Six Flags New Orleans

Six Flags New Orleans is, as its name says, a Six Flags in New Orleans. It was abandoned after a devastating hurricane in that area, and so for an assignment for school, I wrote this short story. Enjoy!

        My throat burned from lack of water, and I could barely see through my tears. I kept running though, not wanting to turn around yet. I did stop running, however when I reached a big iron gate. I sniffed and dug a key out my pocket, and, after fiddling with the lock on the gate for a few seconds, heard a click and pushed the gates open. I gulped, and then started running again, running in no specific direction, just running. Finally, I couldn’t run any farther. I gasped for breath and, panting, looked around me. There were the Farris Wheels and roller coasters, all which belonged to my parents, owners and founders of Six Flags New Orleans. My eyes were drawn to the Titan, the tallest roller coaster in all of the amusement park, thus making it a popular attraction. But right now, there were no people laughing and playing, and no screams were heard from the track. The whole Six Flags had been closed for a hurricane that was coming our way, but that wasn’t going to stop me. 

I was sure that the hurricane-Hurricane Sandy, they called it- wouldn’t be coming anytime soon, so I felt free to roam the park. This place was always a big comfort to me when I was in despair (I don’t really know why), and boy did I need comfort right now. I could feel the drying tears about to pour again, so I began running again, this time to a destination; Titan. I slowed to a walk when I reached the place where people boarded and got off the roller coasters. I walked past the roller coasters and stepped onto the track, the cold metal on my bare feet making me shiver. I kept walking on the track, using the long metal bars that ran across the track as ladder rungs when it came to steep hills. Thoughts raced through my head, and I tried to stop them before they made me dizzy. But then I remembered what my Aunt Hannah had once told me. “It’s best to just cry your problems out. Never keep them in, otherwise you will feel worse.” I took a deep breath and painfully let the thoughts flow. I forced myself to not start running on the track, and stiffly kept walking. 

My brother was leaving. I sucked in my breath in pain. How could he leave! He had just come home from college and now he was leaving to join the army! What if he got killed? What if he got worked to death in boot camp? What if I never saw him again? He had just revealed the news to us tonight, and my parents had been thrilled for him. But I was devastated! 

I reached the highest hill of the roller coaster and turned to look out over the park and into the woods behind it. I realized that the cool evening breeze had turned to a vicious, freezing cold wind. I squinted in the darkness and began to make out a lot of big storm clouds. “What!” The words caught in my throat. Was this Hurricane Catrina? I watched the storm clouds warily, and in five minutes my fears were confirmed. I was in the middle of a category five hurricane. 

My instincts told me to get off the track as soon as possible, but my brain seemed to have lost control. I couldn’t move. I could feel the wind about to blow me off the track to the ground twenty or so feet below. I came to my senses enough to at least get on my stomach on the track and cling onto the rungs. I loved heights, but this was terrifying. The storm raged on for about an hour longer, but it seemed like days. By the time the weather settled, I felt sick. I thought I could feel the roller coaster still swaying a little, but then again maybe it was just me. I willed myself to sit up from my very uncomfortable laying position, and nearly fell off from shock. My mom and dad’s park was ruined! Everything within sight was damaged, but most of it I couldn’t see because it was covered in water. I didn’t feel ready to start climbing down, but just then I thought I heard sirens in the distance. I watched as fire trucks and police cars pulled up to the amusement park, followed by one normal vehicle that I recognized as my parents minivan. Relief swelled over me in an instant, and that was when I realized how tired I was. I saw as my parents and brother jumped out of their vehicle screaming for me. I yelled back, my voice squeaking. 

Later, when I looked back at the amusement park, my heart went out to it. No more Six Flags New Orleans.

</

An Authors Life

Here is a small segment that I wrote from the point of view of an author. It is nothing much, just something I thought wouldn't hurt if I posted it. It's really short, and is supposed to be a little humorous. It is called An Authors Life. See what you think.

Ring! Ring! The alarm jolted me awake and nearly made me fall out of my chair. I quickly grabbed the edge of my desk before falling over backwards. I glanced bleary eyed at the alarm clock which was sitting on the bedside table beside my bed, and saw that it was six-o-clock.

“Ughh,” I groaned, “I forgot to turn it off. That’s just perfect for a Saturday.” I rubbed my eyes, and stood up to go turn the clock off. Then I went back to the desk and sat down with a sigh. “Well, I probably won’t fall back asleep now,” I thought. “Oh well.” 

I gazed down at the papers that I had been working on the night before; until I had fallen asleep, that is. As I looked at the unfinished story, I felt the sudden urge to write, as I seem to feel almost every time I look at a blank page or a pencil. I grabbed a mechanical pencil and soon found myself engrossed in my work.

By the time I had finished the fourth chapter of the story (I had been just starting it the night before), it was nearly lunchtime. My stomach growled when I saw that it was twelve-thirty, and I realized I hadn’t ever had breakfast. I reluctantly got up from my desk chair, opened my door, and walked down the hallway to the stairs. Before I even reached the kitchen the delicious aroma of hot dogs reached my nose, and made me feel even hungrier than before. Dad looked up from his grilling when I came in, and shook his head with a smile when he saw me. 

