Pumpkin Island

Writing stories is my passion in life! It feels wonderful to create something new out of imagination. So, when a boy named Jake sails out to sea on a dare and shipwrecks on a mysterious island, it's the start of a unique and entrancing tale.

• Fantasy
• Fiction
• Humour
• Action and Adventure

								
Pumpkin Island


“Hey, Jake!” Billy smirked. “My grammy said that nobody who sails out west ever comes back.”
 “Ha!” I laughed. “Your grandma’s crazy! I could do that anyday,”
“Prove it.”
Here I was, on a stolen little sailboat, in the sea, just hoping to do a few laps out west and prove Billy wrong. He always acted like he was never mistaken. Not this time, though! I tugged on the sail, and turned the sailboat west with one pull. 
As soon as I did, I felt fear growing in the bottom of my stomach. A grumpy dark thundercloud, black as night, was ominously glowering over me. I gulped. 
“Just a few laps and back, to prove Billy wrong.” I muttered to myself. “ A few laps and back.”
I reached for the sail and started hauling the boat in a circle. I was sweating in the hot summer wind, but a feeling in the air indicated that the weather was about to change. 
One lap.
 The waves were getting more powerful by minute, and the wind was starting to blow me off course. 
Two laps.
“One more,” I told myself. “One more, and you’ll be the winner.”
A giant wave came at my sailboat.I ran to the helm, trying to keep the boat balanced with my body weight.
Two and a half.
The thunderclouds were right above me. As I stared at them with horror, I realized I was leaning too far right.
Two and three quarters.
Before I knew it, the boat was starting to capsize. I leapt off of it, thinking that floating in the cold water was better than being trapped at the bottom of the ocean in a capsized boat. While I was swimming away the best I could, a humongous wave hit me in the face and threw me right back to the boat.
“Urgh!” I cried, and tried to swim away to land. I paused, realizing that the safety of land was too far to even catch sight of. I gasped, as the chill of the water went into my lungs. 
Behind me, the boat capsized with a groan. In the blink of an eye, the mast started crashing. I paddled wildly, eager to get out of the way. It was no use, for the waves were against me and the wind crashed and blew into my face, attempting to blow me out of existence. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain on the back of my head.
 I attempted screaming, only resulting in getting more saltwater into my lungs. The next moment, everything went black.



Day One

I felt the sun beating down on my arms and legs. My whole body was aching as if it had been trampled by a million horses, and then was run over by a bulldozer for good measure.
 I realized that if this was heaven, then gritty sand in your underwear is the norm up there.I seemed to be on a sort of deserted beach, in late afternoon. There was no one around me.  Groaning, I tried to stand up. 
“Aurgh!” I yelled, and fell back down with a wince of pain. I reached up and touched the back of my head. I winced again. My hand was covered in blood!
 For the first time, I noticed the slow stream of red flowing down my neck. The sand I’ve been lying on was covered in a bloody scarlet. There was a wound on the back of my head!  From all the blood lying around, it wasn’t a tiny one either. If I didn’t do something soon, I was going to bleed out!
 The stream of warm blood flowing down my neck continued steadily. Thinking fast, I ripped off my sweater and tied it around my head, tight, to stop the bleeding. To my relief, the blood stopped flowing and dried up. But this bandanna wasn’t going to serve its purpose for long. I needed to find help right away! 
I leapt up and looked around me. This seemed like a lifeless seashore I must have washed up on, with no crabs or any sign of living things. A little way down the coast, I noticed what seemed to be a small entryway into a  forest, just like the types my father always told me not to go into when we were looking for mushrooms.

Sorry, Dad, but this is my only chance to find help! 

I walked on through the hot sands, as they scorched my bare feet. My shoes must have been torn off during the shipwreck. What a shame. They were my favorite shoes! My mom will kill me when I get back! A horrible thought struck me. What if this was an uninhabited island? My boat was shipwrecked, and there was no way to find home!
I started panicking. I’ll either die on this island or be killed by my mom when I get back shoeless. I took a deep breath. Maybe someone on this island had a pair of shoes; one that looked close enough to mine that my mom wouldn’t spot the difference. With my mind made up I headed into the forest.


                            .                     .                      .



I’ve been walking for what seemed like eternity, noticing all the wierd red and green trees and all sorts of pumpkins growing around me, jeering and laughing with their imaginary eyes as I attempted to navigate my way through the forest. 
My feet ached as did the rest of my body, but even stronger now that I’ve been walking for hours. Finally, the sun gave up on me and rolled behind the distant horizon. Hungry and angry at the world, I noticed a nearby bush with berries. They did not survive for long. It was dark, so I decided to sleep and find my way in the morning. I tugged on a palm leaf and  threw it onto the rusty ground, in a pathetic attempt to make some sort of bed. Cold and miserable, I shivered into a sort of light, bitterly freezing sleep. 


Day Two

KABOOM!!!!!!!!!
I awoke to a deafening eruption. I felt fire on my skin and smelled smoke in the dark night sky. The world around me seemed to be scorching in flames! Before I even had time to figure out what on earth was going on, the tree I lay under blew to fiery pieces! 
Without thinking, I ran. As fast as my feet could carry me, I sprinted out of the flaming fiasco, into who knows where. The fire licked my face, and the ashes creeped into my eyes, blocking my sight.
I collapsed to the ground. I couldn’t die now! My mom would kill me for making my shirt dirty! I felt around me and gripped on a small hole, as it seemed to be. 
My heart rose. Maybe I could crawl through it to safety!  I tried not to breathe in the sickening gray smoke and felt around some more. My heart now dropped to the very bottom of where my shoes would have been. It wasn’t nearly big enough for me to squeeze into! 
Suddenly, I heard a creak. The hole seemed to have grown larger! I hesitated. Holes don’t randomly change size. What if this was a trap? 
“OW!” I yelped as the fire finally reached me. Even if this was a trap, it was die now, or die later, with a cleaner shirt for mom. I climbed into the hole.

The hole seemed to open into a larger shelter. I gasped and coughed as the dust went out of my throat. When I recovered, I took a deep breath, and almost fainted with relief as the cool, fresh air ran through my lungs. The shelter was as dark as the black night sky, but the fresh air and the refuge it gave me from the blazing inferno outside totally made up for it. The refreshing chilliness cooled my burns and calmed me.
 If this was a trap, then it was a pretty comfortable one. The room inside the shelter was big enough for me to stand up, but I decided I shouldn’t risk it. I crawled into what seemed to be a corner, and waited for this nightmare to be over.

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes