A Grade 6 Cliffhanger

This is a cliff-hanger I wrote in grade 6 that I’ve fixed up a little bit. Looking back, I think that writing came more easily back then, I seemed to have so many endless ideas that I couldn’t jot them all down. I think you have more imagination when you are little compared to when you are older because you are taught and told to grow up. You don’t need to play make believe anymore, you don’t dream of unimaginable things. Reality takes a hold of you and you think only of common sense and the truth of things. You don’t dream of being able to fly anymore because it isn’t possible, you don’t play pretend because you won’t look good in front of others. I believe imagination is killed by popularity; the idea to “fit in” and to “go with the flow”. Media and society have given us the “perfect” lifestyle, body, and mind, and we try to fit it; we try to fit into this “perfect suit”.  But, it won’t zip up all the way so what do we get rid of? We get rid of our imagination, our dreams and desires, our impossible realities, anything that doesn’t fit. And what happens when you don’t use something? You lose it. We lose our ability to create impossible dreams when we’ve been zipped up in our perfect suits for too long. We need to go against the flow and let our creative sides take over. Because, who wants to live in a world where everyone is striving to do and be the same? I know I don’t.

Anyway, that’s enough ramblings from me…

I think this piece took me roughly about 15 minutes to write, also back then I have found that I used to start stories with dialogue instead of just starting the story a lot (a little bit of writing technique there hehehe…to be honest I just wanted to add some more labels in).

Hide and Seek

“Ready of not! Here I come!” Samantha called out. She turned around; away from the great oak tree she was counting at and looked, looked for any sign that would tell her where her younger brother had gone. There! She could see the footprints of his bare feet running into the forest. She headed off into the dark to find her brother.

Samantha and Jake lived on a small farm near a large forest. Samantha was fourteen and Jake was twelve, but they did not go to school as the nearest school was about 100 kilometres away. They had no neighbours either, no children to play with, so when they had finished their chores, the two playful children would play hide-and-seek.

The young girl followed the footprints in the soft, squishy mud deeper into the forest. It had been raining for days and had just stopped that afternoon so everything was still wet and muddy. Samantha squished her toes into the mud, it made a funny squelch noise as she lifted her foot back out again and she laughed. She liked the feel of the mud between her toes as she walked.

Samantha was a good tracker; she had taught herself how to interpret the markings in the soil. She knew when an animal had stopped, or when it had started to scurry again. She knew what animal the footprints belonged to. Sometimes she didn’t even need a footprint, just a branch that had been broken, a twig that had snapped on the ground or just the smell of the animal.

Jake had run around everywhere, there were footprints all over the place. He was trying to lead her on a wild goose chase, trying to throw her off so she couldn’t find him. Jake would always test Samantha’s abilities as a tracker; he would climb up trees, cross streams and just run around everywhere. Jake would always be the hunted, Samantha the hunter. They had always played like that.

Jake’s footprints had disappeared now, just vanished. Then Samantha saw footprints on the boulders and rocks around her. You have forgotten to clean your feet brother, she laughed to herself.

“You’re making this too easy!” She called out, her voice echoing all around her.

That’s where you’re wrong Sam!” The voice teased back.

Then Sam realised, the rocks were a decoy! Jake had cleaned his feet on some grass after climbing on all the rocks, and then climbed up a large tree to the side.

“Very clever.” Sam said. She could hear giggling coming from the tree. She stalked over to it, not making any noise, and climbed up silently. She could’ve sworn that giggling had come from up there. She would finally have him! But when she had climbed the tree she was mistaken. This large tree had thick, strong branches that you could walk on and then climb over to another tree with the same branches, to another and another. They made an escape bridge.

“Oh come on!” She exclaimed.

“You didn’t think it was going to be that easy did you?!” Jake’s voice called out again. It echoed all around Sam, mocking her.

She followed where he brother had gone through the branches and down another large trunk. She landed on the ground gracefully, not making a noise and continued following her brothers tracks.

All of a sudden her brother called out, “Aaaargh!” Then there was a thump that echoed all around.

“Jake?!” She exclaimed, she started to run towards were Jake’s cry had come from. She almost tripped over a tree root sticking up from the ground and sprained her ankle. She cried out as the pain shot up her leg and began throbbing, but she kept on running anyway. Her brother was in trouble, nothing would get in her way.

Suddenly, a large, dark hole appeared in front of Sam, and then she was falling, down, down, down, down….her screams echoed and began ringing in her ears. Then she thumped to the hard, marshy ground, the wind knocked out of her. Blinded by darkness, she felt around for something to pull herself up on. Finding the wall she shakily rose to her feet and looked up, the sky was a small circle of light. The reality of it all hit her at once. She was trapped…