S H O RT S TO R I E S F R O M T H E G LO B A L C LA S S R O O M |
2014
TO DAY I W I LL D I E
I S O B E L WA LTO N, YE A R 9
R E G E N T S I N T E R NAT I O NA L S C H O O L , PAT TAYA
The structure is designed to add tension by getting shorter and shorter as my character gets scared. It is written in
both 1st person (italics) and 3rd person. My character has been greatly affected by the fact he knows when he’ll die.
In a way he’s had to grow up fast; this is reflected when he tells his part of the story. The theme of change is his point
of view. He goes from being very calm about his death to terrified, as if all that missed youth has finally caught up
with him.
Today I will die.
He dragged his way through the undergrowth. Thorny hands clawed at his ankles, now running red with blood.
Brambles grew everywhere, obscuring the little light of the near twilight, shrouding the ground in half darkness.
He toiled on.
Today is the day that I will die. I’ve known it – well, I’ve known it all my life. I don’t know how as a child you could
understand such things, but I did – I do.
Around him day was turning to night. Light gave way to darkness. Cold winds sliced through the soft summer air.
The birdsong was replaced with the wail of the crickets, their mournful tune as painful as silence. The trees seemed
to grow in the darkness, disfigured until they could just as easily have been men, statues in the night.
I’m not scared. Not of shadows, not of death. I used to be scared, I used to cry in the night; my parents never heard.
But death did. He used to sit by my bedside and cradle me to sleep. As I grew older we would talk. Talk about
anything and everything. He never questioned me like the psychiatrists or talked down to me like my parents. He
didn’t judge me nor I him. He was my friend and I was his. He’s always there when I need him and even when I don’t.
He taught me to embrace the shadows, be