===================Helpless in the Dark=====================
=========================by MonkeyV=========================
===============submittion for survival contest==============
years ago, in the jungle of a far off planet...
A boy named Zane awoke from a terrible nightmare in the middle of the night. Though it was freezing outside, Zane was drenched in sweat. His heart seemingly beating at a million miles an hour, he took a few deep breaths and looked up at the full moon. "I'd better head to the pond and get some water." Zane thought.
He silently ran through the dense trees without crushing a twig. Zane knew better than to make noise durring a full moon. The beasts always came out during full moons. The beasts are horrible but blind creatures that will chew at you, legs first up to your head then play with your body until you die, if they can find you.
Finally, Zane reached the pond. He took long, quiet sips until he was no longer thirsty. Zane got up to leave but stopped in horror. A beast was standing not twenty feet away in the trail he had used to get to the pond. He noticed a tall tree to his right. "Queitly, slowly climb the tree..." Zane thought.
"One branch at a time..." Zane just kept climbing up and up, one branch at a time. "Just keep climbing." he thought to himself. Almost at the top! when suddently, Snap! The branch under Zane's left foot broke, falling to the ground with a loud "Thud!". Immediately, the beast let out a blood curdling scream, signaling to the rest of them.
He quickly scurried to the top of the tree, terrified. The beast came over and started pounding at the tree, howling to all his friends. More and more of the horrid creatures came and smashed the tree. Then finally, Zane fell. He landed about five feet away from the first beast he saw. They all stopped hitting the tree. As Zane attempted to get up to run away, he felt a horrible pain in his pelvous. It was broken!
He fell over and rolled down the gentle slope, beasts chasing after him. Zane rolled straight into a bush of thorns, extremely paiful, but safe. The beasts had appeared to have stopped following him. It was silent. Zane looked out through a hole in the thorns, but something blocked his view. He was looking into the enourmouse blind eyes of a beast and smelled its terrible breath, and he realized that the beast could also smell his.
The creature was going to yell out to his comrades at any moment, so Zane picked up a jagged rock and stabbed it into the beasts eye. Distracted by aweful pain, it allowed him to escape and hide inside a nearby hollowed out tree trunk.
Waiting out the hours in the trunk, the rotten smell of beast blood got fainter as the sun rose. Zane had survived the terrible night.
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much shorter than the limit of 5000. how do you like it?