by Liam Winterton
One very, very cold summer day, an inquisitive kid named Alex was going through the bush behind his backyard in his new house. As he was looking through his vast backyard, he stumbled across a mysterious piece of witchcraft—it looked like a glass can, but it had a weird metal pole sticking up through the top with some writing.
It read something like this:
Whoever opens this bottle will turn into one of the most unimaginable creatures on this planet, a f …
Sadly for Alex, the rest of the last word had faded away over time. Then, Alex started thinking. What could this animal be? Soon all the thoughts came through his head. Ferret, firefly?
After about ten seconds, Alex finally came to his senses and dropped the bottle and ran. Unfortunately for Alex, as he dropped the bottle, the lid came flying off, and about five seconds later after this accident, Alex got knocked out.
“Alex, Alex, wake up!” called out a voice from just beyond Alex’s ears, but when he woke up, he wished that he didn’t. Because when he woke up, he saw the worst thing imaginable, a fish!
Alex really wanted to faint again, but he couldn’t, so he told his parents that they were fish too! But Alex’s parents weren’t surprised, as if they already knew that they were these despicable creatures.
Alex’s mum started explaining that they had a double life as a fish for as long as they had him. “The only way you can become full human again is if you get the special key to the chest all the way in New Zealand,” she said.
Now Alex was determined, so he started swimming, and swimming he went. He went about 20 kms before he found something shocking—it was five bull sharks swimming around the only hole in a big fence that led to New Zealand. So, Alex went swimming back.
His parents started saying it was impossible and that he should just stay here till the next full moon. But Alex was determined, so he picked up some sharp pieces of coral on the seabed, got some teeth, and got a couple of grains of sand as mini grenades. Then he set off on his adventure …
*
As he was swimming, Alex started to think whether he should turn back because of all the defences that were on the way to New Zealand. Finally, he was at the gate with the bull sharks. Alex looked through his bag made of coral, and he found his sand bombs.
Alex threw the sand bombs right in the sharks’ mouths, and they exploded! Except for one, who was the strongest. He chased Alex in and out of the multi-coloured coral and through the shark valley, which was a stupid idea by Alex, because there were hundreds of sharks in shark valley! Alex weaved through all the sharks who were trying to eat him up!
Alex finally started swimming up to the gate, where he swam through the hole. Now Alex was safe! He was swimming for quite a while, when finally, he found the chest. But in front of the chest there was an obstacle course.
On the obstacle course there was parkour, hills and dips, a quiz, and a fight. Alex started doing the parkour, and it was quite easy. In fact, everything was easy up until the fight, where Alex had to fight this thing that was a whale.
Alex got some gloves made of whale blubber and the whale got human fat.
3 2 1, Fight!
Alex and the whale started hitting each other. The whale hit Alex so hard that it broke Alex’s teeth. Just as Alex was about to give up, Alex’s parents came in and punched the whale to a near death.
Soon after, Alex asked his parents how they got here so quickly. They said, “Magic.”
Within minutes, the family of three opened the chest, and …
*
Alex woke up as a human. He was very surprised and started wondering if it was all a dream.
But it wasn’t.
