This short story is participating in Write Story from Picture India 2012 – Short Story Writing Competition.
WSPI-2012-02
Photo credit: Nevit Dilmen
I am Arti, a student of 4th standard in a reputed school of my town named DHANWOOD. My family was not that much rich to afford my school fees but I was the topper of my school and I was studying only because of the scholarship provided by the school. I was a girl who was very quiet and calm in nature and was not good in making friends too early. I talked rarely in school. But Riya who was my best and my only friend in my class belonged to a rich family.
One day our school planned to organize a 4 days trip to a lake named JHANJHAR lake which was around 200 km away from our town near a forest.The charges were around 1000 bucks per person including accommodation and all. I was very interested in that but my family was not in a condition to afford that. But somehow this time my parents managed to pay this much amount. This was the first time when I was going somewhere with my best friend Riya and we were very excited but we were not aware what destiny has set for us.
From school our class controller Ms. Sangeeta, our sports teacher Mr. Ashok , our principal Ms. Ruby, our school bus driver and my classmates (almost all) were all set to go. Riya brought a camera along with her. When we reached our destination spot I was amazed by the lake’s beauty that was really mesmerizing. We both were sitting by the lake side when Riya asked Ms. Sangeeta to take a photograph of both of us. Those were the best moments of my life. But that was just the starting.
On the second day when I woke up in the morning I saw something unexpected. Everybody was searching for a boy named Rahul .He was one of my classmate. He was missing. Everyone was saying that he might be hunted by the wild animals or he might be drowned in the lake and some were even talking about some ghost or spirit in the forest and I was imagining how people could say all such nonsense. We all were searching for him throughout that whole day and by the night we discovered that our bus driver was also missing. Only two more days were left for our trip to over when all this missing session started. We all were very shocked about this and therefore we all were asked to stay together whatever happens we were supposed to report anything strange to our teachers.
On that night i was wondering that this was my first trip and suddenly I heard something .I tried to tell about this to our teachers but they all were sleeping and I decided not to disturb them as I was not sure about the noise. So I myself followed the noise and after a few minutes of following what I saw was really scary and frightening. There was a man and a small girl like me. They were really in a messy condition. Their clothes were tattered but the most scary and wicked thing was that they were eating the dead bodies of our missing members our bus driver and my classmate. I was shocked to see that and I was shivering at that time. I rushed towards my base camp where we all were staying and I stared shouting to wake them all. Then I told them about everything which I saw there. Our teachers decided to leave that place immediately. Somehow those messy creatures came to know about our plan and they attacked us when we were about to leave our base camp.
We all started whining and screaming. We didn’t know what to do and we were also weaponless. Then we picked stones, pebbles and everything else which we can throw on both of them. In this attack Riya was seriously injured so few of us took her to the bus and rest of us were still fighting against them. We somehow managed to defend them and immediately took Riya to a nearby hospital and registered a report about all this to the police. Riya took almost a month to recover from her injuries but I think its almost impossible to recover from the horrible memories of this trip. We lost our classmate and our bus driver. This was my first trip and I learned a lesson from this trip that YOU NEVER KNOWS WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT.
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