“What?” I asked, picking up a hotdog from a plate and grabbing the buns from a cabinet. “What’s so funny?”

“You authors,” He shook his head again and went back to cooking the hotdogs on his indoor grill. “Always forgetting to do things. Like get dressed,” he added. I looked down at my blue-and-green polka-dotted pjs and smiled sheepishly. “Oops.”

That's it! 

</

Tiger! Continued

Here is the rest of my tiger attack story.


 Later
   I woke up to the sound of beeping machines and calm voices. I saw a sympathetic woman's face looking down on me, and heard her say, "She's awake." 
       Wondering where I was I tried to sit up, but a sharp pain in an arm and my back caused me to fall back onto the bed with a groan. 
       "Yeah, you better not try to get up until your a little better, sweetie," the woman said in an even more compassionate voice. I looked at her in confusion, and as if in answer to my unspoken question she said, "Your'e in the hospital honey. They say you were attacked by a tiger, and as you may have already found out you took a pretty serious blow. The police found the body of the tiger also, though, and your friends say you managed to kill it before you blacked out." She was checking a machine near my bed, and turned a few knobs before answering another one of my silent questions. "Your'e two friends are alright, and very grateful to you." 
       Having been relieved of my main concern (my friends' health), I soon fell into a deep sleep.
                                                           The End

A MIni Story by Me! Continued

Here is the rest of my first mini story.


A second went by, then another. I heard some sudden movement in the bushes in front of me. I forced my eyes to stay shut. Another second went by… Cookie Dough barked sharply. My eye lids flew open. “Aaaagh!” I screamed. All I could see was teeth. But next all those rows of sharp teeth drew back, and I heard Dagger screech in pain. I backed out of the bushes immediately and stood up. 

Cookie Dough was digging his claws deep into the shark’s slippery flesh with anger, and biting Dagger as much and as hard as he possibly could. Dagger started flinging himself around once again, and they began to fight. After a few minutes I could tell that the shark’s energy was going down, but Cookie Dough’s was going down faster. After what seemed like hours, Cookie Dough fell off out of pure exhaustion. Poor dog! 

I turned to see the shark, and spun around and started running when I saw him looking straight at me, breathing heavily. I scrambled as fast as I could toward the huge tree I had been climbing before, and started to go up. As I climbed, I dared to hope that the shark could not go up high. Twice during the climb my long black hair got caught in the branches. I hurried to unwind it, but it took so long I was certain I would not be able to make it. I heard a commotion down below here and there, but kept on climbing. “Hang on Kiara!” someone called from below once. I looked down, and saw Sam with a giant stick in his hand. He was beating Dagger at the base of the tree as hard as he could with the stick. I clung onto the branches as I watched him, praying that he would be all right. Thankfully, Dagger was already all worn from earlier, so he did not put up much of a fight before falling flat on the ground. 

It was when I finally reached the bottom when I realized how tired I was. I could not believe what I had just gone through! A shark! If it had not been for Sam and Cookie Dough I probably would…Cookie Dough! I rushed over to the puppy that was just now getting up. I knelt down and picked him up. When he saw the shark laying there he barked and wagged his tail, as if he knew that it was dead. I laughed, and it felt so good! What a relief that all that was finally over. 

I turned to Sam who was standing breathless over the shark, still holding the stick. I asked him if he was alright. “Yeah,” he breathed, “I’m alright. But let’s get out of here fast!” I agreed. Together we hurried on the path leading to the city that now seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. I was never so thankful that I had my friends than on that day.

Tiger!

Another one of my mini stories.

          Click! I took my tenth photo of the unique bird of paradise. I looked at the result and shook my head. It was hard to get a good picture when the bird was hopping to-and-fro like it was. Click! Click! Click! After a few more photos I gave up for the moment and decided I would come back to it later. I let go of my camera and let it swing on the straps around my neck as I ran to catch up with my two friends, who were a little ways ahead of me.
          "Fiona!" one of my friends, Alissa, said to me once I reached them, panting heavily. "Look at this beautiful frog!" She reached out to a red-and-blue frog sitting on a tropical plant near the trail we were on.
          "No, don't touch that!" I almost yelled, jerking her away from the frog. She looked at me in confusion. "That's a poisonous dart frog," I explained. "Even though it's gorgeous, it's poison can kill you." Alissa jumped back in alarm. "Yikes!" She said. "That was close!"
           Gabriella, my other friend, sat on the other side of the trail carefully sketching a colorful flower which grew in front of her. "Isn't it amazing how beautiful everything is in the rainforest?" She said in her soft voice, admiringly gazing at her sketch as we walked up to her. Alissa and I both nodded in agreement.
           Just then there was a noisy rattling in the bushes behind us. Alissa and I spun around and Gabby (that was Gabriella's nickname) jumped to her feet. We looked intently at the place where we thought the noise had come from, and I realized I was holding my breath. Suddenly, something orange and black jumped out of the bushes. I fell down backwards in shock, my camera strap slipping off and my camera clattering and rolling a foot away. I heard a click as a button was hit and my camera took a picture, but I didn't bother to think about that, because I was to worried about what stood in front of us.
          I saw Gabby frozen in place out of the corner of my eye, and saw Alissa fall to her knees, also in shock, wide eyed. We all stared, terrified, at the huge tiger in front of us.
          I knew that we had no time for fear, though, when I saw the tigers narrowed eyes glaring at Gabby viciously. I willed myself to slowly stand up, and was surprised when I actually found myself doing it. I kept my eyes on the tiger all the time, hoping it wouldn't attack, at least not right then. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a large branch near Gabby's foot, and I quietly reached out to grab it. The tiger switched his gaze to me, and began to crouch low to the ground. I quickly shoved first Gabriella then Alissa into the bushes off the edge of the trail and swung my heavy branch to meet the tiger, who was now leaping at me with bared teeth. The tiger was knocked to the ground from the blow in the face, but immediately jumped back up again and leaped at me again.
        I don't remember anything after that, except for falling and seeing the tiger laying on the ground a ways away, just before everything went black.
                                                                   
