Year 13 English Creative Writing

By Khaylm Marshall | Posted: Thursday August 11, 2016

Vladimir woke up to a whiff of smoke tickling his nostrils and choking his throat. He had no memory of being here, yet the moss licked walls, fractured windows cowering behind desert dunes of dust and vast emptiness surrounding him seemed all so familiar. Clambering to his feet, he realised he was standing isolated amidst a burning hell. Waves of dancing flames licked at his feet, and clung to the once tatty, torn wallpaper, now charred as black as the night.

Vladimir woke up to a whiff of smoke tickling his nostrils and choking his throat. He had no memory of being here, yet the moss licked walls, fractured windows cowering behind desert dunes of dust and vast emptiness surrounding him seemed all so familiar. Clambering to his feet, he realised he was standing isolated amidst a burning hell. Waves of dancing flames licked at his feet, and clung to the once tatty, torn wallpaper, now charred as black as the night.

“Jesus bloody christ!”, he exclaimed. A sudden sense of realisation drew upon him. Beyond the dancing inferno he could still make out the outlines of the gigantic metal smelters that dwarfed him - he was in the rural town factory. The depths of crackling fires and bellowing smoke emitting from the stained metallic canisters stared deep into his soul, tempting fear and panic to overcome him. However, all Vladimir could do was stand in astonishment at the inferno manipulated structure, how the devilish nature of flame could destroy something so beautiful.

Yet awe suddenly snapped into despair. A quiet but deadly hiss drew Vladimir’s attention away from the cackle of flame. Fear filled his insides, and his face scrunched as he turned his shoulder, almost trying to shelter him from his terror. Turning his shoulder, his eyes fixed towards a ruptured gas pipe, which was now circulating lethal, toxic gases throughout the flame blazed factory.

“Please somebody, anybody help me! God damnit somebody help!” he cried out, in a sound of reiteration. Again he pleaded for help, but shock and terror dashing through his bloodstream choked his vocal cords, releasing nothing but a pathetic yelp. He longed for the warm arms of safety, but fear left him frozen like a statue to the core.

“What are you doing!?” His insides were screaming. Vladimir focused his vision towards the door, and the clutches of assumed safety that lingered beyond. Despite this, he still remained numbed to his foundations. “Get the hell out!! Every second that you remain in this burning hell is one more second closer to your death!”. In a gulp of realisation, Vladimir realised that no one would call to be his guardian angel, and his life was grasping on by threads to his own trembling hands. And just as he thought that things couldn’t get any worse, the rotten wooden rafters started to collapse in a blaze of burning embers, leaving him isolated in a fiery prison…

“Oh come on, really? There is not much more of this shit I can endure now. The atmosphere of the factory was suffocating now - he felt isolated, trapped, alone. “Think, think, think, come on think!” Suddenly, his eyes fixed onto a cracked, blemished glass window like a hawk. The opportunity revealed itself. Miraculously the ice in his legs started to thaw, and he dashed towards the sight of the window, without a second to spare.

Quickly, he maneuvered his way up the rotting, ember plagued wall, ignoring the scorched burning sensation darting through his fingers. With a hefty leap, he found himself grasping onto the grit covered windowsill, and with a powerful right hand hook, the glass found itself breaking free from its enclosing wooden clutches. Vladimir took one last look back at what he was leaving behind, and with a touch of guilt, he freed himself from his burning prison. Almost immediately as he did, the factory diminished in a blaze of inferno and mushroom cloud of bellowing smoke.

Wiping crisp embers and blinding smoke away from his eyes, Vladimir pondered how the township below reacted to the sights of smoke and inferno engulfing the hillside. Would fear and chaos possess them, or would their actions be of calm manner repeated through his mind. Clambering to his feet, Vladimir drew his eyes below, expecting to see flashing lights and silhouettes of people dashing around like headless chickens. Yet what awaited below him choked his thoughts, destroying all sense of safety and comfort that Vladimir held.

“What the hell had happened here?” The sound of silence echoed around him as he stood motionless, clueless to what had been presented in front of him. One thing was for certain though - this was no mere factory fire. As far as the eye could see in front of him was plagued in a steaming, charred layer of crust. The lush green forest, beautiful winding rivers and breathtaking, picturesque snow capped peaks had all submitted to make way for a baron wasteland. Vanished was the township, and so with it was the remnants of any human life. The wasteland was still smouldering - a warning that whatever had caused all of this could crush him in a simple wave of the finger. A warning that he was no longer the puppet master of his own destiny.

Yet Vladimir’s mind could not absorb and process what was flowing into him. He felt as if he was playing a matter of life or death chess match against the destructive core of the apocalypse, yet the winning moves were cowering away from his vision. “Come on, think!” he shouted. “Always think on the task at hand, never lose your focus” played over his mind, refreshing his memory of thoughts of his humble father. Staring out to the charred plain of death, his senses regathered and rekindled the spark in his mind.

“Alright then” he mumbled, “What do I have to confront you?”. It took a second, but then the penny dropped and reality sunk in that Vladimir knew he was devoid of any feasible resources. It was typical really, wasn’t it? He was meant to take on the world - or at least what was left of it, something so powerful, so destructive, with only his wits about him.Yet all that played through his mind was a singular word. ‘Rest’.The journey through hell was gonna be a long and bumpy ride, so rest was going to be needed. And on that thought, Vladimir laid himself down on the scorched earth, blocking out the burning sensation darting through his bloodstream. But for some reason, he re-allowed his nerves to feel the scold, it offered him a odd, unexplainable sense of satisfaction.

His thoughts transitioned to family. How was Vladimir going to rise to become the solace that his family needed? Ideas started dashing through his head, overwhelming his compact mind. Yet all his thoughts were soon crushed by Vladimir’s deepest, darkest fear. His heart sank through the earth in a sudden sense of realisation - gone was the township, gone was the picturesque landscape, gone...was his family. Mum, Dad, his two siblings - all dead. Incinerated in a fiery, chaotic, destructive blaze, disappearing just as Vladimir’s surroundings did. A fire of rage burned inside his body, yet was not emitted as anger, but as trickling tears. Trickling tears that cascaded down Vladimir’s soft, warm cheeks.

In a sense of defeat, Vladimir sucked in the sweet smoke, allowing it to tickle his lungs and suffocate his throat - it didn’t matter now, nothing was left for Vladimir to fight for. He longed for his lungs to collapse under the immense pressure of toxic effluvium. Pulling a slight grin to his face, he chuckled “Well, you better bloody kill me before I end up killing my bloody self”.

Despite Vladimir’s craving for everything to end, for his life to fade into eternal darkness, for the revolting taste of toxic smoke to strangle every last breath in his lungs, he was not yet ready to admit vanquishment. Somewhere out in the baron realm of chaos that lay before him were answers, waiting patiently to be revealed. Answers he was going to reveal. With a sense of direction, confidence began to reflow through his bloodstream. Standing up, silhouetted against the dark horizon of the baron depths of hell, Vladimir never felt more alive. “You may have knocked me down” he chuckled, “but I am far from out.”