A faded world

By Cahill Parrish-wood

Restless rest, turning and tumbling in his bed while the man tried to sleep in an attempt to escape
his dreaded reality of empty memories abandoned by time, yet this rest was short lived as the haze
of slumber soon passed and the man quickly arose out of bed to open the blinds and let in some
warm, bathing sunlight, which felt heavenly on his tired body. He got dressed and headed
downstairs dragging his feet behind him, first to the kitchen to fix a shot of liquid wakeup, bitter as it
was, he made do, made some toast, and with more energy this time walked into the living room and
took a seat.

He switched the tv on, it gave off a faint buzz and it showed what was meant to be the eight o’clock
news, but it was wrong somehow, the anchors had faded faces less resembling a person and more
so a mannequin, and the speech was incomprehensible mumbling, sounding more like a mashup of
many words that he had heard before but couldn’t quite remember where from, he tried switching
channels but they were all the same odd news broadcast. He was quickly distracted from this
kerfuffle however by a woman, a true beauty with long, luscious hair coloured with red golds as if a
field of wheat was set ablaze but nothing charred, eyes like the greenest sapphire you’d ever have
seen, and skin fair as paper, soft to the touch and radiant to look at. Unlike the people on the
television her vocals were clear and crisp as she spoke winged words that flew swiftly on the wind
and fell deafly on the man’s ears, she beckoned him to the porch so to see the horizon beyond the
beach, and so he followed.

Out on the deck chair was nice with his cup of coffee, the lazy breeze cold on his skin, people on the
street passing by of which he couldn’t quite make out any features, they were more a distant
remembering of a human being, looking as if they are made of clay. Suddenly distracted from his
thoughts, sounds blared in his ears and the girl screamed a banshees scream, he looked to the
horizon and saw the sun in the west, growing bigger and brighter by the second, then everything fell
apart, the woman whom he never knew anyone better turned to dust, he ran without thinking and
the people disappeared seemingly melting or crumbling, houses blew off their foundations then
crumbled to dust, the screams heard everywhere with no direction, everything went bright and hot,
then dark and cold.

Yet this rest was short lived as the void of the dreamscape was broken fast, and the man arose
swiftly and suddenly, breathing shallowly and rapidly whilst clutching his chest as he went, he got up
post haste and calmed himself down, already forgetting what had played in his head only moments
ago, he opened the heavy blinds to let in the stinging rays of the light from a faded world, it gave
him a cold and depressing sensation when it hit his wrinkled skin. Moving on from the window as
soon as he had opened it, he quickly equipped himself and made his way downstairs, with whispered
steps, to the kitchen where he fixed himself some kind of canned mystery meat from the cabinet, it
was a thick, warm, repulsive paste but good food wasn’t a thing in this age.

He took his food, if you could even call it that, into the living room, it has been a long, long time
since the television has turned on, but the large leather lounge is still comfy as it has ever been, and
he ate slowly and carefully as to not get the bad bits. After the meal the man went to the porch, the
front door was a bit stuck and the hinges had rusted a lot in the years but it eventually opened with
a bang and a loud creak, he set up the deck chair and lowered his feeble body in its warm, secure
embrace, the wooden frame is stiff and hard but not uncomfortable as his thick clothing padded him
from both the chair and the cold charred world around him.
As the man sat, he set his weary eyes on the grim scene before him, the houses that once housed
family and friends now are either not standing or on the brink of collapse, burnt and black on all
sides, the roads lay in ruin with potholes and rubble scattered over them making them inoperable,
which is fine because the cars no longer run, the beach was barren of sand, eroded away, the ocean
now laps at the street like a thirsty animal, taking more and more of the land away at every passing
moment. The man seeing these memories forgotten to others lets out a tear, then began to cry his
teas wetting a picture of his late loved one, the day passed and the man sat there and recalled the
days of his youth until the sun had come and gone, and with nightfall the man made his way back up
the stairs to lay in his bed and once again sleep.

reflection
my creative piece “a faded world” is a short story about a man in an apocalyptic world remembering
the day that some event destroyed everything as he goes about his daily routine.

This piece can be interpreted in a variety of different ways for different parts of it as it doesn’t have a
true meaning behind it, for example the piece as a whole could be interpreted at face value as just a
story about a man in a destroyed world or it could instead be interpreted as say an experience that
changed your whole world even if your day-to-day actions weren’t affected.

In the creation of this short story, I took inspiration from “there will come soft rains” by Ray
Bradbury and games such as fallout 4, the actual writing of the story is meant to feel slightly
melancholic and disconnected from the character which I why I never described him in detail or gave
him a name.

For this story I studied the text “there will come soft rains” by Ray Bradbury and from it got the idea
of the post-apocalyptic setting and the idea for the story to be repetitive and never really extend
past what happens at the man’s house.
Quote from “there will come soft rains”

“Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and
ashes.”
Quote from my piece “a faded world”

“he opened the heavy blinds to let in the stinging rays of the light from a faded world”

To summarise the story, it’s about a man recalling a time before in which things were better and
looking at how things are now with a tear in his eye. However it can be interpreted in any way the
reader likes as it was written with no true meaning, to me I can gather meaning from it in a similar
way as in the example given earlier in this reflection.