Stories 2: The Burrow

This essay sample focuses on the stories (imaginative essay) in the section B of the English SPM 1119 paper. You can use this story to fit the question or carefully tweak the type of characters or the storyline to cater to the needs of the question (I thought that was rather obvious but just in case it wasn't).

"You CANNOT go!" my mother asserted for the umpteenth time, but it did little to quell my little brother's innate thirst for adventure in the wilderness. Instead, it only made Manny all the more dogged towards realising his desire to explore the burrow in the forest behind our humble abode. But of course, one cannot expect another (especially mischievous children) to blindly obey one's command just by stating it without a hint of reason.

So, I shifted my attention from my cold cereal to my sour-looking brother at the other side of the dining table. Slyly, I spoke: "Manny, why do you want to go to that burrow so badly?"

He looked up at me, about to mutter something before I continued: "Is it the cute adorable rabbits you seek?" His face lit up as he nodded excitedly.

"But I'm afraid they are no rabbits there, Manny. They are probably gone. All of them."

"Huh?! Why not? Rabbits live in burrows, don't they? Have they moved homes?!"Manny blurted, his face now peppered with hundreds of question marks.

"It's not that they didn't like their burrows. It's just that ..." I deliberately paused momentarily to pique his curiosity. Sure enough, he immediately remarked, "Just what?", in exasperation.

"You see, a few years back, when I was about your age, every kid in the neighbourhood was just like you, attracted to that burrow like bees to honey. They simply adored the rabbits living there and would spend all day playing, catching and feeding those fur-balls. They practically gave those unwitting rabbits royal treatment. They incessantly spoiled and stoked the rabbits with truckloads of carrots. Hahaha...you could hear mothers scolding their kids for taking all the carrots and best of all, carrots were selling like hotcakes at the grocer's for the kids were forking out their savings for those orange sticks! Can you believe it?"

Wiping off the tears of laughter, I resumed: "But all of that changed one fateful night - Halloween night. Every children on Meranti Road was all keyed up and ready for trick-or-treating in their scary or ridiculous costumes. But John, our neighbour's son had other plans in mind. he wanted to ... how should I say it? ... 'bunnify' his Halloween by bringing along a rabbit 'ghost' - draped in white cloth."

I drank some milk to clear my throat and continued: "The night was still young. John, with a lantern illuminating his path, was racing to the burrow when suddenly his leg caught something and down he to the soil he went. When he shone his lantern over his leg, do you know what he saw? A hand - a decaying dirty-green detached hand with bones protruding out of its wrist. It was filled with maggots. But there was something strange about that horrifying hand, as John quickly discovered; its fingers moved involuntarily as though still attached to whomever its owner was. Forcefully, it gripped onto John's left foot  and slowly constricted, much to John's pain."

"John, who was still a small little boy, struggled and struggled in vain to release himself till he decided to head back home to seek help. As he turned around and sprang to his feet, he knocked into something almost as sturdy as wood, and fell on his back. But the pain he suffered quickly vanished upon witnessing a towering figure before his very eyes under the lantern's light. A sickly pale green-skinned man whose head sank into his torso  with eyes almost sinking into their sockets, was glaring soullessly into John's dilated, scared eyes. 'Yu haf samtink dat bilunks tu mii,' the man muttered as he went on to drain the life out of poor little John and turned John into one of its kind."

Manny who was full of ears, suddenly interrupted meekly: "Did John die?"

"Yes, he did die ... die before his family. John somehow managed to return home; his father found him lying before their doorstep. Oh you can't imagine what his parents were feeling at that moment. Their son's face was pinkish-blue, his eyes were white and pupil-less, and worst of all  ... his abdomen was torn apart - his intestines were gone and maggots were pouring out from it instead. Ughh..."

Manny did not finish his cereal that morning; he just left for his room and spent the rest of the day reading and working on crossword puzzles. And, he did not utter a word about the burrow since.