Ranger's Creek

• Veronica Perez-torres, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2015

The muddy water lapped at my feet and slithered in and out of the pebbles I was standing on, rivers of white froth forming on the sandy shore. Birds screeched in the trees and small fish swum in and out of my toes, nibbling slowly at my skin, massaging my blisters and healing them in their own special way. The water was warm, though it was the start of spring, and I slowly slipped into the creek.
I'd heard stories before, of giant eels and bunyips living in the depths. But all that was childish. It reminded me of the times we used to sit around the campfire, telling stories and legends of our ancestors. It made me forget.
I couldn’t see my feet, the water was too dark and dirty. Anything could be down there, waiting, hunting, seeking… I shivered and took a step back. My heel connected with something hard, and I was pulled under the current. Foamy bubbles blurred my eyesight and I saw only the shadows of my enemies. I felt something cold slither across my back and legs, then something tightened around my chest. I struggled against the unknown. Lashed out, angry, afraid, confused. Then I was dragged down into darkness, and the last thing I ever remember seeing was a cold clammy hand, reaching out and ripping at my skin. Vermin, attacking, destroying.. I was nothing, just pray. Pray to something I usually hunted. Something I was careful of. But I had been beaten. Flakes of my skin floated in the water. A glimmer of sunshine that had made its way into the depths reflected on a rock. But for me everything was dark.
I was empty.

I am nothing now. A soul that no longer walks the earth. A hollow form, drowning in the misery of the past, unable to do nothing but pace the emptiness.
Sometimes I hear the laughter of a child, and the sound is familiar. I know who that child is. I know why they are laughing. But I don’t want to believe it’s me. Or how I once was, because now there is no me. There is only nothing, and a cold feeling in my heart. A cold feeling everywhere.
I can hear my mother’s voice, calling and singing her song.
I can hear my father’s voice, teaching me how to hunt.
But they don’t hear me, because they know I’m gone. They know I have left them forever, and there is no way of me coming back. The only thing that keeps us together is my watch. One that was small for me but still better than the ones that my friends never had. I know that they still keep it, that even though it is buried under the sand next to Ranger’s Creek, they have it in their hearts. They must.
But Sometimes however, I imagine the watch floating down the creek; rusty, abandoned, unwanted. floating in the waters that took away its only owner. No one reaching out to take it, no one wanting to remember. Everyone wanting to forget.
But I want to. I want to travel to the happy moments of the past, and review them in my head. Because now, memories is all I’ll ever have left. And the watch will always be ticking. Ticking not only to mark it’s life, but to remind people of mine.
Because down there, somewhere, a tiny bit of me is still standing