Fiction: Group 3
Lights of all Colours
Harrow International School Hong Kong, Carew, Ella - 12, Fiction: Group 3
used to look up at the sky, when it rained, when the campfires were on, when the sun was shining on
my small face, even when I was underground. I used to love fishing, taking a boat out to the shore of
the river, although I never found pearls I still loved to dive, watching how the amphibians lived, how
the marine life communicated with one another. I even loved how the birds lived in so much harmony
underwater, though they belonged up in the air. How when I escaped the aquatic world, even for just a
breath, the air smelt like bamboo and the water reflected lights of all colours.
I used to stay on the boat for hours, at midnight staring at the stars and how the constellations never failed to
grab my attention. How the fireflies floated in the air, the trees whispering and laughing with one another.
Causing the wind to accelerate, and the mountains to chide it’s young to sleep for the night.
But I was going to face the biggest impact.
One day as I walked across the shore, my salty brown hair fluttered in the air. For years now I had walked
on the clammy grass, full of mud and dirt. The river by my side the whole time. It baffled me why the river
would be named after a pearl though I never found any. The rice fields flattened. Ox lazily eating the grass
at the top of the hill, my cousins harvesting the rice, and my brother trying to set fire to a cousins long locks.
Hours passed, the day slowly turned to twilight. The sun rays fading into nothingness, and the snakes
escaping their dens. All the animals were out and I, tripped over into the river shore. As I fell down a pain I
had never experienced before circulated my body. The feeling of rust and oil erupted inside me. Down I
fell, down into the dark abyss.
Screaming and beating the water around me, slowly suffocating I saw the most gruesome, beauty. A mixture
of neon colours and oil filled the water around me. My calf bleeding, the rusty metal below me terracotta
with blood. My body covered in a layer of oil and sand. Shadows flashed before me, the taste of old
medicine in my mouth. Then a deafening silence overwhelmed me, and someone had grabbed me by the
hair, pulling me up to the surface.
Once I woke up my senses were dead, but I still slaved them to work. The echoes of beeping machines
filled the petite tiled room. A man talking with a short woman, her voice strained and sobs releasing from
her mouth every sentence or so. “Help” I whispered, the memory came back to me. I fell down the shore,
the rust and oil cutting off my blood circulation, the neon killing the krill and otters around me. Before I
could stop, I attempted to get out of the bed in the claustrophobic room, only to fall down to the ground,
and limbs to ache with fire. A dark blue bottle fell next to my head, the glass shattering and the liquid
smelling of blood.
I screamed, pushing myself off the ground, screaming for life. What was the date? Why did my fingers look
so long? Why were my leaps longer, and my hair no longer brown, but a black ombré? And lastly, where
was I?
A lady ran up to me, her face seemed familiar, even her voice sounded familiar. Something at the back of
my thoughts was telling me that I know her, the way her eyes smiled, how her hair was in a chopstick,
especially how she cradled me and checked up on me. My vision was now clear, my voice wasn’t in any
more agonizing pain. “What day is it, but more importantly who are you?” I asked the pathetic lady in front
of me, only to receive a gasp of shock. She quickly fell down, crawling away, her eyes now bloodshot and
her body shaking. As she reached the door and carried herself up she looked at me, and shook a shameful
head.
After the door shut all I did was cry, the sound of metal filling my eardrums and the dark memories filling
my mind. All I could do was cry, without even wanting to I had flooded the floor with tears, broken glass,
I
