The Tremendous Night

• Felicity Moy, Grade 3, John Purchase Public School -
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Horizon of Dreams 2018' competition

‘Crack!’ went the beam of lighting across the sky. ‘Bang bang!’ went the thunder. Next thing I knew, my mother had lost control of the car and it was going all over the place. The car just crashed into the rails of the bridge. I quickly grabbed the tissue box to cover my face in terror.
When the car stopped moving, I slowly removed the tissue box from my face. I looked out the window and noticed that we were sinking into the muddy river. I saw an enormous zebra fish staring at me through the window. 'Aah!' I screamed in fright. I was not just screaming because we were sinking. I was screaming because the doors had flung open and the zebra fish was swimming into the car. It tried to bite my mum, but luckily she ducked.
Out of nowhere, a voice sang out aloud, “The only way to stop the fish is to make a loud noise, but it has to be loud. Be careful, no one has been able to defeat it.” I knew I could do it because I am the world’s loudest person. So, I screamed! After a break I realised it was quite hard but nothing could stop me. I screamed at the top of my lungs and a minute later, it worked like magic. Thank goodness we did not sink that low so we were still breathing. Flash! I thought of an astonishing idea to get out of the water.
I remembered we had snorkels in the boot of the car. I kicked the back panel of the car so I could access the boot. I reached in and grabbed the two pairs of snorkels. I gave one pair to my mum and kept the other pair. We slipped the snorkels on and swam out of the car, while battling the current.
After a few minutes, we were out. My mum was very tired. It was late at night. There were still several cars out on the street. Before we could say anything fireworks exploded in the air. After a big celebration of joy, my dad picked us up in a nice cosy car. What a nice end to end an eventful day.