Hello Out There!

Hi there!

I have loads of ideas in my head and loads of writing that I have never shared with the world. But in order for me to do so, I need to know if there are serious readers out there?

I'm getting quite a bit of traffic but not much feedback...

If you like my site and want me to keep adding stuff to it, please speak up now!

Please comment or somehow indicate to me that you're actually liking my writing on this post - just so that I know that I'm not uploading this stuff to an empty world...

Would really appreciate it. If I get enough interest, I will definitely keep posting my writing.

Thanks!

An Impossible Corpse

 

The snow silently drifted down from the sky in whispers of cold flurries. Softly kissing the wind with an icy touch, the flakes flew around the field before they settled on the ground. A nearby forest watched on as the blood of a girl lying at the centre of the whitened landscape slowly seeped away from her and tainted the snow with the colour of rust. Birds cawed and cried at the sight of her bruised lips and at the paling colour of her skin while a single ace of spades, which lay pinned to her thin blouse, fluttered in the breeze.

Regina Royton stepped out of the car and slammed the door closed before she pulled up her jacket’s collar against the wind. The chill had crept down her back and sent spiders of ice scrambling up and down her spine; nevertheless the adrenalin that came with a new case warmed her up as she crunched through the snow towards the fence.

‘Well, this is an unusual one,’ mumbled assistant officer Fellows through a woollen scarf as he took out a notepad and pen and began furiously scribbling away. His black cap hid the untidy shock of hair of a person who still needed a morning shot of coffee.

‘You could say that again,’ she replied as she pulled at her brown leather gloves, ‘the weirdest thing about it is that there are no footprints leading to the corpse.’

 ‘What?’ The officer looked up from his pad and stared across the field in front of him. He noticed that Royton was right as he saw that the innocent picture ahead of him was marred only by the shocking presence of the corpse. ‘Well how did she bloody well get there then?’ he said as he stared at the lifeless figure with a creased forehead.

‘We’ll just have to find out.’ With a determination Fellows was shocked to see from a new female boss, she vaulted over the fence and landed in the frosted meadow.

The snow chilled the feet bones of the inspector and officer as they trudged across the land towards the corpse. Arriving at the girl, they noticed that barely any ice had settled on her and that the snow beneath her was the same depth as the snow surrounding her lifeless body.

‘Well there’s no way the culprit’s tracks could be covered by the storm,’ observed Inspector Royton, ‘and what do we have here?’ Leaning down she plucked the card from the girl and turned it over before handing it to her junior. A single sentence was written in a slanted script above the spade picture;

Your time is up. Was this your card?

Frowning at the wording with shock, Fellows looked up to see the disinterested eyes of Royton looking at him.

‘Y-y-yes…’ he stammered as he bluntly looked at the card in front of his eyes.

‘What are you talking about?’ she angrily muttered as she began to get out her forensic equipment and set about fingerprinting the card and corpse.

‘This… this is my card.’

Five months ago, Jonathon Fellows was walking through the streets of New York, trailing behind his group of friends when suddenly he heard the screams of a girl. Startled by the sound, he stepped through the steam billowing from the vent in the road and came face to face with a man in coattails. Jonathon noticed that he was firmly gripping the hand of a struggling girl while he held a pair of leather gloves in his free hand. Looking into the face of the man beneath a silken top hat he saw blue eyes staring back at him above the thin line of a hard mouth.

‘What do you want boy?’ the man spat at him.

‘Let go of her!’ Jonathon demanded before grabbing his cell phone and punching in the number of the police, ‘I’ve got a man here on 34^th Avenue who’s abusing a woman. I need back up stat.’

‘You’ll regret this one day mate,’ the man said as he realised he was officially now on government records. Twisting the arm of the woman he held captive, he said, ‘but it’s lucky I am what I am. Pick a card, any card.’ As he did this, the girl’s screams turned into a flurry of cards which appeared to come out of her mouth. One of them, the ace of spades, flew at Jonathon’s chest and stuck there mysteriously before the man cackled and cried; ‘it seems like you’ve picked your card,’ before he vanished before Fellows eyes.

 Looking down, foul smells curled up from the underworld of the city as an open man-hole lay in

front of him. After checking the alley one last time for the girl, he walked back out into the open streets and ended the call before flicking the playing card into the nearest bin.

Now, he stood with his eyes widened at the copse below his feet. Her grey eyes were an exact match for the girl who struggled to get away from the man months ago. Kneeling down, he touched her cold skin and saw the scaring on her left hand.

