Short fiction challenge
In my series of short fiction challenges, I post short pieces I wrote for my Masters in Science Fiction and Fantasy at Anglia Ruskin University. We were set a challenge every fortnight, to practise writing in a particular style or genre, and (with permission from my tutor) I’ve decided to share them here.
This week’s challenge was to write a scene that combines a trope and a theme from science fiction and fantasy.
Ana raised her head from where she was slumped on the ground, and took a painful look around her. The bright light of summer dawn pierced her skull like a needle and made her heave, but she could tell that she was in an alleyway. It was indistinguishable from every other alleyway in her town: the rubbish was piled up every which way, plastic bags split open, and the overpowering stench of rotting fish spilled out and oozed its way into her nostrils, finally achieving what even the harsh sunlight and the throbbing ache in her head could not. Soon the (mostly liquid) contents of her stomach were pooled in the dirt next to her, and began to trickle gradually toward a drain from which an equally vile smell was emanating.
As hangovers went, this was a pretty bad one.
Then, with a sudden shock, the previous night came back to her. She sat up – she couldn’t face standing just yet – and took a sharp look at her wrist. Wait. No. What?
She shouldn’t be here.
She should be dead.
Opening and closing her mouth like a ventriloquist’s dummy, she tried to force her brain to work. She looked at her wrist again. The Doomsday clock that all citizens had etched into their flesh at birth was at midnight.
Midnight meant the end. When everyone’s clock hit midnight, they died. It was programmed: you could do nothing about it. The upper classes, the privileged, they got a good lifespan; the workers – like her – had far less time to look forward to. No-one knew the precise day ‘it’ would happen, but the gradual ticking of the clock counted down your progress; and there was at least this concession: on the day you were due to die, the clock would turn red.
Yesterday hers had turned red.
Hence the drinking spree. As a worker, she had nothing to put in order: everything – money, work, leisure time – was controlled and dispensed by the state; she merely accessed it within permissible bounds, and it would be reassigned on her death.
It wasn’t a bad life. She had disposable income, enough for a few beers now and then; and, indeed, going out on a bender was a common practice amongst workers on their last day. It used up the last of the income they had in their pocket, and with any luck they’d pass out before ‘it’ happened. No-one knew what ‘it’ felt like, and no-one wanted to find out. No-one, to her knowledge, had ever cheated the clock and made it through to a new day.
Until now.
She glanced around; suddenly, furtively, aware that she was not supposed to be here, and that anyone – anything – might be on her trail. She had no idea what would happen now. Would she be hauled in and executed? Was her clock faulty? Had she – the thought struck her in a moment of deluded fantasy – been wrongly assigned at birth? Was she about to be given back her real life, her privileged life, the life she should have had all along?
No. Stop it, Ana. You should be dead. You are dead, to all intents and purposes. But do you want to stay dead? Because that’s almost certainly what will happen if anyone finds you. You need to get out of here. Where? Not a clue. But somewhere away from this rotting fish…
Slowly, painfully, she manoeuvred herself into a standing position.
Then she ran.
© Gwyneth Marshman 2018.