safeguarding its immaculate beauty. Nothing changes. Nothing deviates. Nothing reforms. Not even as the ceaseless ticking of time pounds against my skull; undying reverberations thrumming through my feeble limbs with every passing second. I shudder, welcoming the pain, as I grin at the pristine streams: for ‘The Lord is my shepherd, he leads me beside still waters.’
My convulsing body beholds the realm’s continuity, though the absence of its sovereign roars as loud as the silence, ringing in my ears. It resonates in a magnificent crescendo, drawing warmth from deep within. I reach a quivering hand to my ear, crimson speckles my fingertips. I smile at the vivid splotches, for ‘he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.’
And though I burn under glorious heavenly light and sink beneath eternal waters and deteriorate into the equilibrium of light and shadow flooding the expanse of the sky, I do not question his vehemence.
Bloodied and broken, I sit and smile - content; perpetually indebted to the divinity of the creator by whom I may indulge in eternal vindication. Perhaps the day will soon come, whereby his benevolence I am alleviated from my transgressions.
Though perhaps, my anticipation will endure forever.