Madison+D

﻿ The Dragons Den (by Madison Delmenico)

Once again I’m in a fight. My little brother is weak and a bit of a coward so he gets bullied a lot. They start fighting me because I stand up for him. Me on the other hand. I’m one of the strongest in my year level. All the other strong or brave people became bullies. People often wonder why I haven’t become a bully. Its because I despise them and what they do to my brother. “Hey Lucas, you given up yet?” the bully taunts as he hits me in the face. He goes to kick me but I grab his foot and trip him over. I pick him up by his neck and throw him into the fence. “come on” he shouts as he goes to punch me in the face. I duck and trip him over again. He lands on his face. ”Holy shizen” he mutters as he gets up to run. After wards. I’m sitting with my brother, trying to cheer him up. He’s a bit more depressed than usual. He only has two friends other than me. One of them is at home sick today and the other is playing with some of his other friends and now he’s getting bullied again. I try cheering him up by letting him know he can spend the rest of the day with me and my friends. “Hey Lucas” says my friend Tom as he walks over. “Oh hi Matthew” he says to my brother. “I didn’t see you there.” “Hi Tom” I reply. “is it O.K if Matthew spends some time with us?” “Uh sure I guess.” “O.K thanks, so what did you want to say?” “Well I was just going to ask if you heard the rumour?” “What rumour?” “Well you know that house on West St.?” “The one that’s been abandoned for as long as I can remember? Yes.” “Well some one said-” “Wait a second” I interrupt. “This is going to be another haunted house story isn’t it?” “Haunted house?” my brother joins in. “Not only is it just a rumour but I heard growling coming from there myself.” “Sure whatever” I sigh “Look you don’t have to believe me but I was just wondering if you wanted to investigate?” “You know me” I pat my bag “I’ve already got my flash light.” “What have you got your bag here for anyway? Its not even close to the end of school.” “I don’t care what the teachers say, I always like to keep my bag with me just in case.” “O.K whatever, do you want to play some football?” “Sure” me and my brother say at the same time. “Jinx” I say a second before him. I know he wanted to say it first but I can tell from the smile on his face that I succeeded in cheering him up. After school me, Tom and my brother go to the abandoned house. “This place has gotten a lot worse since I last saw it.” I say “Well you know vandals these days” says Tom. “They find a place that no one cares about and then they trash it even more.” “You’re not talking about me are you?” I ask suspiciously “To some extent” he laughs. “Well it takes one to no one” I sneer. “So? We work together.” “Used to” I smile. “I’m more into myth busting right now.” “But we still work together.” “Don’t forget my brother as well.” I look next to me and frown. “Where is he?” I look around “Matthew?” I call. “Yeah? I’m behind the house” he answers. “Why?” I ask as I’m heading towards the back of the house, “Just checking for dead bodies.” “That’s not why its abandoned” says Tom “I know” he replies “But an abandoned house seems like a good place to dump a body” “True” I nod “But a river or lake would be even better” “I’m getting bored of this subject” says Tom “Lets just find a way in” “On it” I say before kicking the back door down “If you cant push it open kick it open, that’s my motto” “One of many” my brother adds. I laugh. “Motto number two, don’t waste time talking when you could waste it a different way” we all laugh and start to go in. as soon as me and my brother get in, the door slams shut “Didn’t you kick the door off the hinges?” my brother asks as he’s staring at the door “I thought so.” I hear a panicked muffled noise coming from behind the door. “Hold on I’m coming” I say as I start to kick the door down again. I cant get the door to move. I hear the noise again but this time its even more panicked. I start kicking even harder until I hear growling noise. Confused, I listen for the sound again. I hear a muffled scream followed by a thud. “Let me in” says a clear hoarse whisper. “Matthew?” “Yeah?” he asks, worried. “Run.” “What?” “Let me in” the voice repeats impatiently “Run!” I shout. Me and my brother start running until I trip over something. “Are you alright?” my brother asks “It’s too dark to see” “Hold on.” I pull the flashlight out of my bag and shine it in the direction of my foot. I see what looks