The Snakes And The Vines

• Izzy Moran, Grade 4
• Short Story
• 2019

Splashes of colour and flicks of eye-catching animal tails glistened in the shining, smiling sun, that was playing hide and seek with the clouds. I walked through the dense rainforest. Behind me, a trail of animals of all kind. At last, I was free of all boundaries. I was in my lush forest sanctuary where I could create as much mischief as I wanted. I swiftly propelled up a tall tree encircled with dark, green vines clinging tight. That’s when I sensed it.

I felt something clutch my body, I shook my head. Nothing happened. Dark, green vines contracted around my body. I tried to move but I couldn’t budge, not even an inch. Agony shot up my leg. I saw a long, skinny camouflaged snake that had just bit me. It was It progressing its way down my small body. My hands were covered by the irritating, minuscule knots from the vines. The snake was starting to wrap around my neck tightening like a Boa Constrictor. My head began to pound in the lust of much needed or urgent oxygen. I tried to detangle the aggravating knots. My lungs screamed. My throat ached. My head throbbed. In a last desperate act, I clawed for snake and vines. My skin was beginning to turn as blue as the sky. I took a deep breath of fermented vine. My throat argued and complained.

Finally, my head stopped hurting. All of the ghastly pain had vanished into ‘Lush Green Emptiness’. An expanse of blank feelings and bewilderment floated into my mind, ricocheting around my head. My mind felt empty, most of my senses faded away.
I think I heard a voice, maybe a familiar one that was saying “Your dying.” I suddenly realised it was me. I was dying. I felt no depression. I was laying in my deathbed, accepting death.

In front of me was a blurry vision. It looked like gates, maybe even the ‘Gates of Heaven’. It was opening before my eyes. A sudden, radiant burst of dazzling rays, followed up by a choir of angels singing harmoniously, “Halleuia Ha Ha L’euia” My fate was sealed, in my rainforest paradise.

“I can feel a heartbeat, she’s breathing.” Bellowed someone, breaking the silence. My memory was as bad as a goldfish’s. The light dissolved back into the darkness. I was afraid. ‘Where am I? Who am I? Who are they? Why am I here? Help me’ I remember thinking. The humid, bright sun was smiling at me once again.
The sun in it’s blue, cloudless sky shone back down at me. Everything was slowly starting to come back to me. The rainforest, sun, vines, animals, snake, paradise. I smiled to myself. One day I’d go back to my deathbed in the ‘Gates of Heaven’, going through the gates.