My set piece is about a person living sort of post-apocalyptic dystopian society, who’s friends and family have all been captured and killed. I tried to work with imagery, which can be seen throughout the story, anaphora, which I tried to use for his memories, and flashback. My favorite part of the story is the ending, because it’s a very clear ending point.

He walks around in the abandoned house, now filled with cobwebs, home to a family of rats and countless insects and arachnids, a feeling of nostalgia running over him as he remembers, late night parties thrown, heated discussions leading towards blows exchanged, arguments ending in crying and hugging. All this was before the Enforcers, a group similar to the Nazis, were created, but even less humane, and much more powerful. He came here to seek shelter, they had been chasing him since his escape from their torture. He remembers, as he walks around on the creaking floorboards.

He remembers the day the newspaper reported the uprisings and riots happening across the globe, with the government announcing that they were created to “enforce” the rules. He remembers when they wiped out an entire city, their justification being that the city was corrupt. He remembers the onslaught of news stories afterwards, about similar incidents all across the country. He remembers his reaction, shocked that there were people who felt it was okay to do this. In the back of his mind, he remembers when they came through his city, taking it all with ease.

He goes out onto the street, and he gets hit with a flashback of what had happened:

Their numbers were not high, but they had weapons of mass destruction, capable of wiping out humanity in just a few days. They laid siege to the city for a month, dropping incendiary bombs to make the people inside surrender. After the siege, they entered with guns blazing and grenades exploding everywhere. They had captured him and his family, civilians living just outside the city. He had tried to protect them, fighting back with everything he could. They had taken him to the maximum security prison, forced him to watch as his family and friends were killed, one by one, and tortured him with shocks of electricity and beatings.

Before he can decide to do anything, he hears a voice outside yelling. He uses the old, rotting stairs to get upstairs. Looking outside a window clouded up because of age, he sees someone running outside a building across the city. He hears a short, rapid-fire sound of bullets, and the person ends up on the street in a pool of blood. He watches as an Enforcer comes out from behind the building, holding an M134 minigun, presumably the weapon that had just been used to brutally murder someone.

His anger takes control of him, and against his better judgment, he sprints outside, takes the Enforcer’s minigun, and opens fire. Knowing that the other Enforcers would be here very soon, he reloads the gun, and turns it on himself.