‘You’re pathetic,’ the woman above him sneered down to his level. Suddenly a leather glove slapped him in the head and caused him to look up into her face. As he did so, Regina’s face moved as the mask was peeled free from its place and instead a hardened glare stared down at him from above, with the same blue eyes as the man in the alley. ‘Remember me boy? You should never trust a soul as soon as you cause an illusionist trouble.’ As he said these words, the man pulled a gun from his belt and aimed it towards Fellow’s forehead.

The world hung suspended in time as a slight pulse began to beat against Fellow’s fingertips that still rested on the girl. Just before the bullet was sent rocketing into his brain, he noticed the man’s assistant on the ground weakly turn her face towards his. The last thing he heard was the small whimper of ‘Sorry’ and the silent pitter-patter of snow.

Wow... it's been a while.

G'day. Wow. Ok so it's been about 2 years since I last posted on here and I'll be honest, I completely forgot about this blog... (until a mate of mine reminded me of it - hats off to you!) but I'm actually keen to get it up and running again. Over the past two years, a lot has happened such as me finishing school and moving onto university. The good thing is though that I have tonnes of writing that I have stored away from school and such which I can upload and share with you guys. A lot of it is Gothic Fiction or Crime Fiction related.

So... hope you like my new stuff. And, like old times, please comment on anything you like!

Coming soon... watch this space.

Here to There and In Between - FINAL PART

Later on we woke up with a start and remembered that we were within a large metal bird flying to who knows where. We all calmed down until we heard the footsteps. Why have footsteps always meant something bad ever since Nepal? I thought to myself as we huddled closer together.

My heart took on a rampage within my chest as they grew closer and closer to the back compartment. Barely holding onto a scream, the back door began to creep its way open slowly letting in light that glared on our faces.

Anya was holding onto Ema and Alina like they were comfort dolls, almost squeezing them to a pulp. The door opened wider and we began to hear the soft breathing of the person who was opening it. Suddenly the suspense was too much for Ema and she let out a terrified squeak loud enough to rattle any mountain nearby (or at least it seemed that way).

The person opening the door jumped before they threw it open entirely and peered in. It was the woman.

She stared at our terrified faces before letting out a sigh and turned around.

“It seems we have a couple of stowaways on board Michael!” she called back to the pilot in a language foreign to me.

“Please!” I shouted above the roar of the engine and the pilot, “We need help! Don’t hurt us!” With a look of total bewilderment the woman turned back to us. She had fair hair that curled around her shoulders and a face with two pink cheeks. He eyes were a deep brown the reminded me of my mother’s.

“Nepalese?” she said in our own language, “But how on Earth did you get here?”

So she invited us to come out and sit on the middle benches as we all told her about what had happened to us.

Half-way through she asked for a large piece of fabric from the pilot to blow her nose with and wipe her eyes. She then proceeded to tell us that she had just come from Nepal and stopped a large box (she used another word I did not know) of girls that were to be sold on the black market. Apparently she was part of some group who wished to help people from my country survive the inter-Asian disturbances.  My heart rose as I realised that it was our terrifying box that we had been imprisoned in so long ago which she was talking about.

She also told us that we were headed to her homeland; a place by the name of Australia, which was to our astonishment also known as the Great Southern Land. Soon after our discussion, she had talked to the pilot who was also her husband and came back to us.

“Now what I am about to propose is very, very serious. I want you to think about this very seriously as it will impact your life greatly. You will not be able to go home.”

“Oh, but we don’t want to go back.”

“Well then perhaps this will come as good news to you. My husband and I wish to adopt you.” she said with a tentative smile on her face.

“Adopt? What is that?” I asked her blatantly.

“Adoption is where another adult takes responsibility for lost children. If we adopt you, you will be able to stay together as a family within Australia with myself and my husband Michael. But it’s okay if you don’t want to. I am just worried that if we don’t, you won’t be allowed to come into Australia and you might get split up.” At this, Anya gave me a look of questioning.

 So we began a discussion that would once again change our lives forever.

****

As it ended up, we agreed for Belinda (that was her name) and Michael to adopt us and have all lived together in Australia ever since. I still wonder about my real parents back in Nepal but do not dare go back for fear of being captured again.

This place here is amazing, we have learned to speak English and we now go to a place called school. Personally, I don’t like school much but Ema and Alina love it. Our lives are better here but we still bear the scars of such an emotional journey through so many cultures and countries that I don’t think we will ever forget our ordeal.

