Fears Of The Night

• George Kaltzidis, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2016

I was in bed. Alone with my thoughts for another night. It was the only option I had for the night, my mother said, or I would just start doing this routine earlier. I hated sleep with a passion that can only be matched by rival gangs in the street fighting. This time in particular, I felt uncomfortable about my time in bed. I had a thought in bed tonight, a superstition; bad spirits would come tonight, and I needed to stop them.

Well, my eyes were trying to shut. I tried to keep them open, but I couldn't. Then something came into my mind to think about. I thought about school bully, Rolf, bashing me earlier today over my sushi lunch. I ended up in sickbay with a headache, and I ended up going home early.

Then, I felt something just like Rolf punching me in the head. It was just the air moving, but it felt hard. Then, the air lifted me up off of my bed, and I fell back down, hurting my rear end. In the background, I heard someone say 'You loser! Give me your lunch!', which is exactly what Rolf said to me today, before I heard a breeze of air through the open window, and everything stopped for a minute.

After my recent moment, I tried keeping my eyes open. But it was pitch black. There was no point in keeping them open.

But when I closed my eyes, I heard something else. 'Ow!' I heard. It was me from last night, at the local pub. We were playing darts, and my older brother threw a few darts at me for no good reason. It hurt a lot. Well, now I felt people throwing darts at me with the air in my room. I felt blood stream down my legs. I wanted to swear. It hurt so much. Then the air took a nice breeze in my face, and I felt nothing more.

Then 5 minutes later, when my eyes closed again, I heard a crowd cheering. It was one I recognised quickly that it was from my football game on Friday. It was our school vs another school with a name I can't pronounce properly. Their best player was a forward, while I was a defender. Their best player jumped on me, took a specky on me and I fell to the ground. I was purely pounded to say the least.

Well, as expected, I felt something that was like 90kg fall in top of me. I couldn't breath. I thought I was going to die. So I tried lifting myself up from my back up. I couldn't. From my stomach though, my luck changed. I got up, found the area with the air, and kicked it in the head. I said, 'No violence allowed in this world.', which my mother says all the time. Then, the air revealed itself. It was in fact a bad spirit. I kept on attacking it until it fell to the ground, and I threw it out of the window. The spirits were controlling the air.

I threw the mask on the spirit's head outside, and went back to bed, as per normal. It was like 2:35am in the morning, and I was tired. For the first time in my life, I slept well and slept in, and I loved it.

And by killing the spirit, my luck changed as well. I actually didn't get injured or annoyed or angry. I lived life like all should; with a feeling of happiness. I had to tell myself a couple of times though that is wasn't a dream; it was true. And I can now only imagine what would have been had I not killed the spirits. I knew I'd done my service to the world by killing that spirit.