like a big bent stick. “To me it looks like the leg of a giant roach, or at least a giant spider or something.” “All the more reason to run.” I hear a banging noise coming from the door. “Go!” I shout as I get up and start to run again. I lead the way with the flashlight but when I get to the front of the house I see that the front doorway has collapsed and there’s no way through. “Well that’s just great, now what?” my brother asks. “We improvise” I say with slight hope as I spot a staircase out of the corner of my eye. “Lets go.” “Where?” “Up the staircase” and as I stare at my brothers clueless face I realise that he still doesn’t get it. “If we find a window or something we could open it and climb down, or at least smash it open and climb down.” when he understands we start to run up the staircase. One part of the staircase has a big hole in it so I have to jump across and as soon as I’m on the other side I help my brother over. As I’m helping him over I look through the hole and notice that the bottom of the staircase is on fire and so is a lot of the bottom floor. I think to my self about what’s happened in just a few short minutes. Eerie voice, giant spider leg, trapped in and now an inferno. “god are you bloody serious?” I shout at the ceiling until suddenly anger turns to fear as I see Tom has been taped to the roof with a bandage around his mouth. “Why are we stopping?” my brother asks with both panic and exhaustion before he looks up at Toms terrified face. “What the hoe!” he exclaims “How did he get from locked outside to stuck to the ceiling.” “I don’t know but we have to get him down.” “How?” my brother asks with just panic this time. “I don’t know all I have are a rope and a sledge hammer.” just as I say that the bandage and tape disappears and he almost falls through the hole but just grabs on to the side of the hole suspended above the flames. We pull him up. “What happened? Who did that?” I ask “Believe it or not it was a dragon.” “A dragon?” I ask dubiously. “Well what do you think caused that fire?” “Good point.” “Hey can we keep running” my brother cuts in. “For those of you that don’t know, fire spreads.” we look down the staircase and see that the flame has almost caught up to us. On that note we start running down the hallway. We come to halt as a huge six legged creature that’s wearing an armour/shell type thing on it’s back, crawls into the path. “Why didn’t you let me in?” the whisper turns to a sinister voice. “I only wanted to be friends. Allow me to introduce myself I am the magical being that hatched on this retched site and this here is my friend who has helped me growing up. Roch won’t you greet our guests.” and that being said, the cockroach lets out a horrible screech that pierces my ears. Every one puts their hands over their ears to try and block out the sound but it doesn’t work. “Kill it” Tom shouts. “How?” I ask struggling to hear. “Didn’t you say you had a sledge hammer?” my brother asks. Hearing that I quickly go into my bag and pull out my sledgehammer. I run at the giant cockroach and smash its head off. The cockroach gets up and knocks me back a couple of metres “Fun fact” the voice continues. “A standard cockroach can go for nine days without a head. A giant cockroach can go without its head for.” the voice pauses. “Two months.” hearing that I decide it’s hopeless trying to fight it so I dart into the room next to me after signalling for the others to follow. My brother comes in after me but Tom is tripped over by the cockroach. He picks up the sledge hammer that I dropped when the cockroach knocked me back and he hit’s two of its right legs off. That causes the cockroach to fall over. While the cockroach is struggling to get to its feet, Tom gets up and comes into the room with us. “Here’s your sledgehammer back” says Tom handing me the sledgehammer. “Thanks” I say “You’ve got quite a bit of roach blood on you.” “Ditto” he adds “Are you guys O.K?” my brother asks. “Because once again I realise something that you don’t” “It better be good news this time” I say dubiously “Well being in the same room as a window that can provide an exit to this place is good news right?” as he says that I notice that I lost my flashlight and the fire hasn’t spread to this room yet. The only way I can see is from the moonlight that’s coming in through the window. “Yeah that’s good news” Tom says in an excited tone. But the excitement fades as a long, dark, arrow-headed figure slides over the window. “Well that figures” Tom says