Dance With The Moon

Where Have All The Children Gone

TRIGGER WARNING -DRUGS,  KNIFE CRIME, MENTIONS OF CAR ACCIDENT, SUICIDE, CANCER 

The line ahead of us was long, far longer than any school lunchline had ever been. Today was different: today was special.

Today was the day that the universe won the battle against time.

The five of us stood there in the line. Jet Briggs, Noah Whittaker, Darion Grey, Leon Harding, and me. The boys.

Jet stood chatting to a group of girls behind us in the line. His tone flirtatious, his charm effortless. Noah was scrolling through Spotify on his phone, trying to find the perfect playlist for this momentous occasion. Darion was staring around at the posters on the walls, lost in his own thoughts. Leon was on the phone with his mum, talking in a low voice so that none of the rest of the group could hear him.

And then there's me, Oscar Bowen, The clown of the group. The one that's not as charming as Jet, as intelligent as Noah, as talented as Darion, or as sweet as Leon. But yano, I'll do.

The line moved forward, the faceless figures in front of us thinning out. It was our turn soon.

In a matter of minutes, our lives would change forever.

We received our packs. 365 pills as a starter pack, an entire year's worth. A trial run if you will.

We took the first pill. Our bodies quivered as the strange substance entered our bodies, running its magic around our bloodstreams.

The nurses warned us that these pills wouldn't create immortality. These pills would not protect us from death.

Weeks go by. Leon got sick. He started spending more and more time at the hospital, sometimes days on end.

That's when we found out that he had cancer.

He tried to fight it but it was too much for him. He died only a few months after the diagnosis, aged just fourteen.

A few years went by. We took our GCSEs as fourteen-year-olds, so you can imagine how well they went. By some miracle, we all managed to get into our school's sixth form.

That's when the second tragedy happened.

We were outside school, dicking around as most lads do at fourteen.

Another group of lads stood in front of school smoking. None of us had ever seen them before, they looked much older.

None of us remember how it started but they started making loud remarks about one of the girls in our year. Being young and thinking we were hard, we squared up to them. A fight broke out and Noah intervened to stop us. Knives were produced. Noah was stabbed.

Blood splattered onto the pavement as the paramedics rushed to save him. His head on my lap as I begged him not to go.

I begged him not to leave.

But the angels took him away before the paramedics could even get there.

Three of us made it to a level somehow. Our pouches got filled annually. Three years after the experiment started and we were still fourteen.

But then, another tragedy struck. Well, two, within a few months of each other both Jed and Darion had passed away.

Jet was hit by a car whilst trying to impress a group of girls. Typical Jed, went out the way he lived his life - centre of attention.

No one saw the car coming.

And as for Darion, he took his life a few months later. There had been rumors, numerous emails exchanged between him and the top sports schools in the country. He had been rejected from them all on the basis that he was too young to compete.

He would always be too young to compete.

Because once you take part in the experiment, you can't go back. There's no starting the aging process again once you've stopped it.

You can't mess around with the aging process.

I guess that leaves me, alone.

Stood in a shopping centre, age waved at me as he passed, hand in hand with faceless strangers going about their daily lives. He looked at me, his presence concealed by a dark hood and I knew.

I knew that one day he would come for me.