I wrote this short story in the 30-minute creative writing part of an English Language GCSE past paper, and committed the general gist of it to memory in the hope that a similar prompt would come up in the exam. I felt that with this prompt, ‘Doing the Right Thing’, most students would write some tired story about finding someone’s wallet and handing it in instead of keeping it or something like that, so I decided to put my own *twist* on it. In the exam, I was lucky enough to get the prompt ‘A Difficult Decision’, so the story needed very little adapting to make it work. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!
Doing the Right Thing
The sun entered centre-stage, scorching the treetops that nodded on the horizon and setting the sky alight with colour. Brilliant pinks and oranges streaked the landscape, illuminating plumes of ashy smoke and streets dark with blood.
Blood, smoke, fire. He blinked out of his daydream. Who was he kidding? The sun hadn’t risen in two months.
Stumbling out from the hot, dark pile of rubble in which he had taken refuge, the boy peered out into the thick, gritty smoke. Through it, he couldn’t even make out the horizon, let alone nodding trees. He smiled jeeringly at himself. Nodding trees. Good God.
It was impossible to tell the time of day, but some semblance of a damaged internal clock told him he was tired. With that realisation came a sudden weightiness in his limbs, and he collapsed to the ground with a resigned grunt. As his eyes closed against the burning air, he found himself dreaming of sunlight again.
Moments later, he became faintly aware of a strange, strangled wailing sound. After a moment, he recognised it. It was no longer uncommon to hear the final cries of babies left to the elements as a last resort of desperate mothers no longer able to nurture them.
But he had never heard that pitiful sound as close to him as this. Cracking open his eyes once more, feeling them being lacerated raw by that cruel, gritty wind, he looked around absent-mindedly for the source of the noise.
The baby was lying barely six feet away from him. It must have been left there in the night as he slept. He watched with an air of calm detachment its little face, deformed into ugliness by radiation poisoning and further contorted by its incessant wails. The wails became hysterical. Several minutes went by before it occurred to him that he should help it.
The boy caught himself at that word, ‘should’. Why ‘should’ he? He ‘should’ get some rest. He ‘should’ find something to eat. He was not ashamed to recall the last words of his mother as she choked on the ashy wind just five cold months prior: “So long as you do the right thing, Johnny.” Or was it Julian? It didn’t matter now.
He looked at the baby. He ‘should’ help it. He felt a tight gnawing in his stomach. He felt the heaviness of his limbs.
He ‘should’ find something to eat.
He should find ‘something’ to eat.
He moved towards the baby.