Fear

• Shannon Cloey, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2008

Fear brings you to the point of tears, heartbreak, and insanity. You are aware of the photo frame in your hands and of the fresh, salty tears that have run down your face and have fallen on the protective glass. The photo holds your smile, along with the person you loved. Is it worth living after what happened? The glass frame feels like nothing. It slips from your delicate fingers and smashes against the cool floorboards beneath your feet.

Anguish and fear spreads though your veins like electricity, rushing to your fingertips in seconds. You become more nervous and flustered by the minute. You dread a life without love and the fear of it takes over your body like poison; it eats you up inside until you can’t move.

Fear is upon you like a wave; thrashing against your fragile body; breaking it into a thousand tiny glass shattering pieces. You are unable to breathe; the fear incapacitates you.

You feel sand under your feet, no longer the floorboards. Your thoughts have been immobile even though your body has not and suddenly you remember in flashes the trip you made from the house to the beach. You stand at the waters edge, feeling the freezing salt-water lap at your feet. You walk forward, crashing against the waves; you submerge.

Invisible silk hands embrace every inch of your trembling body; guiding you slowly away from the dim light that you see. The hands take you further into the bleak darkness; claiming your body.

You can still see the light; you stare at it. Slowly your vision is flooded with a blood red colour; it’s almost transparent, diluted from the water. Is that your blood? You look at your skin – it is paper white.

You are afraid of what death might bring, and so you hope that everything will be fine in the end, because that is all you can do. The hands that pulled you so unwilling down to the depths grab the sweet remains of air that you possess in your body, they tighten themselves around your throat. You scream at the sudden pressure clamped at your larynx. Air bubbles escape your lungs and dance enchantingly towards the surface to be dissolved by the light that you can no longer see.

The hands are no longer tight around your neck, are they? They do not seem it. You see your life spread out like a picture book before you, bright colours, happiness, and laughter, until the colours fade into another, merging. They race around your head screaming and soon become one blood red colour. It seems like an eternity before the colour changes to a dark maroon, and then it swiftly turns to the more accommodating black that you are used to. The black invades your mind. Once again you cannot think; the darkness hunts you down, you will be damaged by it – it is inevitable and no matter what you do you cannot stop it.

It will find you.