The Lost Foundations by Gabrielle BG (inspiring books for teens TXT) 📕

also barred off.

There was only one solution. One boy was very skinny and looked like he could fit, with some work, through bars in the exit pipe. We decided to try to fit him through. He didn’t want to go in of course and thought it was a bad idea, but it was the only way.

We thought that if somehow he could get to the other side, he might be able to open up the bars so we could escape. It was so dark that it was too hard to tell where anything was. The plan was so foolish at the time, but our insane desperation was what was driving us. It took a lot of twisting and turning and help before he got out.

He searched forever but could not find anything that would somehow assist in our escape.
“I’m going down,” he said.
He slid down the pipe, but all of the sudden we heard this big thump.

He yelled that the opening was sealed up and he was stuck inside. We screamed and yelled to him. Suddenly the pipe behind us began to stir. With a huge gush water blasted out it went straight through the cage into the sealed pipe where we knew our friend would drown.

“No!” I screamed.

I was not about to lose another friend. It seemed that every friend I ever made I was forced to lose. I just couldn’t. I began shaking the cage. I kept shaking it and shaking it. Screaming and crying all at once. My friend was going to die! We were going to die! It was all over. We all grabbed on to the top of the cage and helped each other’s feet up so that we were the highest possible.

The water filled up to the very top of the cage where we were, but then it stopped. The cage bars lifted and the water rushed us into the pipe. We fell down a long dark tunnel and eventually flew out into a giant river where we were rushed by a heavy current downstream. Water was pulling me under and pushing forward at an intense speed.

I was worried for my life just as much as I was worried about my new friends’ lives. The thought of once again losing my only companions was also just too much to bear. Bits of debris flowed everywhere. The river was disgustingly orange in color.

My arm got slashed by a sharp object, then I was caught by something triangular in shape. It was a large pointy piece of rusted metal that was sunken underground. I had rushed right into it. As the river rushed me forward, I tried to get a hold of it, but it was too slippery. I fell directly on to the top point of the triangle and could feel it pierce into my stomach.

It was an immense horrible incredible pain. The blood poured out and all I could think of was the horrible pain. Finally, I managed enough strength to pull myself off of the edge and hold myself in front of the object so I couldn’t be rushed away. I waited there, for what seemed like hours. I was waiting for the end.

My friends were already dead by now unless they had found some way to safety, and even if they had they would never find a way to me so in a sense they were dead no matter what.

All my hope seemed to be carried like the blood from my cut, by the current: far away. My tears began to pour out. Pitiful horrible sobs began to break free from my troubled mind. Thoughts of nothing but despair and sadness filled me. Dark shadows clouded my mind. I could almost feel the empty roads, the dirty streets, and the mindless people. I could almost sense the dying lives of all who rebelled. So many people tried to stop it. I felt the pain as the last light in me flickered out.

The rebel me vanished into a wild dream where I was walking for miles on a long desolate plain. People cried out to me in all directions. They were hungry people. They were starving people. People who were alone just like me.

Finally I came to a giant cliff. I began to climb it. With each step regaining more of myself. I began to feel lighter too. The air began to smell cleaner. As I turned to the sky I noticed it had no longer looked black, but grey and as I kept climbing it eventually turned to a clear crisp blue.

I was almost to the top. I focused so much on the cliff that when I finally got up to the top I was taken aghast by what I saw. There was a valley of beautiful flowers and green grass. There were great big trees with fruit I’d never seen. Everything beautiful that had ever been on earth was there. Feeling true happiness overflow, I smiled. It was a something that I had done so long ago.

But this was only the beginning. There, sitting in a patch of daisies, was my sister Molly. I tried to call to her but she didn’t seem to hear me. Finally she did hear me, and turned aorund. She was smiling and waving. I began walking towards her. But then, just as soon as I got to the valley all the beauty began to disappear.

I cried out to her and she cried out to me but it was no use. We both watched each other silently as she faded into nothing. The sky grew dark again and the horrible wasteland returned. I was so confused and full of disbelief. I wondered if I was really dead or in some sort of dream I could not wake up from. Was I doomed to wait on this mountain for eternity? I decided I should try to climb down, but there was nothing down there. On every side of me was black dark space and I was left there alone and trapped. I lay down and dreamed again. I dreamed of how things could have been if none of this had ever happened.

