The Path of the Past
A short story I wrote for the Advanced English Trial HSC a couple of weeks ago …
Looking up, I could see the pale moonlight playing on the swaying leaves. They cast a shadow like a dying fire on the glowing dirt road in front of me. Everything else was a dark silhouette, with only the road to guide me.
I recognised that tree; it was the one I’d fallen out of when I was nine or ten, and I’d broken my arm. I remember my father running down this road, his wide-brim hat flying off behind him, as he rushed to help.
I almost forgot. I can’t wander through this country so carelessly now; I can’t climb the macadamia tree to get the nuts, for fear of being seen, for fear of dying.
I almost forgot the gun in my hand, it could have been a shovel. I could have been on my way to help Dad dig holes for the new fence.
No, it was a gun, a loaded gun. The moon was shielded by the slow-moving clouds and my path was lost, the leaves now just mysterious silhouettes like everything else, eerily moving in a graceful minuet.
I remember when I was younger still, before I had broken my arm, how my night-light went out. It was dark, pitch-black, and in my mind I could see the shapeless monster creeping out from under my bed. I cried then, just like I wanted to now.
I forgot again, like I wanted to. I wanted to forget all about the gun, about the invasion. I want to forget the looks on the faces of my friends, contorted in agony, as I watched them captured from my hiding place. The cries were unbearable, the anguished screams asking how things could possibly have gotten the way they are now. That’s why I had to remember.
If I forget, there’s no chance of survival, no reunion … no more Sunday afternoons walking between the Eucalypts. I have to find out how things got the way they are and I have to reverse it, flip it. I want to be in my pitch-black bedroom, scared of a monster under my bed. I always knew Dad would be in the next room, and he’d turn on the light and the monster would vanish.
But that’s not possible, I remembered. My father was beyond a reunion, they’d killed him, killed him in cold blood. I’d kill them so they had no more blood to kill with.
The moon emerged, shining on the leaves, reflecting off the black gun, illuminating the path.
I saw lights ahead; I aimed, I fired.
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