Strange: The Senior Young Writers Group Zine 2023

“There were screams. And now I don’t know what to
do.” She waited, and looked him in the eyes and whispered,
“what did you see?”
“I could not look away. The fear embedded on my
parents faces now embedded in my brain. You could not
understand the way their faces did not look at anything, like
they could not bear to look at anything. You could not
understand the way their skin had shrivelled against their
bones, like all the water in their body was used for tears. Could
not understand the way their hands curled into themselves, like
their body was a disease they couldn’t bear to spread. But I can
not understand the way I couldn’t look my parents in the face
for I will feel sad nonetheless.”
“What will we do?”
“There is nothing I can do,” he told her as the fear
began stretching further from his brain, “but you can run.”
She did not wait for her fear to be tangiblised in the
boy’s body, and left. She closed her eyes and followed the
worn paths, stumbling over tiny, thin hands and feet. She
mumbled apologies to the corpses and continued.
She followed the trails to the edge of town, to the
cornfields and oblivion beyond. She left the town, to be a
stranger elsewhere.
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