I cannot help but think where or who Ashmi is with now. Is he safe? Will he have a better life? Perhaps it would have been best for him to have stayed in Nepal after the old woman died. But however much we wish, we cannot change the past.

Many have asked us how we survived and what we have done. The most often asked question is where we have been

- but we can only reply that we have been here and there and in between.

Fin

(Please note this story is entirely fictional) 

Here to There and In Between - PART 3

A month rolled on in our little boat until one day Anya informed us that we were now in a place known as Burma as well as Myanmar. Also, that if she remembered correctly we were on the main river of Ayeyarwady. Tall orange coloured candles dotted the landscape but we were soon to find out that these were in fact magnificent temples known as Golden Stupas. The local people of Myanmar fed us Peh-hin-ye lentil soup as they listened to our story.

One day while on the river, Ema and Alina became restless and tired in the boat and after much whinging became increasingly annoying. Therefore we decided that we would have an excursion up to the top of a nearby Golden Stupa which was next to the river. So off we went and jumped out of the boat one by one and began our steep ascent up the hill.

When we got to the bottom of the steps, we were already huffing and puffing so much that we needed to sit down. After a few minutes of resting, we decided to climb.

Oh it was a majestic climb up the old sandstone bricks most of which were covered in ivy. Looking out at the views around us we saw that a thick Asian jungle stretched away in all directions; and towards the west, a great shimmering plane of water winked at us like an old friend. Of course we could see the winding river that snaked its way through Myanmar; we had now named it our vein of hope.

So as we continued to climb, the sun began its slow meandering descent towards the horizon. But by about the time we were three quarters of the way up, Ashmi, Anya and I began taking turns to carry Alina and Ema on our backs. It was at this moment in time that we began to hear soft chanting and murmuring coming from the great golden dome above us which could only mean one thing; Monks.

We slowed down and began murmuring between each other as to whether we should continue but at the same time a third party joined in on our Stupa. Sneaking up the other side to the one we were making our way on, we stopped and watched as a small group of what looked like military soldiers crept up towards the top. Speaking in a language that none of us understood, we watched as they took out ugly looking objects from their belts and they then turned their backs to us. Written in neat print on their backs was a single word; Junta. It was then that we realised that they were going to attack the monks at the top.

Everything that happened after went so quickly it seemed a blur.

The soldiers on the other side began to run hastily up to the top as Ashmi made a split second decision and put down Ema before charging up to the top as well. I then screamed at Anya to take the other two back down to the boat and get ready to depart as soon as possible. Then I sprinted off after Ashmi.

It was a race against time; Ashmi wanted to get there before the soldiers so as to warn the monks, the soldiers did not know about us but wanted to get their horrible deed over with as soon as possible and I wanted to get to Ashmi before either parties reached the top so that we could escape as soon as possible. Huffing and puffing, I struggled to keep up, jumping up stairs two at a time to keep up with Ashmi and the soldiers. We were gaining on them until I slipped on an ivy leaf and fell to my knees. With the world spinning around me I jumped back up and continued to run.

Ashmi and I reached the top first. The soldiers soon came after.

“Get out! Get out now!” screamed Ashmi at monks who just looked at us blatantly. Ashmi grabbed the nearest monk and pushed him towards one of the sides.

“We have to go NOW!”I shrieked at Ashmi in response.

Chaos ensured with everyone running around like headless chickens. It was then that the soldiers arrived. Barking quick commands between each other, they spread around the internal temple and pointed their ugly weapons at everyone in the middle. Ashmi turned around and pushed me behind a large vase behind into a small alcove hidden in the wall. He ran back off into the centre of the room and demanded to know answers as to why they were here. One brave monk attempted to push a Junta off the edge of the stupa but was shot to the ground with two quick Bang!s.

I sat there watching in horror as the men progressively went around to each monk to inspect their physique. Any deemed unfit or unworthy were shot. As this massacre played out in front of me, Ashmi remained defiant in the centre of the room. When the soldiers found that he spoke a foreign tongue a sadistic gleam came into their eyes. They drugged him then and there in front of me before placing him in a sack marked with that terrible word.

I was helpless; sitting there doing nothing as one of the most important people in my life was carried away by foreign military. The nearest monk to me noticed I was in the alcove and shuffled backwards.

“You need to get out of here, before they see you. Escape; now!” he whispered urgently to me; surprisingly in my own language.

