Fairytales

• Kate Mcdonnell, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2011

Okay, so I guess I am a little excited. I mean it is tomorrow. My birthday is tomorrow I don’t want much and I know that I won’t get much. Probably only one present. My family is poor but I wish we weren’t. Kids at school tease me and tug at my clothes and it really bugs me but I guess I’ll just have to live with it for the time being. Anyway back to my story. One present is all I get. I hope it’ll be good.

My Birthday, its today and guess what I got. Go on guess. A book of fairytales. With every fairytale you could ever imagine. ‘The three little pigs’, ‘Thumbelina’-you name it. I have already read ‘The three bears’ and it was great but right now I have to go shopping. I can’t wait to read the next story.

Once we get home I am horrified. The door of the house is open and a strange car in our driveway. We walk and I run to my room. A full grown adult is sleeping on my bed with my book as his pillow. I slide my book out from under his head and I run to mum. She doesn’t believe any thing I say but she comes to my room anyway. Suddenly I hear a window smash, then a rustle of bags and then a car drive off. In my room is shattered glass from my now broken window. In the kitchen the shopping is gone and there is no longer a car in the driveway.

I read ‘little red riding hood’ this morning and it’s made me late for school. We have a substitute teacher and he seems very familiar. Oh no it hits me like a slap in the face, it was the guy who stole our shopping. He is glaring at me because I’m late. Suddenly I say “What a big cut on you lip,” he said, “All the better to glare at you with.” “What a big sack you are holding” I said, “All the better to kidnap you with” he replied. We ran outside screaming and I ran home. The guy suddenly popped out of the bushes just before I reached my house. He was dressed as my neighbor. I said hello and walked inside. I grabbed my fairytales and my notebook. I wrote my encounters with this guy and opened my book to read a story but then a wave came across me. ‘The three bears’ and ‘Little red riding hood’. The things that happened to the characters are happening to me, only backwards, and this guy is always the villain. If I try I can defeat this guy with my book as a weapon. But How?

I scrolled through titles. I saw ‘Cinderella’, ‘The hare and the tortoise’, ‘Jack and the beanstalk’. That’s it. ‘Jack and the beanstalk’, it’s perfect. Now I just have to read the story.

I went outside and I heard the guy playing a beat like giants footsteps. He chased me up a tree and made a grab for my ankle. I climbed to the top as fast as I could as the guy dropped the drum, picked up his sack and climbed with me. I swiped away the sack and it fell to the ground. The man undid his tacky belt and threw it like a lasso but I caught it. I yanked and he let go and it slapped him hard across the face. He threw most of anything he was wearing at me but I ducked and nothing hit me. He had nothing left and I lassoed him around the neck and he fell to the ground unconscious.

I jumped to the ground and called the cops and they took the guy off my hands by putting him in jail. The guy was a wanted man and I got $30,000 for catching him. So like in ‘Jack and the beanstalk’ at the start of his story he got magic beans and he got a golden egg laying chicken at the end, I got a magic fairytale book at the start of my story and $30,000 at the end. Yes, I guess you could call my life a fairytale.