This is a #storygram (mini-story) from my Instagram, which you can get to via the social media links at the top of this site. I do my best to make them daily for you to enjoy! YES, many of them will hopefully be expounded upon in novels or other future writing endeavors of mine. Thank you very much for reading and sharing them! And don’t forget to check out my film Portfolio too!
The Story:
The fires are here. The smoke is billowing ahead of them and beginning to flow around me. It threatens to seize my lungs, choking me into submission for the flames’ easy consumption.
When they told us the Earth’s ozone was critically thin, we all laughed. None of us believed them until the fires started. Now, I smell the smoke and feel the heat as our planet burns.
I am one of the few who have made it to an underground city, where we will attempt to survive as Earth tries to repair herself over the decades. But I know as soon as I climb into this hole and join the city’s inhabitants below, I will never see the sky again–maybe my grandchildren will but not me.
“Come on, Danny. We have to go.”
My sister is with me. Our parents said they didn’t want to live without the sky. The fires consumed them a month ago.
“Okay, just… Just a few more seconds.”
She looks at the sky with me for too short of a moment. After several seconds she takes my hand and leads me to the tunnel. She climbs in until only her head is above ground.
“We still have each other.”
She climbs down, and I swing my legs over the side. I climb down a few rungs of the cold, steel ladder and grab the handle of the hatch to the tunnel.
Before I shut the hatch, I take one last look at the sky but my eyes catch on something next to the tunnel’s entrance. A bush with blueberries is begging me not to leave it behind. I pull out a container and start to collect some of the berries.
“Danny, what’re you doing?” my sister asks from below my feet.
“Say ‘Ah’ sis.”
She opens her mouth, and I drop a berry in.
“Mmm! That is awesome… I’ll miss that.”
“We can eat them before we enter the city gate at the bottom.”
I take one last look at the sky before the smoke thickens and blocks it from my vision.
I shut the hatch, and we are in total darkness underground, with only the sound of our shoes on metal rungs to remind us that we are buried but not yet dead.