Checkpoint

Let's put everything together in a checkpoint piece. Here's the original snippet:

Dad's ute is so small. I look inside. The seats are all back and forward and up and over everywhere. Everything inside is sticky. It's blood – I'm not stupid. I go round the side to where the open tray is. A bale of hay has come loose and spilt itself all over. There's his big tool box still there, and on it, the big rag that he wipes his hands on. It used to be a pair of my pyjama bottoms until the bum came out. I pick it up. It smells of turps and oil and grease. It smells of my Dad. A long way away there is a siren. That will be the police. It's a long way for them to come. I suppose they will look at the skid marks and those trees over there that are all flat and sprinkled with glass.

Mr and Mr Mann are arguing about how they'll tow the ute. I stand here waiting. The sky blinks down at me.

That Eye, the Sky(1986)

Here are the examples we've been building:

Imani’s bike is in a ditch. I go closer. It’s undamaged, except one of the handlebars is bent like an elbow. There is a truck on its side. A red shipping container and a crowd of men with their hands on it. I can see cuts in the dirt where the container hit the ground. The dirt around the bike is black and wet. There just away is a tiny piece of blue, one of Imani’s nails. She wears acrylics even though I tell her they’ll make it hard to brake. I walk over to pick it up. It’s smooth on one side and rough on the other, split partway down the middle. It’s the size of my sister’s fingertip. A motherly woman is picking up Imani’s bike. I need to stop her taking it. People in this city will steal anything. If I don’t stop her, she will walk into the darkness of the estate and Imani will be angry at me for losing her bike.

Emmanuel is yelling at a policeman about why he doesn’t know the hospital. I’m pulling the bike out of the woman’s hands, but she is pulling back. The city grinds us like sand in the vast and ancient ocean.

Grandma’s cottage is open. I’m the first inside. Everything is everywhere. Books strewn, plates smashed, curtains shredded. Her kettle smokes on the stove—the fire is going but the water has long since boiled away and now the air is bitter with the smell of burnt metal. I walk through the doorway to her bedroom. The wall above her bed is covered in blood. Her wardrobe has been torn open and among the clothes on the floor I see a faded red cloak like mine. She used to wear it when she was my age. I haven’t seen it for years. I lift it to my face. It smells of lavender and lilac. Like her. Then I see Grandma standing in the corner. There’s been a mistake. She’s fine. In a moment the Woodsman will step in and all of us will laugh with relief and Grandma will tell us there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for all this blood.

Grandma smiles at me, her teeth strangely big and bright. My fingers tighten around the Woodsman’s axe. The world wears a mask.

And below is your version, joined together. You might need to delete some excess paragraph breaks.

Is there anything you want to edit? This is your last chance to make improvements before we conclude the lesson!

Do you:

maintain that subjective, first-person point of view (including the narrator's beliefs, judgments, predictions, ways of talking to themselves)?
use a strong final metaphor?

Delete excess paragraph breaks and polish your scene.

First person in That Eye, the Sky 6: The bad event