Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27304089-20151128001110

Our Struggle

Light shines through the cracks of the wall leaving thin illuminated lines on the faces of my father as he peeks through the narrow breaches. They are rummaging around, smashing furniture, breaking glass, hunting. My mother keeps her hand over the mouth of my younger brother to stifle his sobs; he is too young to know how to hold in your fear for self-preservation. My father grips a pistol that he holds at the ready should the barrier that protects us shatter down.

I know that he blames himself, he didn’t listen. Most people didn’t listen; they didn’t listen to the ones who horded and fled claiming the end was coming. Some of the these people were kind when the chaos came to the street and offered food and shelter to the ones who once saw them as paranoid fanatics, other were not so forgiving and forced out those seeking sanctuary with weapons drawn. Other would take you in and use you till situation got bad, would leave you for dead or as a distraction. They were the worst, to think how quickly we could turn on each other.

My family was lucky, we knew an older lady smart enough to know trouble was coming. Days before it started she told us that she had a place in her home that was well protected and well hidden. I remember the day we fled in terror from our home. We were lucky that we had managed to dodge the hoards that were rampaging down the streets but their handiwork was obvious. Corpses, lots of corpses dotted the street; it was not only men but also women and children. There was a corpse not far the home we fled to, a young girl. Whatever had killed her was not obvious. She just sat leaning on the side of a building. She looked like a doll with pale skin and glass blue eyes just staring ahead. The older woman rushed us inside locked her door after looking around to see if anyone else was outside.

I wonder where the older lady is now. She is either hiding herself, was killed by the same group looking for us or at least would soon wish she was. She had been safe and careful, she kept the windows covered, told us to make as little noise as possible. We weren’t dumb and knew that it would be what saved us. Every day you could hear the sounds of someone who got sloppy, someone who left a light on, who got caught scavenging food or just was unlucky. That was what was truly scary; it could just be bad luck. A sneeze at the wrong time, a slight shift while sleeping that could reveal you; it was a constant battle of survival. We were prey and our predators would have no mercy.

The sounds of these predators were all around us, on the other side of the wall, on the floor above. They were diligent in their hunting and even more diligent in the chase. It was like they got enjoyment in what they did and took every opportunity to torment those they were after, to make others fear when they found the remains. The noise on the other side of the wall slowed down and then stopped. We heard the sounds of them coming down the stairs as the headed for the door; their hunt fruitless. My father let out a breath that he had been holding in ever since he had peaked out the window and saw this hoard approaching down the street. It was the wrong time.

Crash! The wall smashed open, a shadowy figure stood in the new opening calling out to the fellow hunters. My father raised his pistol and fired at the figure, the round hit him directly in the head. As the figure dropped, two more reached inside the wall and dragged my screaming father out. He tried to aim his gun but it was knocked from his grasp. There were at least five of them in the room and four of them immediately charged upon him and began striking him over and over while the fifth dragged the rest of us from our temporary sanctuary. I saw my father’s face through my tears as I was dragged into the room. He had the eyes of the girl I saw when I first arrived, a glass blue that reflect how far away he was from this place, how he was in a happier place than the hell he had just left.

“STOPP”

Another figure walked into the house and called to the ones doing the beating. The figures nodded and pulled my father up and dragged him out of the house along with us right behind him. Outside we could see the others who had been caught; some of them had been beaten to the point that they no longer looked human, others were dead, their fresh blood still on the walls and the streets as the laid lifelessly. I knew that this was the end, not of just me and my family but of humanity. There was no longer any mercy but just brutality. Hunters forever chasing their prey and maybe, someday the world would be fair and they would be chased by even more powerful predator. Maybe someday they would know the fear that we felt. I knew I would not live to see that.

While the world lives on and will live on for many years I know that my world ended in 1933.

I am bit of an aspiring author and I felt it would be a good idea to put some of my work up for critique. I felt that the world of online scary stories lacked "historical horror" or horror about a time long past. The idea that a date that is just note in a history book could be the greatest terror to people who lived it. I structured it like a creature story to create the feeling of being hunted by something inhuman. Any feedback? 