“What are they doing to him? Why are they here?”

“They control this country. They recruit foreigners into their army faster than you can say stolen and they hate religious practices. That is why they recruit those fit into the army as well and kill the rest. You need to leave; there is no place for women in their eyes. I will look after your friend when I’m recruited. Go now.”

With tears streaming down my face I snuck out of the Eastern entrance and began to run down the steps. My heart near collapsing in my chest; I bolted down to the river. Once again all of the horrible things that had happened since that fateful night in Nepal replayed through my mind. Running helplessly at full pelt down the golden stupa I realised that what seemed like golden beacons of hope to begin with were nothing more than chambers of misery now. Falling into the boat, I told Anya that we needed to leave immediately. When she asked where Ashmi was my heart ached so hard that I passed out.

(To Be Continued...)

Here to There and In Between - PART 2

“Jyoti! Jyoti!” shouted a tired looking Anya, “Where are the others?” She had swum up to the two little ones I had thrown out and helped them up onto the bank of the river. All three of them were sitting and shuddering on the bank as I drifted further away from them. I took one look at the girl that had jumped out with me. Within that one look we both silently decided to swim our way back up to them.

As soon as we had arrived, Anya was hugging and fussing all over me and the other girl so that our clothes could dry out as quickly as possible. We had a debrief between the three of us in which I found out that the girl that pulled me out was named Sunita and the two little ones were Alina and Ema whereas they found out about what had happened to the other girls. After a good bout of crying, we all sat on the bank and rested. The two little girls and Anya had fallen asleep in the sun and Sunita was glaring at something opposite the river.

“What are you looking at?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s just there’s a sign over there,” she replied as she pointed her finger to a wooden board with incomprehensible scribbling on it. “I have no idea what it means.”

“Neither do I. What is that scribbling?”

“Oh, I understand the words but not what they mean.”

“You can read?”

“Yes, my mama taught me. I come from Kathmandu.”

“Really? What does it say?”

“It says Mymensingh Tea Tree Fields, Bangladesh. I don’t know what they mean.”

“Did someone say Bangladesh?” Anya asked with a yawn as she sat up.

“Yes, Sunita said it.”

“But that’s a whole other country to Nepal.”

“You mean we’re not in Nepal?” a horror struck Sunita asked.

“Yep we are a long way from home.”

****

That afternoon, we decided that we would follow the river south in the hope of finding another person to talk to. Taking care not to walk on the box path, we walked until sunset dipping our feet in the water to cool them down along the way. Within the later hours of the day, Anya and I carried poor Alina and Ema on our backs as we trudged along. It wasn’t until the first star came out that we came upon a boy. He was about 15 years old and had dark hair to match his deeply tanned skin. He did not come along by foot but rather by water, he glided along within a canvas weaved boat singing a song to himself and did not see us as he glided along past.

“Hello! H-hello?” I called as he went past. The others joined in with me as we collectively tried to get his attention. After about half a minute of calling, he snapped back around to face us within his boat.

“Oh! Hi, I didn’t see ya there! What are you ladies doing here? My name is Ashmi by the way.”

“You speak Nepalese? Oh thank goodness!” sighed an exhausted Sunita.

“Well yes and no. I used to live in Nepal when I was younger but now I just roam where I want to.”

“Oh, well can you help us? We were stolen from our home and escaped earlier today. My name is Jyoti and this is Sunita, Anya, Ema and Alina.” I explained as I struggled to keep my tears at bay.

“Tik aache! Oh wait, in Bangladesh that means no worries. What can I do for you?” he asked with a glint in his eye.

“We want to get back to Nepal.” Anya blurted out.

“Back to Nepal? That’s crazy! You know they have strict borders. You can’t even get out easily these days.”

“But we want to go home! Where are you going anyway?” I asked with exasperation evident in my voice.

“Well I want to get out of Asia. I want to be free and live somewhere different. You can come if you want.”

With no other option than continue walking or go with Ashmi, we all decided to go with him. We thought that if we got to a village we could find another way back to Nepal. So as soon as we got into the boat with him, we all collapsed into a deep slumber that he could not wake us from. We just trusted him to guide us along the river.

****

As the weeks went by, we stayed with Ashmi in his boat and glided lazily along the river. We had long since given up on returning to Nepal as every village we went through said that it was impossible. No matter how hard I pushed, no one would take us back. Ashmi provided us Ilish Macher Paturi (steamed fish inside banana leaves) as we glided past villages, tea tree fields and banana plantations. We were sad to say goodbye Sunita when she decided to start up a business in one of the villages we stopped in with her new-found love who she knew as a child. She did teach us all to read and write though before she left so as we did not need to worry about illiteracy.

