The Revenge: The Drowned

April 16, 2008 – 6:11 am

The previous installment of Chloe Bradshaw’s pirate saga can be found here.

Floating in the sea I looked around in search for the other members of my doomed crew.

I couldn’t see through the sheet of rain. I did manage to glimpse Mr Williams’ figure, head bobbing up and down over the waves. With the last ounce of strength I had I swam towards him. When I arrived, he looked in pretty bad shape

He couldn’t stay afloat and I couldn’t keep him at the surface. Tears came to my eyes. I still feel responsible for his death, and as I am writing this, the same tears are forming again. I couldn’t save no matter how much I wanted to. He looked at me, eyes wide with fear. His expression froze before he sank to the sea bed.

I glanced around in hope that I would see someone else. Alas, no one was in sight. I looked around desperately once more, before I started to swim towards Long Ships. The water was freezing and my heartbeat was slowing. I was running out of hope.

The rain was still pounding and the storm still taunting. I wasn’t that far away from Long Ships, when I realized I couldn’t go any further. It was painful when I breathed in, like someone was pounding upon my ribcage with fists of steel.

My eyes were shutting. I felt numb, the coldness didn’t reach me now. I wasn’t in pain just awfully tired. I stopped panicking, there was no point. I let my eyes close and the current took me. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Arts & Literature, YA, fiction | Comments (3)

The Revenge: The Ship’s Death

April 7, 2008 – 4:35 am

Chloe Bradshaw is 13. The previous installment of her pirate saga can be found here.

The man who stood before me was supposed to be dead, and yet he wasn’t.

“How?” I said in a gasp.

“I cannot answer that, for I don’t know either.”

“How old are you?”

“I have been around for about a century.”

“Have you ever died?” Mr Williams interrupted.

“Yes, once, …” Luke’s mind seemed to wander. “It was awful.”

My face must have betrayed a rush of sympathy toward him.

“Do not feel sorry for me, I have seen many things in my time.” He insisted.

“Yes, I’m sure you have but haven’t you ever wished that you could die?” I asked.

“Most of the time. However, I have learned to live with immortality. One has to, after a while.”

I wanted him to meet my crew, deciding to keep mum about his amazing abilities for a while.

Up the stairs we went, the steps creaking underfoot as they had before, seemingly a million years ago. I noticed that Luke’s feet made no sound, as though he was walking on air. Read More »

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The Revenge: Witness to a Murder

March 26, 2008 – 3:31 am

Chloe Bradshaw is 13. She counts Darren Shan as one of her main writing influences. Her favourite subjects at school are Drama, History, and English. This is the first installment of “The Revenge,” one of her many stories.

Mine is a hellish tale, one of treachery, bloodshed and piracy; life, death, and life after death. My story will haunt me forever.

It starts in my house at Sennen, two miles from Lands End, in 1720. I was only about fifteen when it began, but I still remember it as clear as day. I was with my twin brother Jay and my father. Father was explaining something about ships. He used to be a pirate and he carried a few grisly tales in his memory. We grew up knowing that he was banished from the ship when he stole a bottle of the captain’s favourite rum.

A loud rap at the door had interrupted our conversation.

“You two wait at the back, and do not let yourselves be seen,” our father told us. My brother Jay and I looked at each other uncertainly. “I just want you to be out of the way.”

I was frustrated, but also very curious. Never before had he asked us to leave the room when someone was at the door.

I stormed out of the room, Jay following behind me. I remember scanning the door, trying to find the hole which was caused by one of my Father’s guns (all I will say is that I managed to get hold of one when I was little). I found the bullet hole near the bottom of the door and crouched down. I had a perfect view of the room. After the incident was over, I wished that I had not found it.

“I don’t think you should be watching him.” Jay said.

“Eh,” I grunted, finishing the conversation off. I did like my brother, don’t get me wrong, but he could be such a brown nose!

I watched as my Father opened the door. A man stood in the doorway, he was tall, and wore a thick brown coat and a lot of jewellery. He had a presence about him which made you want to run for the hills. Although I had some doubts, I was fairly sure that we were being paid a visit by a pirate.

“It has been fifteen years, Lucian, it is time,” Read More »

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The Polygamist

March 16, 2008 – 2:52 am

Imam Idris Sultan was unmarried, and for this reason he approved of polygamy.

He was a religious figure in “this irreligious society” where polygamy was looked down upon. His open advocacy of the practice allowed the impious to label him “a pervert just like us” — a fact that caused him great agitation. He did not think polygamy was a mark of perversion and therefore tried to set forth various arguments as to the benefits of the practice.

He invoked altruism. He identified the vast number of women in the world that were orphaned and suffering and homeless. He thought to himself that if such women could, three or four at a time, be matched up with healthy middle-class males (such as himself), then the world would be a much better place for all.

However, this welfare oriented argument always floundered when he remembered that he lived in a so called “welfare state.”

