Literary magazine

(This was written in response to a sample exam question on the new English GCSE course, namely a description of adverse weather and its effects. The relevance of this response to that question is left to the reader to determine.) T HE SKY WAS A VISAGE IN FLAWLESS WHITE. Not a single blemish tarnished its brilliantly colourless finish. It could almost have been called beautiful, under different circumstances. Yet such circumstances as to prevent manner as a grater treats a lemon rind. All his life had passed in self-righteous nicotine abstinence, yet now when he spoke he sounded like a twenty-a-day man; gravelly, hoarse. That said, tar-coated organs and a failing heart would have been preferable to staying an-

its appreciation were here, he reflected gloomily, and

other day in this London, this ghastly London, devoid of

the worst would just have to be made of them.

people, devoid of life, devoid of all joy that made exist-

ence even remotely bearable.

He stood upon what was left of Westminster Bridge, its

groaning supports actively protesting against the bitter

Standing amidst the flaking paint and the faint whiff of

cold, the icicles that clung like obstinate limpets to the

prolonged putrefaction, he looked out over the frozen

underside shuddering with every footstep, and sur-

expanse of the Thames, buried beneath ice deeper

veyed the becalmed ship that was London. Nothing

than a well, dull and grey like the mottled glass of a

stirred. Nothing moved. Though the distant, meagre

second-rate greenhouse. Thick white mist jostled for

sun glinted harshly off the snow that he waded through,

attention on the fringes of his vision, but he raised his

knee-deep, that was piled high over every car, every

eyes instead to the heavens, and uttered a contemptu-

doorway, there were no signs of life whatsoever. But

ous curse.

should he have cared to cast his gaze down a few feet,

It had been a Wednesday. That much he remembered

then the ugly marks of death were everywhere. Bodies

with more clarity than the rest. That particular Wednes-

lined the pavements; their final, choking breaths frozen

day had been unremarkable – nondescript, spectacu-

in their petrified mouths.

larly void of content. Still, in retrospect at least, content

Westminster’s parliamentary palace lay destroyed; split

wasn’t lacking nearly so much by the afternoon. Two

asunder like a desecrated temple, submerged beneath

o’clock had sounded, much like any other day, precise-

its own crumbling ruins. Its cast iron girders were

ly a quarter of an hour earlier than anyone would have

snapped and crippled; its tiled roofs slumped under the

liked, yet that day it was tolling for more than the end of

great mass of snow, endless, endless snow. The story

the lunch hour – it was a death knoll for mankind. The

was the same everywhere, so far as he could tell from

Coming had manifested itself as a cloud: blank, ex-

his circumspections; the great monuments and mono-

pressionless, with wispy tendrils of a tentacular nature.

liths felled with all the grace that a careless lumberjack

It had descended much like a biblical offering, lofty and

would bring to the task. The pillars upon which London

inexplicable; only this one didn’t bring peace and good-

society was founded could now be found in neat piles

will to all man; no one began loving their neighbours as

of rubble, from Battersea to the Docklands and beyond.

thyself; there were no burning bushes. All men per-

ished, yes; all neighbours succumbed as their fellows,

He sighed wistfully, before drawing in a deep, resigned

granted; but all that burned was the icy fire of retribu-

breath – oh! it was cold. Wincing with the sickly sensa-

tion in his heart.

tion of the thin, oxygen-less air rasping in his throat, he

10

-Robert Bywater, Year 10

thought of his lungs, roughly treated in much the same