ENGLISH


For this term’s Gazette we have decided to publish some Year 9 work on dystopian creative writing. These two extracts come from Year 9 students writing in response to this picture based on Cormac McCartney’s novel ‘The Road.’


Extract 1 Isolated. Dirty. Stale. That’s what Blackmarsh was, or, still is. Its unclear and foreboding sky still haunts me to this day. The thick grey clouds concealed the dark summit as if hiding it from the town. The air was filled with heavy oxygen barely noticeable over the dust and pollution. The bitter air


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would make anyone cough and splutter; cold, harsh, sooty.


The unsettling silence which had a hold of the town disturbed me. No hum, squeak, or shout was there to convince me that the town wasn’t completely lifeless. Utterly silent. Mute houses, in a ghost town.


A dirty and littered road sat beside the delapidated, desolate houses. I approached a half-burnt building. It was dark. Pitch black even. It looked like something that came out of a faulty oven, it was so scorched. The other houses weren’t any better. All the others were like dishevelled creatures glaring at me for being on their turf.


I reached out to brush my hands against the brittle bricks that made up the building I stood next to. It was cold, ragged and serrated. Like this town, in a way.


The unkempt gardens. The dingy roads. The wrecked cars. They were all deformed and neglected in some way or form. There was no end to the destruction. There was no end to the emptiness. There was no end to the barren wasteland.


Ruins, if you were being generous, was what you’d call the state of the town. Ruins. What might have once been a pretty little town had now disappeared and turned into a dark and dingy hellhole. No one could call this place home. No one. Smashed glass was scattered through the dead grass, of what used to be, front gardens. It was a small place but even so, no one in their right mind would want to stay here having taken a glance at it.


Further down the rubble, known as the road, was an abandoned, crashed car. Left rear tyre off. Windscreen shattered.


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