₦airaland Forum

Beautiful. This is outstanding work. You sure know how to capture your reader's mind till they're stuck in your imaginary world with no route to escape even before they realise it.

Amazing work. Keep it up

Divepen1:
I've pasted your works here

http://writertain.com/2017/08/29/writing-prompt-3-first-lines/#comment-10


Piroux
ksslib
chriis
yhungbrowne

Very kind of you. Thanks

Before the rescue team could get to them, all lives of the students, teachers and boat instructors had been cut short.

The rescue team got to the scene very late when everyhwere was already dark and were welcomed by floating bodies of little children circling quietly on the water surface like weightless toys. Most of them lay face-down, arms spread wide out open like they were trying to swim before the water defeated them. Some died, their back on the water, arms stretched out in a tight grip, like they were trying to grab a ladder that descended from the sky.

Two kids, a boy and girl, still held their tiny hands together even as their lifeless body danced to the rhythm of the ocean winds trying to separate them.

Another girl floated alongside her stick sweet. Any direction the wind swayed her, so did her candy.

The rescue team, often professionally trained for situations like these, seemed too struck by the scene in front of them that none of the six man crew attempted to do anything. They all just watched in silence. No one said a word or moved.

Pencils, books and soaked torn pieces of papers that contained amateur cartoon drawings, crayon paintings and funny sentences scribbled in funny handwriting littered everywhere.

The wind slowly blew one of these papers past their boat.

"I love my mummy and Daddy" it read. The handwriting looked funny as that of every child not concerned about the way their writing looked, but excited that they can now write love letters to mummy and daddy.

The rescue team, as if scared of touching the bodies, started picking the pencils, books and torn pieces of papers one by one, carefully avoiding the bodies. All this, they did quietly, no one speaking to the other.

"Her, it could have been my daughter" one of the rescue team member broke the silence, pointing to the candy girl.

"Or him, him, her, her" she began pointing at all the children.

No one replied. They just continued picking the papers, books and pencils in silence.

"Or even her". Another crew member broke the silence, pointing to a little girl drifting far far away from the rest.

They drove the boat towards her. She died face-down on water like most of her classmates. She looked smaller than all of them, probably the youngest. One of the crew members scanned her from head to toe with a look of pity and regret, touched her hair, and hesistated a little before he bent over and flipped her lifeless body upside-down to reveal her face.

Staring into blank space with dead white eyes, was the scariest and most shocking thing any of them had ever seen.

A dead, smiling face. Teeth in full display.

You could tell all of them were confused as they gave eachother a questioning look.

"What's that?" asked one of them, gesturing to an object floating towards them.

All of them were beginning to feel uneasy, almost everyone - for the first time - began to take notice of their environment, looking front, left, right and back.

"It's her bag", one of them killed the tension as he picked it up, a picture of a yellow pokemon drawn on the back, water bottle strapped to the side.

Inside, was a squeezed piece of paper, pencil and sharpener. He unfolded the paper but couldn't make anything of the crayon writing. He flattened the paper on his lap to get a better look. He could see it clearly now: a little kid's handwriting.

"We are all going to die. It will kill us all" , he paused and looked at the crew members who looked back at him like he just cracked a bad Jesus joke.

"and kill you too", he continued, reading it this time around one word at a time.....slowly. "It is watching" .

There was a long pause. All of them looked at eachother, then back to the girl together, almost as if it was rehearsed. The guy holding the piece of paper felt his right hand instantly become weak. The paper began to tremble in his hands like he was carrying a bag of cement one-handed.

Alongside the writing, was an amateur cartoonish, crayon sketch - something a kid would draw: bodies of little children floating on water, a rescue boat with six crew members on board, one of them holding a squeezed paper.