A few hours later the sun rose and began melting the snow. The light fell upon a kneeling frozen boy. In his cold pale-blue hands was a small book with a faded picture of the sun printed on the front.
He knelt waist deep in the snow watching turn the world him white. He was tired and hungry and above all, he was cold. He was thinking about how he got here. He remembered the camps, where they were told what to do and what to think. Where he was bred and raised for war. Then the day came when the paper fell from the sky. Books and pages with fantastic stories and ideas. The marshals tried to take everything. All the stories about places where the sun rose in the sky and illuminated the ground. The stories about choice and decisions. The stories about life, love, heartache, and loss. People where beaten and the books were burned but the stories remained. Was there a place where they could get these things? Marshals never answered the questions and beat those who kept asking. He wanted to know. He wanted to see the sun, a place illuminated by anything other than floodlights. He was also not alone. Four of them schemed and conspired to find the sun, to chase the dawn, to not let the marshals win. They all fell one by one. The first was even before the escape. She died at the end of a rope for failing to follow orders. The second was torn apart by dogs just outside the fence. He never reached the safety of the forest. The third went mad. He screamed about the lies of the books and the beauty of order, before turning around and heading back. Leaving him alone to face the blizzard. The gunshots that greeted the third still rang in his head. Maybe the third was right and there was nothing out here but death and sadness. He was tired. It didn't matter, he had done what he wanted. He chased the elusive sun and though he hadn't found it, he was not destroyed by the marshals. He had won. There he fell asleep kneeling in snow, slowly being buried.
A few hours later the sun rose and began melting the snow. The light fell upon a kneeling frozen boy. In his cold pale-blue hands was a small book with a faded picture of the sun printed on the front.
Sue Clayton
9/5/2020 03:48:04 am
I was with him all the way as he fled from the marshals and my heart bled when he met his gut-wrenching end. Well done, Sean. Comments are closed.
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