As I Lay Covered With A Cardboard Box

• Hanna Batstone, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2009

The cruel wind bites around my feet and wraps around my leg like the tentacles of a jelly fish. I am the dirt that gets trod on. I am the unloved. I am no one. Long forgotten, alas without a home.
As the thick smog passes over me, it reveals the top of a full moon and reminds me of times of freedom. I fumble with my only possession. It is a small passport photo of Jimbert Plage, a friend who died years before, just a memory, so long ago, my only friend.
Well another day I live on in this hell-hole. When will my time come? The golden gates of heaven shall open I am sure, this is my only hope. I curl in a tight ball, trying to conserve my warmth like a candle running out of wick. Where have all the people gone? The earth isn’t an incredible, beautiful fresh place. It’s black, grey and dead. Destroyed by generations of mankind’s dirty factories, slowly grinding away at the planet until this.
But wait . . . what’s this? Warmth, the smell of roast chicken coming from an unknown source.
Friends everywhere, smiling, laughing, happy and free.
Why can’t they see me? Or hear me? Help, is this it? All eternity left staring at the joyful faces of my past, no, no...
Then here I am again, cold and hungry. Never have I felt so alone, loneliness is a slow silent killer; slowly clawing away inside you, until you can’t go on.
This is me. Was I dead? Was that where you go when the ticking time bomb of life explodes? I am not afraid of death. I welcome it.