After the Fire

a short story i did for a creative writing class i know it needs work but im not shure where


After the Fire


He stood alone, a lean form dressed in rags so filthy he blended in with the darkness. His breathing was the only thing to break the silence.

It was a strange place he found himself, pictures, unmoving images of the past decorated the walls and surfaces. A baby frozen screaming at some unknown foe. A child sat on a new bike, a proud father supporting the child smiling at the camera. An Unknown lifetime trapped, motionless, in wooden frames and behind dust fogged glass. History left, forgotten.

He closed his eyes and for a moment he imagined he could see, the ghostly forms and voices of the people from the pictures going about their lives, reliving the past.

He shook his head to free himself from the vision and took one last look round the room before leaving. He followed the imprint of his leather moccasined feet, that had left a trail of prints on what remained of the moth eaten carpet.

Gently laying his feat on the wooden staircase he made his way back down to the ground floor. Behind him he ran his hand across the wall, cascading wallpaper and plaster behind him. Accompanied by his soft footsteps the gentle patter of the plaster was strangely comforting in the quiet that surrounded him as much as the darkness did.

On the left at the bottom of the stairway was a door, and due to its lower hinge being broken, it leaned at a strange angle. Where its bottom corner leaned out and its top corner in, a faint orange light flickered in the black of the hallway.

Going onto hands and knees he pushed his way though the broken door into the room beyond. The room was bare apart from a sofa, a dark lump against one wall. Its broken springs, sticking out here and there, shone menacingly in the orange glow

The source of the light was a fire set in front of the original heater, upon the stone hearth surrounding it. Beside the fire lay a bedroll made up of a couple of old patched blankets, an equally patched pack was at the head of the makeshift bed. He sat upon it, his back to the wall, watching his shadow dance on the wall, reminding him of his vision.

He sat there for a few minutes before lying down to sleep. But sleep never came. Instead he lay watching the shadows playing on the uneven, pealing pant of the ceiling and the light dancing on the far walls

Restlessly he turned on to his side to watch the fire. The hypnotising movement of the flames drew his mind back to the past, a place he didn’t really want to go.

When he was a young boy he had watched as the flames consumed his hometown. Where once lived thousands, there was no one living in the deserted ruins that remained.

The Cities, themselves, had vanished under the many mile high mushroom clouds, they were the first target for the bombs.

He remembered those first lonely days wandering the ruins, abandoned and lonely. Scavenging for the little food to be found in tins, hidden in collapsed stores. For three years he had wandered, alone and never seeing a living soul.

The golden light of dawn, shining though the broken glass of the large bay window that occupied one wall, woke him as it crept over his face. He stretched and blinked the bright light from his eyes. As he got up he saw for the first time the dismal room in which he had spent the night.

Once white walls were brown with age, dirt and dust. The sofa, with its now not so menacing springs, was a sorry lump leaning against the wall for support. He looked down at the trail of footprints showing up sharply in the dust. The footprints led from the bat window and to the broken door and back echoing his movements of the last night He knelt down where the prints met and proceeded to pack up his bed.

He left the house, his shelter against the freezing cold of the night. Leaving the same way he had entered, though the broken window. stepping out on to the over grown front lawn. He took a deep breath of the fresh morning air, feeling the cool clear air fill his chest and for a moment he watched the rare scene of the rising sun, golden on the horizon before the dingy, muddy clouds hid the magical sight.

He set his course for the hills just behind the village where he had spent the night. The stony mounds almost blended in with the sky but they were his home and he felt as if there was an invisible light guiding him back

After his three years of wandering he had found a tiny community living on a secluded farm hidden, and protected by those hills. There the land could still roughly be farmed, enough to feed its residents.

He had left the safe haven of the farm and undertook the two days walk, for one reason, to bury the body of his child in the Place of The Dead. The place the old-timer had called a cemetery.

Like many, the child had been born deformed, so deformed neither mother or father knew whether it was a boy or girl. It lived only a day.

Though it was only midday, the day was starting to get dark, when he saw the guiding fire by the farm gates. The last time it had lead a survivor to join their small number was Three years after he had joined, that was about four years ago, but still they kept the fire burning, still believing there were more who survived.

He touched the roughly painted piece of wood, tied to the gate with the orange baling twine that they had everywhere. “Hope Farm” he read and smiled, he knew that humanity was out of hope, it went the day the first bomb fell

As he entered the farmyard the entire community of eight stopped work to welcome him back. They gathered in the yard offering their greetings but fell silent when a girl of about sixteen walked up to him

“Is it done?” he nodded “thank you” he watched as she walked into the farmhouse

Humanity has no hope left, he thought again as he watched as a small boy, who had no eyes and only half an arm, was lead in after her. He sighed as he watched the child, remembering his own, not if no living children were born. His child was the seventh born deformed or dead to the three women in the community since the bombs.

He paused, watching as the rest of the community follow the girl into the farmhouse, then he entered.