Ravager (Short Story)
Ngun Tha Vang | Ruskin Park Primary School
Primary English | Term 1 2021
The phantom of a raccoon’s shadow draws slowly through the wrecked city. Pillars of concrete rubble are falling in whirlwinds of dust at my feet. I squint my eyes, breathing heavily, clouds of noxious silt fluttering like butterflies of grey upon my skin. The hairs along my arms are powdered with white; like sugar sprinkled on baked goods.
How could my hometown become like this?
Foxes stands solemnly next to me, her fists trembling in desperate fury, staring at the desolate wasteland of abandoned buildings stretched for miles before her. Christmas’ ears are whistling in the snowy tempest like leaves of black fur, his nose snuffling at lifeless corpses and wisps of dead animals. Veins of green infection trail through the crevices in the ground like spreading acid.
I try to speak, but my throat is closed off by a thick box of snow and sludge. Instead, I fall to my knees.
Faced with the Ravager, I am nothing, but a poor little boy standing in a land of ghosts.
“Let’s leave,” I call hollowly to Foxes, and Christmas bounds ahead, tail drooping like a wilted stem.
And, alone, we children and our own dog walk away into the distant haze.
Ngun Tha Vang | Ruskin Park Primary School
