Survival Alex Greene
Darkness . Then light … It curled around his eyes in grasping claws that made him almost miss the blackness . The boy looked around ; his lungs screaming in agony … but he couldn ’ t move . For once in his life , he couldn ’ t weasel his way out of trouble . He turned his head in the gloom , his dark eyes making out the forms of other … corpses . They didn ’ t move or even struggle , so they had to be dead . But then , the boy wasn ’ t even sure if he was still alive . On that thought , he almost forgot about the building pressure in his skull and the air evaporating out of his lungs . The boy turned towards the burning light ; his black eyes locked shut against his will , but he welcomed the coolness . He felt bodies brush against him ; lifeless and limp , their hands raked over his skin . Their hair brushed over his face ; their eyelids flickered slightly as he drove past them . Each connection brought back memories he ’ d never had . Children he ’ d never loved or cared for , danced and played around the fallen remnants of city spires . He saw wives and husbands laugh at some incomprehensible joke . All of this meant nothing to him . The first time this had happened he might have cried . But now it was just a fact of life . An annoying and irksome fact that made social interaction almost impossible . The boy ’ s head ripped above the surface ; his white hair spilling over his sallow face ; his precious circlet lost in the depths . He looked to the skies and instantly regretted it . For a few minutes , he groped around in the water until encountering a corpse , he used it to drift in the direction he thought was the coastline . When his sight returned , it took him a while to realise it was his brother ’ s . His sibling was more pallid than usual , a corpse white rather than his usual alabaster .