To ease you into your weekend, here's a creepy little story from yours truly.
This was my very first piece of fiction writing for my course this year. It was published in 'INfusion 46', our NMIT student publication. I've tweaked it a little for this version. It's short and sweet. Indeed, it's the shortest thing by far that I've written for college this year!
I think I could adapt this into a longer work for young adult readers. I'm intrigued by the ideas behind it, which I'd like to explore. I'll let you know how I go.
Please to enjoy.
***
‘The Next Day’
She
was awoken by a sudden white flash. The thin blanket of sleep slipped away. She
held her breath against the rumbling of the early dawn.
She counted, getting as far as five. Another flash. She
counted again, only getting to four.
It's coming quickly this
time, she thought.
Her cold skin prickled from the ozone. She was completely
awake. On the bed that had been his,
she pushed back the stained quilt. She never slept deeply these days. No-one
did.
She glanced up towards the sound of rain tapping on
corrugated iron. She hoped she had sealed the roof tightly enough. She’d used
all of the resin that she could find in his workshop. You couldn't trust the
rain. You couldn't let it touch you. And you couldn’t let it in. Not anymore. The days of carefree
walks in the rain with her father were past now. The days of trusting the rain —
of trusting anything — were long
gone.
The initial silence was replaced by a sudden roar. The
rain was very quick. It was getting quicker each day. It could sneak up on you
if you weren't careful. The rain could hide other noises if you weren’t
careful, too.
Her gaze shifted to the door. She strained to hear over
the storm. The old-fashioned key was still in the lock. She should still be
safe, even if he came back. But, like many things in this house, the lock
wasn’t very strong.
Myself included.
She stared out the window. She ignored the faint
reflection of herself — a skinny, unremarkable girl with long brown hair. It
was her mother’s hair, but with some of her father’s copper highlights through
it. It was a face of dark hollows, and darker, empty eyes. She looked past
herself and allowed her mind the rare luxury to wander. No-one let their
concentration lapse for too long, not if they valued their safety. But the
locked door was a measure of protection — for the time being, anyway.
She stretched out her awareness to the roiling sky. Her
eyes widened, taking in the view.
Weather is too large to be
concerned about someone’s death. Weather is vast. Weather stretches across
countries, across the planet. The weather here is just a tiny part of a pattern
within patterns within patterns. There's a reason The Scientists can’t make
rain, or make it stop raining for that matter. The Forecasters
might be able to give some vague predictions about weather based on years of
gathered information, but you can’t ever reliably say what the weather the next
day — or the next hour — will be like. And you can never create weather or try
to control it. The Rainmakers had tried that once and everyone now knew the
disaster that had become.
But
life goes on. So too, it seems, does death. Sometimes death goes on in a cruel
parody of life. That happened quite a lot these days. Life and death go on, and
so does the weather. The million small dramas people wake up to every day
doesn't matter to the weather. It doesn't care about what happened to you
yesterday. It doesn't care about your sanity, or your safety. It's weather.
It's just too damned large to worry about you. It’s too damned big to care. But
we have to worry about the weather and life and death.
Today, she had to worry about all three. Especially
death. In particular, his death. She
hoped his death would be permanent, and that her life would continue.
I don’t want to have to kill
my father again.
Across
the room, the doorknob rattled.
© Aaron Hughes 2012
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