Cold Winds

This is my draft for my senior english assignment. i had to write a short story based on the book 1984 by George Orwell. i hope you like it :)

Winston and his family shivered in the morning chill. Cuddled together in the crowded subways. The bombs in the distance creating the rhythm to their melody of misery and the outside gunfire became the beat. Winston looked up to see a man huddled by himself, his age was measured in wrinkles and the years had betrayed him. As Winston sat their staring he realised that this man had no more than a few weeks of life left, whether he would be shot, diseased or simply die from the unrelenting cold weather, Winston did not know. The war had began one year ago but even so Winston struggles to remember what life used to be like and if it had ever been any different. His mother would always speak of feasts and laughter of which Winston had forgotten the meaning of; life is bleak and he can feel his mother’s death getting closer and closer almost breathing down her neck. His father was the first to be claimed by death just a few weeks back he went missing and somehow Winston knew that the INGSOC soldiers had killed him to entertain them in their boring task of portal. Many people have ended this way some have been hanged, others shot, there is even the occasional one beaten to death.

 

INGSOC raided the subways. People running and screaming everywhere, the world became a blur as people dropped dead around him. He saw the light in the old man’s eyes go dark as he collapsed to the cold, hard ground. Gun shot it is. Winston run with is mother and sister till they had left London far behind and hid in a forest behind some vast paddocks. He woke to his mother’s coughs and knew death had come, waiting to collect her prize. This war has been good for death and so has the winter. The war had claimed thousands for death but winter with her constant chills and plagues has brought on a wave of death that no war can compete with.

 

It didn’t take long for them to run out of food. They couldn’t hunt animals and knew not what plants they could eat. His mother’s had worsened and his sister had joined in on the coughing. Winston hadn’t eaten in days and felt the weakness of hunger; the chocolate bar in his mother’s hand was unbearable to look at. It beaconed him, drawing him closer, temping him to snatch it out of her hands. He could bear it no long. He reached up and took it from her, running away with it feeling his heart snap.

 

A few hours later when the chocolate was long gone he started to walk back towards his mother and sister with regret bubbling in his stomach. He entered the small room and… Rats. All he saw was rats, everywhere there were rats, no mother, no sister only rats. Terrified he dashed through the doorway not looking back. Within days he was back in the heart of London cold and petrified waking up screaming form nightmares of rats in the thousands scurrying out of the gutters and streaming towards him leaping at his face. A month later he woke from one such nightmare to see posters of a dark middle-aged man with a black moustache staring at him with the caption ‘Big Brother Is Watching You’. The war was over but winter had not finished.

 

A man with intelligent eyes wearing black overalls walked towards him saying, “Boy, where are your parents boy?”

“Dead, sir”

“Come with me boy. We’ll find you somewhere to stay.”

Winston walked with the man with intelligent eyes down the dark ally way and the sunshine hit Winston’s for the first time since the beginning of the war between his majesty and Big Brother and now it had ended, now Winston was safe from death’s chilling grasp winter had ended.

 

A storm rolled in as they screamed ‘Death to the King, Death to the King, Death to the King!’ They slipped the thick rope around their delicate necks as the watching crowd roared calling for the princesses’ death and begging Big Brother to kill King Edward II. ‘Down with Princess Margret, Down with Princess Elisabeth, Down with King Edward!’ The soldier’s started the cry ‘Down with England, Down with England, Down with England!’. And Big Brother answered with ‘Hang Them!’ and everyone cheered. Everyone but Winston as the royal family swung to and fro from the rope. The King’s neck was broken and he simply swayed from side to side as the princesses struggled desperate to breath kicking and grappling the rope around their necks. None was safe from death’s dragger especially under the rule of Big Brother. His life was over. He would become one of INGSOC’s mindless slaves. He would love the retched Big Brother.