A Stamp Stuck In Three Red Backs' Web

• Matthew Williams, Grade 5, Doncaster Primary School
• Short Story
• 2016

Excellence Award in the 'Word Zone 2016' competition

One cold, winter's morning in Melbourne, Australia, a teacher went out to the shops to buy some stamps for his class. He strolled through the aisles covered with items and stopped when he saw a pack he liked. It was a pack of blue smiley face stamps, priced at $3 each. He examined it, and then he happily walked over to the counter to pay. He put the pack of stamps up on the counter and handed the counter guy the money. So the man walked to his car and drove to school.
Just before recess, while he was correcting his students' work, he noticed one that looked exceptionally great and got out his best stamp pack, the blue smiley face stamps that he had bought just that morning. He stamped the kid’s work, Samuel was his name. Now this kid, Samuel, was a funny guy and decided to draw a web behind the stamp on the opposite page, to make it look like the stamp was trapped in the web. Next, he drew red spots on the three spiders' backs to imply they were red backs.
The stamp screamed, “Aagh! Get me out of here!” No one heard.
“Someone! Help me! Please!” the stamp called. And yes, I know what you’re thinking, "Stamps can’t talk! You crazy boy!" But hey, this is a story, anything can happen.
Anyway, the stamp cried and screamed but no one heard him. Why? The kids were at recess.
Just as it seemed as though this was the end for this poor stamp and the deadly red back spiders drawn by tricky Samuel were going to liquefy him and eat him for dinner, he was saved.
As the kids came back from recess and sat back down at their tables, the stamp was screaming madly.
“Please! I’m gonna get eaten alive by these insane red backs!”
“Red backs, you say?” Aaron, another kid on Samuel’s table, asked.
“Yes! Take a look!” the stamp said, stressing.
“Wow, a talking stamp!” Samuel said.
“That’s why I bought them,” Mr Cook, the teacher, interrupted.
“Just save me!” cried the stamp.
“Eh, OK,” Samuel said, reaching inside his pencil case for his rubber.
So Samuel rubbed out the spiders from his book and the stamp wiped some sweat off his forehead.
“Thank you, Samuel,” the stamp said.
“I hope I don’t regret this!” Samuel thought aloud.
Suddenly, to Samuel’s amazement, the stamp squeezed and shook and eventually he escaped from the page so he was standing on Samuel’s book.
Samuel gasped. “What the …”
“Yes, I am now free! Those red backs were on there to stop me from taking over the world. I blanked your mind using my special stamp powers so you would forget and rub them out! But now I’m free, I can activate my stamp army and together we’ll abolish all of human kind!” the stamp cried.
“Oh no!” Samuel said. “I knew I would regret this sooner or later!”
The End!