Inertia
A debut story, a dramatised (or romanticised) interpretation of the world under COVID-19. Inspired by La Peste by Camus and 1984 by Orwell. I do hope you like it, and that you forgive the amateurish and make place for courage!
I feel the mud on my cheek, the grass lingering between my fingers. The sky is clear, and nature is back roaring with a vengeance. My eyes remain closed to the world, thoughts spiralling, struggling to recount the events that led us here. Our world has stopped spinning, and all has come crashing down. We were forewarned through biblical prophecies and journalistic endeavours, but we ignored them all and accepted our fate. Inside my head, all is calm, peaceful. A sure contrast to the madness that must be slowly brewing, itching to spill onto the streets. The reality that I had known, the reality that personified all that I understood, was no more. Everything has changed, and for someone who had waited for this change for so long, it all came so quickly… too quickly.
I open my eyes, and the colours that surround me are a stark contrast to the darkness that unfold inside my brain. My house, situated beneath the Heathrow flight path, is blessed by silence. A silence that eventually becomes eerie; a hollow echo of a world that stopped functioning. Instead of the jet fumes and engine blast, birds are singing and flapping their wings across the still sky. Birds whose names I do not…