If he really wanted to help women in trouble, the more appropriate thing to do in such a society wasn’t to marry multiple times, but to become involved in politics, assist in the passage of helpful legislation, or volunteer at the women’s shelter and write grants — in other words, engage in ventures that benefitted all the women, and not just the troubled ones that he was attracted to (which would be very selfish and not at all altruist).

Unable to devise a convincing argument as to the merits of polygamy caused Imam Idris a great deal of despair. If he could not even convince himself about the viability of Islamic polygamy in this day and age, how would he influence his congregants about the more complex things of the faith?

They would turn soft in their practice, and slowly drift towards apostasy, and then he would have to imagine stoning them in his head while publicly assuring them that “in this pluralist age you are free to leave the faith as you please.” Read More »

By Ali Eteraz | Posted in Arts & Literature, Columnist, Religion, fiction, islam | Comments (4)

Peanut Butter and Magic

February 29, 2008 – 3:58 am

Why did I eat that doughnut? Why? What possessed me? I knew it looked sketchy, all sealed up in that plastic bag with a giant smiley face stamped on the front. My innards are so not smiling. Why couldn’t the flight attendants serve something real for breakfast? Like pancakes and peanut butter? Oh, man…I’m scared I’m going to have an airplane lavatory emergency…

I’m just going to write and ignore it. We’re going to land soon. Everything will be fine.

You’re probably wondering why I’m keeping a journal in the first place (whoever you are). Well, I’m leaving the country—leaving Urbana, Illinois, actually—for the first time in my life. I’m braving airplane rides and sketchy doughnuts to find adventure, at last. I’m off to Norway! The land of trolls, fjords, magic, new beginnings…

Oh, man. I don’t feel good. But we’re landing…

Not good.

Rushing to the lavatory while the plane is hitting the ground is much more exciting than I would’ve thought. I had to hang onto the rail and sink for dear life with my pants around my ankles as the plane bounced to a careening halt on the runway. I almost dropped my glasses down the toilet. Luckily, I feel much better now. I kicked open the lavatory door before the plane was completely stopped, made a flight attendant scream, and hurtled to my seat, where I buckled up and pretended like I’d been sitting the whole time.

It’s lucky I went when I did. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one affected by those doughnuts. When I got to baggage claim, crowds of people were shoving past each other to get to the bathrooms. I think there were laxatives in those things.

Anyway, if I’d been rushing to the bathroom then, I wouldn’t have seen the short, smiling lady, holding a sign that proclaimed, “Welcome Ellie Steelhart!”

I straightened my glasses and strode to meet her, trying not to gape. She looked like…like a creature from Norwegian lore. White hair puffed around her head like a mushroom cap. Her nose, pickled and ballooned, stretched out over a smile that reminded me of grandmothers and kindly old neighbors who bake cookies for the local kids. Only, since she looked she crawled out of a toadstool, I imagined she baked for the local gnomes. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Arts & Literature, YA, fiction, humor | Comments (1)

Pirates and Parallel Parking

November 8, 2007 – 9:14 pm

Lucy Peterson wouldn’t describe herself as the kind of girl who teaches Russian men how to walk the plank, plucks old ladies’ whiskers to gussy them up for dates, and avoids parallel parking…but she was that kind of girl.

Lucy’s life circled around four entities. The first was taking piano lessons from the aforementioned Russian man, because she liked piano and music helped her escape from the day to day insanities of her life. It was an unusual perk that Dr. Sabanov thought the KGB was after him and, because of his almost-but-not-quite-fluent English, constantly asked the meaning of phrases like, “You drive me bonkers” and “Walk the plank.”

“What is this walk the plank?” Patrick told me to walk the plank, what means this?”; “What is this ‘bonkers’?” Patrick was Dr. Sabanov’s other piano student. Lucy shared classes with him sometimes. He seemed nice enough (other than ordering their teacher to walk the plank), but she could never tell if he was smiling or not, due to a beard the size of a small mountain lion that smothered half his face. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Arts & Literature, family, fiction, humor | Comments (0)

My Life for a Witness

December 15, 2006 – 9:17 pm

He doesn’t know he is walking the dead. He doesn’t know he is dead either. He walks the dead, day and night, by land and by sea, past the stretches of memory. He doesn’t know how long he will have to walk, how far north and how far south, how far east and how far west.

The thought of direction, of destiny, of a point of arrival, like an insight extracted from a perturbing sight or a glimpse of light in a blind dark night, torments his walk. He walks and walks until he comes to the field where they dropped dead like flies in a pool of light. He recognizes the faces, for they were all alive once. Only he knows they were alive once, for no men, no women, no children, no journalists, no embedded moralists, no risk-taking leftists, and no bushbiting infidels will come forward and say in plain English, these men who are now dead were once alive and well. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Arts & Literature, fiction | Comments (0)