This is my submission to Victoria Marini’s First Page Contest!
Email: andrew.rosenberg at writerunner dot com
Title: Teen Alien
Genre: YA SF
Word Count: 55,000

Will return all critiques!

Submission:
They say before you draw your last breath, your life hits replay.

They never said it could happen after.

Grett Hawk’s eyes stared up at the pale blue sky. Her heart and lungs lay still. Ribs jabbed through her side, dislocated jawbones and broken teeth dripped blood down her throat, and guts oozed out of the gash in her belly.

Two mule boys argued above her body, screaming in their girlish voices. One grabbed her broken hand and yanked, separating her shoulder in a sick snap. The other seized her shattered wrist, grinding the cracked bones. They hauled her out of the ravine, over the jagged, blood-smeared rocks that had blendered her body.

Grett could neither move, blink, nor speak, only stare at the solar trees that crowned the ridge top. Like all plants on Gwanda, trees were dead things, machines designed to simulate real trees. Unlike her, they did not have thoughts still running through their heads.

Is this what death is like? Grett wondered. She felt night-sky calm, disinterested in the assault that had just claimed her life.

A vision intruded into her mind’s eye, an image of whips lashing the mule boys until their backs bled. She had laughed at their cries. What did they know of suffering? Her mother and sister were dead, killed in action by the enemy. Someone had to pay. Someone had to hurt as much as Grett. Why not the dirty mules?

Unease electrified as her life replayed across her mind’s canvas.