depressingly “The dragon?” I ask “It shouldn’t take someone who has seen the dragon to figure out that that’s its tail” “Leaving so soon” the voice says “If you stay you can experience the thrilling heat of an inferno” “Who ever hires you as a salesman is an idiot” I say mockingly. “Even the brochure sucks.” “Silence!” it shouts as its head comes into view “Why you mock me I do not see. But none the less I shall burn you three” “Isn’t it a little too late to take on rhyming” I continue “It’s pretty lame anyway.” After I say that the dragon shoots a fireball at us. Me and Tom dive to the left and my brother dives to the right. The dragon turns toward my brother. “Matthew look out” I shout but he just sits still, frozen in fear. “Hey scale face” I yell at the dragon just as it’s about to breath fire on my brother. “How about we order off the menu” I say as I charge at it with the sledgehammer. it starts to breath fire at me so I throw the sledgehammer at his face. its breath catches the sledgehammer on fire and it goes into the dragons open mouth. He starts rapidly breathing out fire at the ceiling for a couple of seconds. I know what’s coming next. “Duck for cover!” I yell as I start to run away. A few seconds later the dragon blows up. The explosion tears the wall away and we can see several people outside staring at us. “Call for help” tom shouts at them. Luckily someone already had and the firemen are here in half a minute. And so we are rescued. The next day we are questioned by police as to how we got trapped in the burning house. I say that someone pushed us in and boarded up the doors before setting the house on fire. I had to lie because I know they wouldn’t believe a story about being attacked by a dragon. When they ask who did it I mention the name of a bully that was terrorizing my brother earlier. It may seem a bit harsh but it seems more fair for a bully to take a punishment than someone who has just been viciously attacked by a dragon. The police let us go and set off to find him. As me, Tom and my brother are walking away from the police station Tom asks “Do you know why the dragon blew up?” “Of course” I reply. “Did you think it was coincidence that the first thing I did to him made him blow up?” “I see your point” he answers. “So what made him blow up?” “Well based on the books I’ve read, you know how humans breath in oxygen and breath out carbon dioxide?” “yeah.” “Well dragons breath in oxygen and breath out a flammable gas. They breathe fire by keeping a rock and a piece of flint in a pouch in their mouth. They use their tongue to bang the flint against the rock to make a spark. They do this while exhaling to ignite their breath. When I threw the sledgehammer the wooden handle caught on fire because I threw it while he was breathing fire. It went in his mouth and down his throat which caught the breath in his lungs on fire. That went off as if I had just shot a grenade and blew him up.” “Hey if that was in a fiction story. Do you think that the author may have encountered a dragon before.” “Yeah and I suppose this is all a government conspiracy” my brother says and we all laugh as we walk home back to a slightly peaceful, almost normal life.

the end _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_  Friend memory  ﻿I remember several good times with my friends but one of my most vivid memories isn't my most recent. Me and my friend were riding our bikes to the park on a hot saturday afternoon. Just before going into the park we decided to get a drink so we rode to a seven eleven between the park and a coles. We parked the bikes right next to the bin out the front of the shop. We walked in and both wanted to get a frozen coke but when I reached into my pocket to get my wallet it wasnt there. "Damn I must've forgot to bring my money" I said. "Thats ok I'll pay for you" he replied. Even though it costed $2 he still decided to pay for me since I apparenly left my wallet at home. We also got a free caramello egg for each frozen coke. We sat next to our bikes out the front of the store and drank the frozen cokes. Even though it cooled me down on the inside, my skin still felt hot. I just decided to put up with it. He finished his quickly but waited for me to finish mine. As soon as we had both finished, we went back on our bikes and rode into the park and down the hill. We were there for about an hour before both going home. By the end of it I realised that I forgot to eat the chocolate egg and it melted in my pocket. What a mess.