Hello everyone! I hope all of you are doing well! Lately in my QUEST class, we read the book Legends by Marie Lu. This read was a prodigious book with a lot of adventure and a great dystopian plot. After we read this book, our project was to write a short story from the perspective of continuing the plot that we were introduced to in Legends. So over the next few posts, you all will get to read my dystopian short story that I wrote for my project. I hope you all enjoy!
Dystopian Short Story: Part 1
1135 hours
Wing family house
67°F
DAY
It’s been 27 hours since they killed my brother, and it’s all my fault. I never thought John would be the first sibling to die. It doesn’t feel real. It feels like the second I walk into our old house, he will scold me for wearing shoes inside the house because he just cleaned it.
Every time I close my eyes, I keep getting flashbacks of his body lying on the ground as everybody cheered for his death. A hand on my shoulder wakes me from my thoughts.
“Hey,” June says softly. I look up into her eyes, and everything stops for a second. I just want to forget about everything. I just want to stay in this moment. I’m so close to her that I can count the golden freckles in her eyes. I don’t think she realizes how beautiful she is.
“Hey,” I say, not recognizing the hoarse voice coming out of my mouth as mine. I eventually stand and walk the length of the hallway. We were at my parent’s old house—the house we lived in before my dad died. Being back and walking through these halls after such a long time blankets me with another blanket of grief. I smile sadly at the memories flashing through my mind with every step. I was so excited to grow up. But here I am now.
“I made hot chocolate for us?” June says her voice is wavering like it’s a question. She timidly hands me a cup of surprisingly warm cocoa. I reach out to take one of the warm cups, and my fingers brush against her hand. I frown at how eerily cold her hands were.
“Are you cold?” I say, setting the cup down and covering her hand with my own to warm them up. She doesn’t respond but doesn’t pull away either, so I take it as an invitation and pull her gently so she sits next to me. Then I take off my jacket and wrap it around her. “I can’t have you get sick now, can I?” I say with a slight smile as I hand her the cup of hot cocoa back. Then I lean back and take a sip from my cup.
We sat there in silence for a while, the heavy severity of the past unfortunate events blanketing us, burying us six feet under over and over again. I sigh and look up at the grandfather clock ticking by the corner. It’s 11:57.
I look over at June and take in her presence. She was staring at a blank spot on the wall before us. I subconsciously scoot closer to her and wrap one of my arms around her. “Hey, I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” I say, looking into her eyes—not knowing what else to say.
There was a sudden crash right outside the door, and I froze. I slowly look over at June, who looks just as alert as I feel. The hair on my neck rises as I watch June slowly grab the knife next to her and come to a rise. She looks at me one last time and walks stealthily to the door.
I wait in the heavy silence, soaking us with dread. I catch myself admiring how still June could be and mentally facepalm myself. Then after a while, June flings the door open and aims her knife where the person would have been—the only problem was that there was no one there.
“Something’s wrong.” I hear her mutter to herself. I watch her as she looks down at a spot near her leg. A strange expression crosses her face, which I can’t figure out. And something tells me that we just got involved with something bigger than we could manage.