To be continued.

A MIni Story by Me!

One of my mini stories I have written, and I thought you might want to read it. This one is kind of weird.

 “Huff, puff,” I panted hard as I climbed the practically Mount Everest tree. I told myself not to look down, because I knew that if I did I would be frozen in place for a long time. I was scared. I had always been afraid of heights, ever since the fourth grade, when I had fallen off a tall climbing wall and broken both of my arms. Now each time I climb up something even semi-tall, for a moment a vision of me falling down and never getting up again haunts my mind. Every single time since then someone has helped me down, at least after telling me to try to jump a dozen times. 

But this time I was trying. Not the jumping-down-from-really-high part, but the climbing-up-really-high part. I was determined to overcome my fear of heights, and to feel at home in the air, like I had before the fall. Right then I was taking an even bigger chance than most kids do. I was carrying my dog, my beagle puppy, up with me. So, I wasn’t the only one in that tree who was scared.

“It’s okay Cookie Dough,” I told the shaking four-month-old puppy. “We can do this.” As if he had heard me, my best friend, Sam, called to me from so far below on the ground: “You can do it! What do you see?” “All I see is woods for miles and miles!” I yelled back, starting to climb back down, “Nothing else!” 

Sam and I were lost. We had decided to explore our small (or so we thought) town of Mihhoma, and had ended up in a strange, very dense woods. We had traveled for hours, and now we did not know how to get back. There was no sign of any houses or schools or anything. So we were lost.

Suddenly, as I was climbing down, I saw something large coming up behind Sam. “Huh?” I said. I leaned forward to look, one hand holding on very tightly to a branch, and the other holding Cookie Dough. I gasped, and as I did I lost my grip on the tree branches and fell to the ground far below.

“Uumph!” I landed hard on the ground, right behind Sam, and right behind the shark. “Kiara are you all right?” Sam asked worriedly. My only response was a scream. My eyes were glued to the shark that was strangely floating in mid-air, as if it could fly. Its teeth were bared, like it was ready to strike at any moment. Sharks. Another one of my major fears since I was little. 

Sam spun around and fell back in shock. I heard him draw in his breath when he landed. I was still scooting back, and I ran into some thick bushes. I huddled inside, praying the shark would not notice me, and definitely not attack Sam! Sam started scooting back into some other bushes, but the shark’s eyes were still trained on him. The shark let out a growl, and even though it was not loud, it sent my heart beating fast. 

The humongous normally sea-predator had to be a great white shark because of its size. I could now see why it was called a great white shark for its skin was gleaming and practically reflecting the sun light into my eyes. And its jaw, oh its jaw! Its teeth looked like spears and the mouth was so big I was certain it could swallow me whole in a second. The shark’s eyes were an evil green, so evil that I felt that they alone would hurt me more than anything else on the shark.

My eyes were all of a sudden drawn to something hanging onto a branch just above the shark. Cookie Dough! The poor puppy was barely hanging onto the branch with one paw, and with a sharp yelp he immediately lost his grip and catapulted down… right onto the shark’s back. 

Everything was silent. Sam was now safely hidden in the bushes. I held my breath and did not dare move for fear that the huge beast would turn and target me. And for a moment little Cookie Dough sat motionless.

Then Cookie Dough slowly raised his head. Bad move. Dagger (that was what I started calling the shark later on) started swinging his tail around vigorously trying to free himself from the strange creature on his back. The puppy clung on with his claws, and that made Dagger roar even louder. The evil creature started swinging around to and fro, around in circles, and up and down. Finally Cookie Dough was slung off, right into my lap. He whimpered and ran in the bushes right next to a tree behind me. 

Dagger caught his breath for a second, and then glared at… the bushes I was in! Slowly I turned around, not wanting to see the shark any longer. If he did eat me, I did not want to see it! I closed my eyes and took a deep breath...