PROSE FICTION

Georgina Hamilton-James

The Chambers

Annie

The air was warm and stuffy, fuelled by the forensic summer. Dust particles hung in the air, caught in the lofty morning light, and Annie lazily watched them from the bunk bed as they spiralled around her in a sporadic dance before floating to the floor. Ever since the start of summer, the Centre had been captured in an unforgiving bubble of heat that had seeped in through the cracks in the walls and under the doors of the adjoining cells. Lucy snored softly in her arms, finally asleep after a long night of nightmares, and Annie listened peacefully to her rhythmic breathing, unable to sleep in the bright daylight despite her growing fatigue.

The cell door opened. A guard appeared and Annie surprised herself when she felt a flutter of disappointment that it wasn’t Tommy who had come to let her out. She brushed the thoughts away as quickly as they had come.

Outside, the ground was being eaten alive. The grass once fresh and dewy had been sucked into the baked orange soil and only skeletons of wispy blades remained. The sky’s colour mirrored that of the ground, taking its form in a dusty, orange haze that made the horizon indistinguishable, like it was one big, orange blur enclosing them. Sweat clung to Annie as they walked around the building to where the orchard used to stand. There was a small group of children with her, all of them dressed in the same clothing: khaki trousers and a green t-shirt that failed to mask the dark sweat brought on by the heat. The orchard, once full of juicy fruit hanging in luscious trees, was now a depressing graveyard and she wasn’t in the mood to see it today. Was she hallucinating? A vast swimming pool suddenly came into view, filling the space where the old trees used to be. The group began screaming with excitement and hugging each other and even though Annie didn’t know any of them, she joined in, pulling a very small girl with big, owl-like glasses into an embrace.

They all ran, fully clothed and plunged into the blue water, letting the summer heat slip from their skin. Annie floated on her back like she’d done with her parents when they had