I tried to understand. When I opened my eyes and saw that I was still on the cliff I felt true despair for the first time in my life. Then I jumped off into the space even despite my fear. It was emptiness and darkness. I knew I would remain floating the dark space forever. But then I began to hear words. They were mocking words of others who could see me. They told me it was my stupidity that brought me to that place: it was my foolishness and failure to cooperate. I told them I wasn’t theirs to control. I told them that the war was over. Then I screamed, “I am your waste land!”

Red light filled the darkness, then colors. I felt myself regaining consciousness as faith and hope returned once more. The voices turned into nothingness. Finally…but then suddenly, everything was pain again. Pain! The program hadn’t ended. “No no no!” I moaned…I woke up and saw people looking down from over me. Then I looked down and saw blood all over my stomach. At my side stood my friends and at my right stood my sister, Molly.

“Molly!”

She looked so little with her hair slightly tangled and her face so childish, unlike mine. She didn’t speak to me. Her face turned slightly red.

“Oh Sarah! Why did you leave me!?”

Her face looked as though it had been holding back tears.

“I didn’t leave you. I was trapped”

She just stared. “It’s too late, Sarah.” Then another girl put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sarah, you must still be in shock. I’m sorry to upset you.”

They took me to a place hidden by giant boulders, there they helped to bandage my wound.

“I waited for you for so long. I waited until it became dark. I thought you would come back,” Molly told me this as if she had wanted to say it for so long…but I felt like she didn’t want to, “I started crying and was confused. I decided my last hope was to get into the right truck, but I wasn’t sure which one.

I finally saw the name that you had mentioned and tried to get in but this cruel man caught me. He took me to The Wasteland. They tried to control me, to drown out my thoughts with rules and games. But something happened, and they let me go…I found these people here. They told me you would be coming here. They knew you were special, but not me. Not me. No, I was let go. You, you were able to survive!”

“I’m glad you’re all alive,” I said but I was shaking.
“Of course I’m alive. Don’t you understand, we can’t die Sarah!”

“Yes we can…if not then why am I bleeding?”
“No, I mean we can’t let ourselves die. We have to keep the dream alive, no matter what the test. We have to keep being hopeful.”

Despite Molly’s face she seemed different. I believed she would understand eventually.

“We were looking for you here before,” I said. “My friends were helping me find you.”

“And you saw the river?” Molly asked.

“Yeah but everyone told me it was a different place altogether.”

“So you gave up…”
“I didn’t give up, maybe you did.”

“No!” Molly yelled back in rage. “I never gave up on you, that’s what you’d want me to think isn’t it. Traitor!”

I didn’t know what to say. I found it, I knew it in my heart. This was the waste land. That huge building with fences and police men and children who never grew up, and they had fooled us all. They….they had won.

I looked down to see the shadow of a boy carrying canned food. I was so amazed at how these people were surviving, living, and eating under the watchful eye of the rest…and no one bothered them. There were people from every part of the world there. I began to wonder if we were just freak experiments.

The villagers were very friendly, it seemed. Later I couldn’t shake the thoughts of my dream away. Why did that dream seem so real, and this place so horrible and fake? These were the people in my dream in so many ways. I said a prayer…quietly to myself for the first time.

I realized that I didn’t need to wander anymore. I was safe. I didn’t need to be afraid as I sat there with Molly and watched the great building that towered over, light up like some brilliant star lost in outer space. I watched the sun set over The Wasteland. I closed my eyes at last.


***
The foundation crumbled at last, and I remember it all with bright clarity. I remember my mother’s face, her wails as we hurried off in search of our destination. I remember my home beside the ocean and my brother. We were never meant to be soldiers, to fight a war like this. We were never meant to submit to those blinding lights, or drown in that horrid river of waste.

Most of the villagers are gone, now. They ran out of canned food, or maybe they lost something. Molly is gone; she went back to the Waste