Letters #Wattys2014

I'm going to die soon

Dear George,

You obviously don’t understand what I’m telling you, so I guess I’ll tell you everything.

My mother, my father and I all lived on your side of the wall until I was four. Life then was almost perfect with sunshine, happiness and more importantly...Neapolitan Ice cream.  But not everything was perfect. My mother was a vital part of the government, and she told my father secrets that the government were keeping from us all. But my mother agreed with everything the government was doing even though some of the things they did to people were far from humane. My mother and father had an argument one night and my mother ended up slapping my father around the face. Trying to intervene, I managed to trip up and fall on my mother who ended up falling down the stairs, dying. My father and I were later arrested for murdering a member of the government which is an even greater crime than murdering an ordinary civilian. In fact, it’s a definite death sentence. 

My father was not long ago exterminated; in fact they exterminated him when they believed I was capable of looking after myself. Then they gave me my day of death and I knew I had to find a way to get out of here. I noticed a pen pal program that some of my friends were setting up to communicate with the other side. Of course, this is completely illegal but I don’t have long left anyway so I had nothing left to lose. 

But something did surprise me, the address I got given was an address I knew. It was my next door neighbour’s house who had a little boy around my own age. But I never met the boy because I was taken to the other side of the wall before I ever got a chance. So I wrote to you, hoping that you were the boy I was thinking of. Thinking that I might make a friend before it was too late...a real friend.

So there’s my story. But I’m going to die soon anyway so there’s no point getting attached to me.

Clara