The Hypno Cave Mystery

• Aiden Suhaili, Grade 3
• Short Story
• 2022

Ssshh! I was in a deep dark cave. There were twenty-five people, twenty-six if you count me. They said they were trapped. They called it the Hypno Cave because they thought you would be lured into it and stay forever.
Then I heard a breeze. At that moment, green ooze appeared! It chased us and three men slipped. I could not just stand there, I needed to help them. I ran and managed to hold two people’s hands. The third person fell in the ooze. After that, we saw a huge gap right above us.
I helped myself going to the gap and luckily the ooze didn’t get me. I felt at ease for a moment. I saw one man who kept sneezing and he said he had an allergy to sea creatures. At that moment, I saw a congealment of cuttlefish.
The cuttlefish chased us and tried to bite us. We dodged most of them but seven of us were bitten badly. A person with a scar saw a thick circle opening in front of us and said, “Let’s go! We have a perfect escape route.”
There were eighteen of us. We kept walking and saw two tunnels in front of us. “We can go this way!” shouted a forgetful man who was pointing back to the ooze.
“We’ve been there” snapped a wiser man.
“Do what you want and suffocate all you want,” smirked the forgetful man.
“I’m sure we’ve been there” moaned a lazy man.
They argued as they moved forwards in their chosen direction.
Nine people had gone back to the tunnel that we just came out of. Three went to a tunnel that was stinky while the remaining people including me chose the tunnel with brisk air. I heard a cough and another thundering cough in a short interval. Two people disappeared.
Four of us followed the path in the hope of finding the way out. I looked back and saw very long slimy things. I thought of something at the tip of my tongue - green ooze, Hypno Cave, long slimy things and lots of cuttlefish. It was a humongous mother cuttlefish! That explained the sneezing person! He sneezed because of the cuttlefish. Suddenly, an idea struck my mind. We should run to the tip of the tongue up and down to make the cuttlefish sneeze. We did and it worked. We got sneezed out.
We swam to the shore before the cuttlefish could catch. We were relieved to have made it out alive from the cave and started calling for help from the authority. Now everyone knew about the truth of the Hypno Cave. Who would have thought it was a giant cuttlefish all along!