Soon enough weeks had passed by and we had all gotten to know each other. Anya had two older brothers which worked with her father in Kathmandu selling maps of various assortments. She had learnt the geography of the nearby land back-to-front and could remember every country within the Asia and Oceania region. Ema and Alina were best friends and were sleeping over at Ema’s house when they were stolen. They lived in a small village at the base of Everest and their fathers were Sherpa’s who led foreigners up and down the treacherous mountain. Ashmi was another story, he was abandoned by his parents in Nepal and was found and brought up by an elderly woman who, on his 14^th birthday passed away from starvation. It turned out she was giving him all of her food so that he could develop properly and in doing so, she had neglected her own health.

Ashmi was a rather mysterious boy who showed me new things. He told me about the places he had seen and all about the constellations above us. Together the 5 of us had developed a family. Ema, Alina and Anya were the sisters I had never had and Ashmi, well he was the brother I always wished for. But every night like a dark foreboding cloud, the faces of those other girls haunted me. Where were they now? How are they now? I thought to myself every night as I fell asleep.

(To Be Continued... )

Here to There and In Between - PART 1

My name is Jyoti Lama, I am now 18 years old and I have a story to tell you. Some say it is a brave one; others think it was an adventure, while others yet believe I made it up. But I say it was hell. Let me tell you about my story of here to there and in between.

My feet were sore as the ice-flecked pebbles beneath them attempted to pierce the skin as I walked back to my hut.

 The wood forest nearby had nearly died out, but there was nothing we could have done as our cooking fire within our hut needed to be fuelled somehow. The solution to this problem was... well I don’t know. We would probably have had to move our house to live somewhere else than the small plateau on the majestically snow capped mountain.

With the splinter filled wood in my hands and the sun setting behind me, I crunched my way back to the gaping hole that was our door and walked inside. Mama was sleeping in the nearby corner as I stoked the central fire and adjusted her woven blankets. Our house may have been one roomed and had a dirt floor; but to me, it was home. The smoke began to curl out the holes in the roof as I heard the unmistakeable footsteps of my father coming home from the hunt. He told me from outside that he had luck that day finding several rabbits and began to skin them. I eagerly waited for my first meal of the day.

After we had eaten, I laid down and gazed at the stars that peeped through our thatched roof and thought of how magnificent Nepal was and how just a few kilometres away from our nearby village of Kodari was the magnificent Everest. ‘The stars are so beautiful tonight. I may have an empty stomach most of the time but to me that doesn’t matter. Life is life and though I have not travelled out of the village, I live with a peaceful life.’ This last thought floated through my consciousness as I drifted off to sleep.

That night was what started it all. I have no idea who they were or why they did what they did but they changed my life forever. While I was asleep, bandits of a foreign tongue crept up outside the hut. Their crunching footsteps woke me from my slumber as I sat bolt upright and looked at our door. Darkness had enveloped my home and I instantly knew something was not right. Usually you could see around you from the holes in the walls and roof and the moonlight that came through the door. But on that night all I saw was complete and utter darkness that leered at me with four harrowing globes. Eyes – that’s what they were and as soon as I had taken my first gulp of air to alert my parents, they covered my mouth with some sort of fragrant fabric. The next thing I knew I was breathing in copious amounts of fumes and struggling to keep my eyes open. Before I knew it, all was as dark as the insides of a black heart that was struggling under the influence of guilty actions to beat its pulse.

I woke up in the back of a moving platform. Juggling and bumping and jigging as the light coming from the slits in the walls flashed and sputtered. At first I thought I had fallen into the book Mama once read me and was on a flying carpet soaring through the night sky but soon the drug wore off and my mind once again came into sharp focus. As I peered around me I saw other girls around my age group either waking up or huddling in corners of the box. Swaying, I worked my way over to a girl with striking eyes and dark hair. If it wasn’t for the horror in her eyes, I would have said she was remarkably beautiful.

“E-excuse me? Where are we?” I asked with hesitation at the way her eyes were darting between me and the walls around her.

“We... we.... we are on our way to be sold.” She shakily replied as the box juddered over a large rock.

“S-s-old? What for?”

“To be slaves. We must honour our buyers- I mean husbands.”

