The sound of her
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
On July 1st, at eight in the morning, Little Hinkley shook with sound;
A terrible roar that made the houses judder and the dogs bark.
It was like a dinosaur was riding a freight train through the village.
People clutched their mugs and dropped their spoons and opened their mouths
And YELLED into the rumble….
AAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH
IT’S AN EARTHQUAKE
WHAAAAAAT IS HAAAAAAPENING???
DUUUUUUUCK.
GET AWAAAAAY FROM THE WINDOWS
LET ME THROOOOOOUGH
AAAAAAAAGGHHH
DID YOU HEEAAAAR THAAAAT?
WHAAAAAAT IS IT?
DON’T MOOOOOOVE
RUUUUUUUUUN
AAAAAAAAGHHHH
AAAAAAAAAAAGHHHH
Doors banged. Phones rang.
Voices tangled in the air.
Even when the ground stilled
And the roar dropped to a low hum
The villagers’ panic kept rolling
Like a giant snowball of fear.
Panic. PANICKED.
Except for one small girl
Who stood oh so calmly now
At the very top of Martha’s Hill.
Her name was Emily Henry
And she stood perfectly still
Perfectly silent
At the top of Martha’s Hill.
Emily’s long, grey dress hung down to her ankle bones.
Emily’s long, thin arms were raised up to the sky.
She stood there, perfectly still and perfectly silent.
A silver needle in a haystack of noise.
All week, all month Emily had felt panic.
It swirled in her chest and chilled her bones.
It spiked her blood and twitched at her fingers.
She hate, hate, hated it. It was too much.
Panic that she’d forget her school bag.
Panic that she wouldn’t know the answer in maths.
Panic that lunchtime would go on forever,
With nobody to talk to. and nothing to say.
And then there was home time, and that was worse.
How would she answer her mother’s questions about the day?
How would she get her homework done before bedtime?
How would she sleep before it was morning again?
And so, on July 1st, at eight in the morning
Emily climbed her way to the top of Martha’s Hill.
It was a Saturday and the school week was done.
She was not going to live through another weekend with all this…
This swirling, needling, rumbling.
The time had come to let it out.
Week 51
I’m nearly at the end of this year long short story challenge. And I want to keep experimenting right til the last. So, this week I wrote down two things that I haven’t tried.
1) Writing something for a middle grade audience (e.g. 8-12 year-olds).
2) Writing a story in the form of a narrative poem.
I’ve been thinking about narrative poetry because I’ve got the poet Ian McMillan coming on my Comedy Masterclass podcast in a few weeks.
It is so fun getting to experiment with new elements. It flagged up so many questions for me, and now I’ll have a different eyes on the next narrative poems that I read!