ELTHAM HIGH SCHOOL ANTHOLOGY   

-15/09/2053-

 

“Hello?” I asked as I looked around the pitch black area I found myself standing in. “Hello?” I asked again a bit louder this time, but my only response was the echoing of my voice. I wanted to walk around, know where I was, but my legs wouldn’t move as if they were locked in place and wouldn’t budge.
Suddenly everything started to get brighter around me, revealing what looked like a street. ‘What else could it be?’ I thought to myself. ‘It looks deserted.’

When my legs started functioning again, I walked rather quickly down the cement path hoping to find someone… anyone.  ‘And get off of this street.’ I added as an afterthought. Because the feeling in my legs hadn’t completely returned, I stumbled a few times but picked myself up easily.

It was so dark and the street didn’t seem to have an end, the street lights barely did anything apart from flicker uncontrollably and the setting surrounding me wasn’t helping the fact that I was panicking a lot already.
Well… who wouldn’t be? Dark, deserted street with really old, rotting houses with nothing but yourself and your own terrifying thoughts shouting in your head telling you things that wouldn’t comfort even the most positive being in the world, of course one would be scared for crying out loud!

After walking for quite some time, I began to pick up speed and was soon running due to my own fear. It took quite a lot of time, or at least felt like it, until I finally saw someone standing under a flickering street lamp. I didn’t exactly notice that the person I was running towards was rather dark and shifty looking, as if it was someone I shouldn’t trust or even be near. But because I was so desperate to not be alone and scared beyond belief, I was oblivious to this obvious fact and the strange aura hanging around the stranger. I figured it was a male, due to the more built appearance, and the style of clothing ‘he’ was wearing. He wore torn cloak with the hood up the colour being a sort of grey mixed with brown, baggy pants and worn leather boots. I couldn’t see his arms, so I figured they were hidden underneath the torn up cloak. He looked as though he was someone who lived in alleyways or on the street somewhere.

It was only seconds until I was standing within a few feet of the man. I waited a few moments wondering if this person knew I was even standing there. After figuring that this ‘oblivious’ stranger didn’t know I was next to him, I decided to speak up, which at the time seemed like a good idea but in reality it was possibly the worst mistake I’d ever done… not that I knew that.

“Hello?” I asked, gaining the man’s attention. It wasn’t until after I had spoken that I noticed the uncomfortable feeling building up inside of me. When the man finally turned his head to me, all I could see was his mouth to his neck. He was smiling, but not in a friendly way… it was a frighteningly creepy smile, going ear to ear, his teeth looked horrible, yellow and filthy with a few missing. The smile sent shivers through my entire body and made me want to run away and hide. But no matter how much I wanted to run, no matter how much I wanted to get away, my legs wouldn’t obey me. I was panicking, shaking violently. As much as my body felt like it was going to collapse, it stayed frozen, staring into this man’s terrifying face.

I finally noticed that he was pulling something out of his cloak, I couldn’t tell what it was partly due to my panicking. But when he pulled the whole object out, I was completely sure I couldn’t feel any more fear and panic in my entire life.
He held a silver barrelled gun and casually put it to my forehead. I visibly gulped, unable to say a word. All I could do was shut my eyes tight and hope that this wasn’t happening, that it was just a dream or for the man to show some mercy and spare my life before he ended it with a bullet smashing through my skull and into my brain. Pathetic, I know, but I couldn’t do anything else. My body was frozen like a statue and I was overwhelmed by fear. ‘Move! Why won’t my body move?! Come on!’

Suddenly I heard an ear-splitting bang followed by an excruciating explosion of pain in my abdomen. The man hid his gun and smiled at me in the same creepy way as when I first got his attention as I fell to the ground.

I was in so much pain I couldn’t even use my own voice. I looked down at my hands which had absently moved to my extremely painful wound and saw my hands covered in blood, lots of it.
Slowly as time went by I fell unconscious. The man who had shot me had long since gone. My thoughts went around why he didn’t just kill me. ‘He had the perfect chance to smash a bullet through my skull… so why didn’t he?’ The last thing I remembered before falling unconscious, was the sound of sirens filling the cold, dark night air.

Feeling more than reluctant to open my eyes, I sat up, stretched and rubbing my tired and sore eyes. The first thing I noticed were the tears that had yet to fall. ‘I still can’t forget that night, can I?’

Trudging to the other side of my dimly lit bedroom, I grabbed my uniform that hung on next to my desk and lazily slung it over my shoulder to carry it to the bathroom to get ready. ‘I wonder how many more times I’ll have that dream until it stops…’

As I made my way down the stairs to have breakfast the one thing that got my attention was the fact that no one was present. ‘Where the hell has everyone gone?’
I made my way into the kitchen and looked around to see if anyone was home. ‘They probably had to leave early for something.’ Deciding that it wouldn’t do me any good to just think about it, I got myself something to eat, grabbed my bag and left the house.

“Hopefully nothing happens today.” I shook my head clearing it of all thoughts about my dream and the events of the morning to focus on the day ahead of me. ‘But if nothing did happen, it wouldn’t be very interesting, would it…?’