“Husbands? I am only 15. I’m too young to marry anyone! What are we in?”

“Well you’ve got no choice, we’ve all been stolen you see. There’s no way out of it.” A sob escaped the girl as she admitted their fate. “And we are in what those filthy foreign men call an au-auto-tomo-moh-beele.” A large pot hole in the unsealed road beneath us caused the entire group of girls to be thrown into the roof and slammed back down again. Crying erupted around me as many of the younger-looking girls broke their resolve.

“Well we have to get out of here.” I said to her as we picked ourselves up. “My name is Jyoti by the way.”

“Mine’s Anya and it’s impossible to escape from this tomb!”

“Nothing is impossible,” I snappily replied as I got up shakily and placed my hands on the wall. They were made of wood which is what I was hoping for. I pried my hands in between the cracks in the walls and saw the slit of light become enlarged. “Alright,” I turned around and said to the girls, “we are all in this together. Now to get out, we all need to pull our own weight.”

“We can’t escape! They’ll find us and track us down!” screamed a terrified little girl at me. God, they’ve stolen eight year olds as well? What is this nightmare? I thought to myself as I suppress my own fear and summed up the courage to continue.

“We can at least try. Oh and my name is Jyoti. I’ll get to know yours once we get out of this hell box.” With that, I began to explain the plan that had formed in my head.

Everyone was to get their fingers in the slits of light within one wall between the wooden boards. On the count of three, I told them that they would have to pry the boards apart as best they could until the boards (hopefully) snapped off. After my little speech everyone tentatively and with a lot of swaying, took up their spots around one wall in the black box. I was in the middle and began the chant. “Ok everyone, ONE... TWO... THREE!” and with that, the wall gave an almighty creak before the girls and I ripped a large hole in the centre of it.

Light poured into the box as we saw a vast field of strange bright green leafy plants. Just before this field and running next to the box was a wide river slowly making its way South. I did not know where we were but a plan instantly came to mind. They are not going to like this. Glancing at Anya, I saw that she knew the same thought I was thinking and with a quick nod, we both made a decision. Hope had come into the eyes of all of the beaten girls as they looked at me standing in front of them.

“Alright,” I said, “I have an idea but you are not going to like it. We have to jump out of that hole and fall into the water. That way, we’ll escape and land safely as well.” There were different reactions between the girls. The younger ones looked mortified and the older ones looked fierce and confident. Although I appeared to be younger than a few of the older girls, it seemed that I had taken leadership of this group.

“It’s the only way,” Anya said beside me, “we can escape and we WILL escape girls!” Suddenly, with a stroke of sudden confidence, Anya turned to me and declared that she would go first so as to demonstrate it was safe. A worried look must have passed my face for she soon scowled at me. “I am going; you can’t stop me. I will never forgive myself if I don’t do this now.” Then with a fierce look of determination at me and a wandering look of reassurance at the rest of the girls; Anya jumped.

It was like watching a graceful fish jump and dive back into the aquamarine depths it came from as Anya jumped from the hole and landed in a perfect dive within the water. Screams came from the girls behind me as I sat in awe of her escape. I turned and saw the angry face of a driver peering into the back of the box through a previously hidden window. With a foreign tongue he screamed at us. The foreigners had seen Anya escape.

The box began to swerve and tilt as the men tried to veer away from the river. The girls in the back fell the floor with the violent tilting of the machine. An oncoming box or whatever-they-were-called forced ours to dart closer to the river. I took the chance and picked up the two unsuspecting eight year olds and threw them out the hole and into the river. At least their safe now, I thought to myself as the box once again moved away from the river.

“EVERYONE MOVE TO THE HOLE-SIDE OF THE BOX!” I screamed as the floor threw us up against the roof again, “when we next go to the river, JUMP!” The girls then scrambled over to the left-hand side of the floor causing it to tilt that way. As the path the box was travelling on became thinner, the river wound itself closer. The girl behind me panicked and ran back to the other side of the box as the one in front jumped with a scream. She had grabbed onto me in her delirium and pulled me out with her. Two SLAP!s against the water told me that we had both made it but that no others had. 

As soon as I got my water-wings I looked up and saw that our box had travelled a little further down the river and had suddenly turned an abrupt right down a side path. A sickening feeling filled my stomach as I realised that the rest of the girls had no longer any soft landing to place their hopes of escape on. They were headed for the markets and there was nothing I could do about them. They would have to fend for themselves.

(To Be Continued...)