There have been a few posts of old written pieces from my teenage years, and this is another one. I’ve thankfully been able to recover the long-deleted files from my dinosaur of a laptop, so this may become a frequent occurrence as I go through it and decide which pieces are sharable and which are too terrible, strange or ridiculous. This is a pretty boring one, but it can only be more boring sitting on a hard drive. The last edit was made on 21st September 2010, when I was 15 years old, so there’s no real excuse for the shoddy writing style, but there’s something stopping me from making any changes to it.

There is no title. There is no context. There is no actual plot to it.

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Mary tugged her brother’s sleeve, but got no reply. He stared into the distance, motionless and fearful. Mary tugged again, and again, harder this time.

“William?” she repeated. “What is it William? What’s out there?” Her voice sounded shaky and helpless as tears filled her young, innocent eyes and her hand slipped out of its grasp on William’s cuff.

“It’s an aeroplane, Mary,” William managed to squeeze the words between his lips, which were reluctant to make a sound.

“Where’s David, William?” Mary asks again. “Is he at the aeroplane?”

William didn’t listen to his sister’s rambling questions that in all honesty didn’t make any sense.

“Shush, Mary,” William whispered. “Or the aeroplane will come here.”

Mary’s eyes opened wide, but William didn’t notice. Outside the sky was black other than the odd orange glow that flashed every now and then. The city tried to hide from the inevitable, making no sound or light other than the cry of each terrified child, questioning everything with no understanding.

William still stood completely still, silently praying for his brother and parents. He closed his eyes but there was no effect, as the sun would not be able to reach the inside of the walls even if it wasn’t half past one in the morning.

Mary suddenly began to cry noisily and William held her closely. He held his breath and squeezed his eyelids as closely together as they could manage, his whole face becoming distorted and wrinkled. Mary mumbled to herself but nobody could hear her over the noise.

That moment seemed to last forever, William’s face and Mary’s muttering, and the incredible din that didn’t seem to pass.

Mary was scared and confused, not sure what on earth was happening, why it was happening and who made it happen. Images rushed through her head of witches and broomsticks, her innocent mind not allowing her to imagine the outside world.

“I want to see the aeroplane,” Mary called, only just about loud enough to be heard. “Because I want to prove it isn’t a witch.”

She pulled away from William and ran towards the door, her arms out in front of her. When she finally reached the wall she ran her hands along it until she found the door handle. William was calling out to her as loudly as he safely could but Mary ignored him and grasped the handle in her right hand and turning it.

The door creaked open slowly and as it did so, Mary squinted with the light and covered her ears.

“What’s that William? What is it? Is that an aeroplane, too?” Mary shouts over the noise.

William jumped across the space towards the door in a single motion, his arms stretched out forward as far as they could reach.

Mary watched him, suddenly startled. One of her arms was still in the path of the door, and she was well aware of the fact. She removed her hands from her ears and screamed, jumping out of the doorframe just before William’s bodyweight caused the door to crash to a shut.

Mary looked around, almost blinded by the pure white light that flashed around her. Her ears rang; the noise was so loud she couldn’t hear it. Mary seemed to jump before landing face down in the grass, tears soon streaming from her eyes and into the safety of the earth.

The door slammed shut behind her with the impact of the explosion. William turned the handle and pushed on the door but the impact had pushed it further in on itself, the hinges bending in such a way that they were unable to swing freely.

Mary was lying on the floor, shaking with fear. She kept her eyes closed and her hands over her ears, gently humming to herself, hoping the ‘aeroplane’ would just go away. Mary’s long, dark hair covered her head and part of her back, matted into a lot of tiny knots. One of her socks was torn, with a large hole the size of a golf ball on the underside of Mary’s foot. Her other sock was still in tact, hidden under her brown leather shoe.

Suddenly the noise seemed to calm down, and everything lay still. Mary sat up slowly and looked around at the town she had always felt secure in. Streetlamps had fallen over and windows had smashed. The only area that seemed remotely useable was the road in which Mary was now situated.

Mary’s innocent, dark eyes scanned the area rapidly as her immature imagination tried to think up an explanation for such devastation.

In the distance the sun began to rise, casting an orange glow over the city. Mary suddenly felt scared again, but this was a different type of orange glow than before.