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Our second place Middle School category winner was written by Micheal Mamlok, a student at the OL Slaton Junior High School in Lubbock, TX. |
I was so nervous. I never dreamt that such a dismal deed could ever be done. It could not have crawled out of the deepest crypts of my darkest thoughts. And no matter how hard I tried to make the terror go away it was always there. Unflinching, never blinking, always, always there.
Fear fogs my memory, but I believe the night of reckoning began like this. The clock started to stare ever so menacingly at me. It forced me to confess out loud “It is 10:11 and there is only 49 minutes left”. I remember feeling a furry hide slide through my shaky legs. For now, it was just my cloudy gray cat hissing by. Her bristled tail and frightened feline face told me she knew that this would be the night of the deadly deed. As I walked past the worn, wooden doors my worried world began to change. I felt the granite counter top, no longer stunning and smooth, just cold as death. A noble sailfish mounted on the wall had become a putrid, dead fish, unflinching and never blinking. A bouquet of silk flowers had changed into a pot of dead roses. They drooped from atop a cabinet waiting for their casket. Eerie shadows were sharpening a fan’s blades as it cut guillotine-like strokes through the shadowy air above my head.
The slam of a door drew me to an urgent plan. Could I run outside and escape this lunacy? I looked up towards the moon. It was neither full nor empty. Its indifferent light fell sadly upon the sharp, dead limbs of barren trees. The fence was no longer a friend ready to protect my yard. Its sharpened picket tips stood like skewers ready to impale those who might try to escape. I then knew there would be no way out. I slowly stepped back and heard something. Something dripping, dripping from above and from within.
A storm cloud covered the moon outside, but not the growing lunacy inside. It was rain that had started, like the nervousness pounding in my brain. Painfully slow and steadily increasing. I knew it would always haunt me. Haunt me until the deadly deed was done. I stood transfixed, looking for help inside and out. Suddenly, there was a bright flash of light. The final storm had started.
My feet swept me into a study, towards a blood red desk. It glistened with each lightning strike like a slaughtered slab of meat. I sank into the chair behind my desk and awaited the inevitable. A cold chill filled my bones. It was the sharp tap, tap, tap of human fingernails on the distant cold granite counter top. A menacingly muffled sound bounced off the gaze of the dead fish on the wall as the steps grew closer. My muscles failed me as I froze to my desk. I could not move as the words I dreaded were about to pierce into my soul. Words from my father’s voice exploded with the ultimate horror: “Son, it is time for you to do your homework. Start writing your story now!” And that is how and why The Deadly Deed was begun.
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