What Lurks Beneath?

• Jet Edwards-perry, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2019

Abandon ship! Abandon ship! We were sinking! The bedside lamp hit me and I was out cold.

As I opened my eyes, I realised that I was under the surface of the ocean. I swam for my life towards the surface. At long last, my head was above the ocean, the sea was aboil in fury like the very devil itself. The next thing I knew I was looking at the ship; it was abound in flames and had a cracked hull. I doubt it would float freely again. Then I noticed another thing: the ship was being thrown around by massive tentacles!
The tentacles were lyon blue with darker smalt blue suckers. Despite the fact that I wanted to save my friend, Arthur, I knew I had to save myself first. I had never felt this fed up and miserable in the history of my whole life! After a while, I started looking for something to float on. I did a full 360o turn and found a bit of old timber floating there and clambered on. After just sitting, I started thinking about my life before I came on this foreboding voyage. I am ten years old, I have an older brother and a younger sister. I have a Mum and a Dad, but I am the only one on this boat in my family. We (my family) never had any money to spare. That was why I was smuggled on to this ship by our family friend Arthur. He was so caring, always sympathetic and understanding.

Then I thought of what had happened on the wooden, unstable wreck of a ship. It had happened so quickly, seven days into the voyage, the captain sent down a diver (to look for the hoard of wealth that lay submerged at the bottom of the ocean). That didn’t last long; the last thing we heard from her was “HELP ME SOMEONE PLEASE THERE’S SOMETHING DOWN-”. That was all we heard. The last word was muffled but probably was “HERE”.

I knew I needed to save the ship.

On my bit of wood, I managed to save 13 people and found some more wood for them to float on.
When the boat was in the water, I jumped on it and climbed on the deck. No one was on the boat so I figured that they jumped off the port side (where I didn’t check). As I grabbed a harpoon gun, a colossal tentacle grasped me and dragged me under!
THUNK (that’s the sound of a book closing). “That’s enough Dylan” I say (its 70 years later and my story’s a book). “But Grandpa, please finish the story.” “Don’t worry I promise that we can finish it tomorrow night. And besides, you need to go to bed!”. “Fine” he grumbles, “good night Grandpa”. I chuckle as he walks off, he doesn’t realise it’s true. And without another thought, I follow him to bed.