Crumbling Dream
British International School Shanghai Puxi, Laura Kelly, Fiction: Group 3
T
he sand was rolling in the murmuring wind and the dry heat pushed down on
everything around. Then suddenly an ear-splitting sound attacked the atmosphere and
the ground began to tremble as if an earthquake had begun. Machinery moved into
view, crushing sand dunes, lizards and any plant life present. All animals ran in fear
of the monster they had never seen before which was attacking their land, killing their prey.
More and more machines came in to view. They stretched for miles, along with people littering,
polluting and wrecking the stunning surroundings, the beautiful nothing. In just a few days a
crew and more equipment had arrived creating a huge construction site. It had fences of wire and
wood all around the site and such a large amount of equipment it is unbelievable that they could
use it all. It was all situated right in the middle of an undisturbed natural beauty.
The head of this site, Mark, was a tall, broad man, with a manner that warned not to mess
with him. He was intent on getting the new hotel built much earlier than the buyers wanted it. It
was his first real job and he wished, in the end, for the finished building to be spectacular. He was
a man driven by work and success; he only started in the business a few months ago and already
he was heading sites. Mark was going to get this hotel done even if it killed him and not only was
he going to finish it, but he was going to finish it and have an ending so good, no, so fabulous
that it would go down in history.
It was a few days in to the building and Mark radiated pleasure like the sun radiates heat. The
place was coming up quicker than he would have dreamed it would, and nothing had gone wrong
yet. But it was on this day that everything changed. A man appeared as if out of thin air and
hobbled quickly over to the site and when he found Mark he spoke to him,
“You must halt the building of this hotel, stop or face consequences.”
For a minute Mark stared at the man in amazement, and then he began to laugh. He guffawed
for a while until he noticed the old man had not moved.
“Get off my land” he told the man yet he still stayed still, “I said leave” Mark spoke again, his
tone a little harsher now, more forceful.
“You must bring the building to a standstill, leave or you will regret it.” The man whispered
in a voice as frail as paper. Brushing this second threat away Mark rudely dismissed the old
man from his site for a final time. In the end, he made two workers escort the old man off the
premises. Mark forgot about the warning completely; until later in the week when things started
to go wrong for him. First two of his colleagues, who were tremendously important to the project,
disappeared suddenly without a single piece of evidence as to why. They were scoping out the
area, seeing whether or not it would be easy to add on extras to the hotel they were only supposed
to be away for a couple of hours but they never returned. A few days later one part of the main
building crumbled down to the ground; part of it seemed to have disappeared, while another part
seemed to have sunk deep in to the ground. Then at the beginning of the next week he found that
the pool they were planning on installing had been wrecked though no one had any idea what did
it. It was entirely tipped over as it the four winds of the world had arrived to move it. This was
when Mark started to get slightly worried but not scared enough that he was willing to call off the
building of the new hotel.
