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Yes, so I
Yes, so I wrote this story for English class *pulls face* and I think it's kinda weird... It'd unedited as yet and I'm just wondering if anyone has any feedback/suggestions/critique/"Omigosh ML your teacher is going to fail you you're writing so many apocalyptic/dark/evil stories."
Mm...
~
It's been thirty years since we left Nowri because of overpopulation. Our lifestyles were too lavish, our tastes too expensive, and we paid because of it. Nowri had become a barren and desolate land, and we didn't speak of it anymore, much. We were ashamed of our past. If you can believe it, there were plenty of children who had never even been there. Children who had been born and bred, grown up and raised their own families, on our "new Nowri," a planet that scientists had discovered just in time to save our race from the plight we ourselves had created. They called it "Earth" and they said it would fulfill our needs just as efficiently as Nowri did. And I suppose that was the truth, for the children who had never experienced Nowri. It was a beautiful place. Far nicer than Earth.
I want to tell you about one of the dark days before they discovered Earth, a bigger and stronger planet, and we were able to relocate. I was a news anchor, and this is the story of shame, sorrow, and terror that I told every day...
*
"It doesn't look good from up here," I said through the microphone to my friend Jake. Jake was back on the ground, hosting the evening news for our frightened and desperate viewers. It was just another day filled with hardly enough oxygen and fresh water to get by, a day where we were berated by storms and earthquakes and natural disasters that caused panic and fear to do Adolf Hitler proud. Just another day that Jake and the rest of the crew and I had to make our living by spreading horror stories to the civilians who huddled, confused and crowded, in houses that could hardly hold them. Overpopulation. The most fearsome form of apocalypse.
"No, not good at all," I said decisively. "I'd recommend we circumscribe off several areas around some of our more important buildings and maybe get some sort of partition up to restrain all the water..." I drifted off uncertain. 'Important' buildings like the president's house were filled with commoners who needed somewhere to live. Every building, from supermarkets to libraries to schoolhouses, were crowded with frantic civilians packed in like sardines. I myself shared a small apartment room with not only my immediate family, but also my mother's best friend and her family, and a cousin of that friend. And that was special treatment for a prominent newswoman like myself. Others were not so fortunate.
Water was raging through the towns like it runs in the city we now call Venice, but it was a heckuva lot more furious, more pulsating, more... alive somehow. Alive, but killing. Lots of death and destruction.
But it wasn't only the water. There were earthquakes rolling around in competition with the hurricanes and tsunamis. Volcanoes chose this moment-- and the next and the next--- to erupt, spewing white-hot lava and easily spreading chaos and mass turmoil through our beloved Nowri. If you listened, above all the ruckus you could hear the screams. The screams...
It was enough to drive a person insane--- in fact, I think that by that point, I just about nearly was. My mentality was inconsistent, and I would catch myself talking to thin air or waking up shrieking. I'd begun hearing voices in my head. I gave them names. Wendy. Tricia. Riley and Bill. I laughed bitterly to myself, not caring that millions of people were hearing me broadcasted live on their television screens. One more madwoman in the midst of this brouhaha would make no difference...
Nothing would make any difference, nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing could stop the fires, the burning, licking, dancing flames that sprung up from the land and gobbled down our world. Nothing could prevent the hail, or the cold--- the cold that seeped into a person and made everything else disappear, seem inconsequential. Nothing could stop the brute forces of nature that ravaged our planet. Our people. Our spirits.
Nothing.
*
That was a day for me. Living with that ever-present terror, never a relaxed moment. The horrible irony of it all was that I-- I-- was on the news, telling everyone else abut the few horrors that had not reached them yet, and making them even more afraid. Sowing terrors of doubt and paranoia. And where doubt is sown, desperation grows and blossoms into disaster.
And then they found Earth.
The scientists. They located this planet, and said we would =be able to sustain life there. They told us it was bigger ad more resilient than Nowri ever as, even before all this. But we'd have to take care, they said, that this quandary did not happen again. History repeats itself, they said. History repeats itself...
We are here now. And we are safe from the evils that troubled us on poor, forgotten, fragile Nowri. But people will forget. People like me, those who remember, will die and with us will the realities of our horrific everyday existence. And then, when there is no one left to remember...
Will history repeat itself?
submitted by Mary W., age 11.86, Missouri, actua
(November 4, 2009 - 9:57 pm)
(November 4, 2009 - 9:57 pm)
Pretty good, as a whole. I will not go into a critique here just cause it's so long :D But there are two things. One is that I like the last paragraph above the asterick. The other is that I think this needs some work on the flow. It feels too choppy, as well as a little too preachy at the end. Tone down on the moral and try to transition between the recolection and the current narration more smoothly. That's all I'll say as I have school to do. Anywho, not bad at all, and I enjoyed it. Perhaps I should be worried about that, given the subject matter.... :D
-EH
(November 5, 2009 - 3:21 pm)
Thanks, Emily. I admit I was sort of hoping you'd read it, I love reading your critiques... ;)
Re: preachniess: Yeah, I know... It comes out all environmentalist save-the-world, which I don't like or even agree with. That's sort of just... how it turned out. So that does annoy me too a little...
I'll see if I can work on the flow... if I have time... *still has to finish math and social studies before returning to school tomorrow* *whines*
(November 5, 2009 - 7:03 pm)
Wow. That's a very well-written story. I see what you guys mean by "preachy", (especially as I do not agree with people who say population is a problem) but still it was quite frightening. Especially as just today I looked at pictures of pollution in China. Artificial clouds, mucky brown rivers, people with cancer and other wierd diseases from breathing too much polutants. I wish I could post the link.
(November 14, 2009 - 7:40 pm)