Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 3 | Page 275

The sailor’s voice was trembling. “This… monster … sunk our ship. It struck in the dead of night. I was going to clean the deck and then I heard this cracking sound and then-” he stumbled over his words, he was talking so fast. “What about the main ships?” “They’re fine. They were far away. It hasn’t found them yet.” Yet. Well, that sounded a little ominous. Like the roar that followed the sailor’s words. The water near us rippled with such force that it almost pushed our boat over. The sailor turned silent, his eyes wide as saucers. A figure shot out of the water, spraying water all over us and making me close my eyes instinctively. When I reopened them, a pair of big, shimmering red eyes were staring right back at me. The monster’s serpentine body waved back and forth, before diving back into the water and pushing our boat over. I plunged into the cold, dark water, grabbing on to a long piece of wood that fell from the boat. Anything that could help me float. I resurfaced, gasping for air and looking around for the other sailors. With a yelp, someone disappeared under the surface with a plop , leaving a puff of blood in their wake. Something tickled my feet, and before I could react, it coiled around my legs. I was raised up into the air by the monster’s tail and found myself staring into its malevolent eyes. My first instinct was to freeze. Then I remembered the piece of wood in my hand. The wood was still pretty sharp. If I rammed it with enough force between the monster’s scales, that would be a permanent injury for sure. My hand trembling, I held up the piece of wood, aiming it at the monster’s susceptible head, but it was hard to see in the dark. It turned towards me, and I drew my arm back to throw my weapon. The monster opened its mouth with a roar and its head flew towards me. With a rather gruesome sound, the wood impaled the monster’s forehead. It blinked for a few seconds before falling into the water with a deafening splash, dead. I tried to get the dead weight of the monster’s tail off me so I could resurface again, but the weight was suffocating. After lots of kicking and thrashing, I noticed all the remaining sailors were staring at me, shocked by my rather lucky feat. “What are you staring at? If we stay here any longer, we’ll get hypothermia.” I chided to the gaping sailors. We swam towards the nearest ship we could see: A vessel similar to ours. With a few yells, they spotted us and hauled us up. Standing there, soaked to the bone and shivering, I couldn’t help but wonder: What’s next?