A Clash of Fangs: A Battle for Freedom

By Kearnon Henske

     “Ahhhhhhh!” I screamed as I came upon what looked like an old, abandoned asylum. At first,it looked like a run-down and broken building, but when I looked closer, I saw a guard on duty. This guard was heavily armed and was keeping a close eye on the building. He stood motionless, staring at it very intently. I was with my friends, and when we saw this,  we immediately were freaked out. My friends started backing up, and I sensed the worry in their eyes that something was freaking them out. “What is that?” Charlie asked, his voice cracking with fear.

      “I don’t know,” Ed whispered.  

     Me and my friends were all about to leave, but then the guard turned his head, saw us, and shouted, “Intruders!”

My friends and I were obviously scared so we ran and ran like never before to try and escape. Just when we lost sight of him, I heard an engine revving up, and before long a car was racing after us. We knew we couldn’t outrun them so what we did next was something unexpected. We turned around and started to run towards the car. What we hoped would happen was the driver would have been caught by surprise and would move out of the way, but no!  He started driving straight towards us. After we saw this, we were caught by surprise and not sure of what to do. In an instant,  the car was within 10 seconds of hitting us so we did the unthinkable. Once it was a second from hitting us,  we jumped to the side with the car completely missing us. Now that we had this lead, we started to run the other way, but then the guard pulled out a gun.

Once we saw this, we knew that we were in trouble. We had no other choice but to put our hands up and wait for him to take us to wherever he wanted. After some time, he pulled up right next to us, keeping the gun aimed at us. But out of the blue, Ed smacked it out of his hand then kicked him leaving him stumbling, and after a very short period of time, Charlie grabbed the gun and aimed it back at the guard. We thought that we had just gotten the upper hand, but then more cars pulled up with more guards with guns and we were surrounded.

We were grabbed by the neck while still at gunpoint and were split up and taken into different cars. In each car two guards held us each at gun point so there wasn’t much that we could do. We were driven back to the building and were brought inside. Seeing all of the eerie decorations wasn’t really helping. We were dragged into a room with a throne and a creepy looking man sitting on it and he said, “Well, look what we have here.”

The ghoulish man took a closer look at us. He seemed surprised that us kids had come all the way out to this abandoned place. “Please let us go, we mean no harm,” I begged, but he didn’t seem to care.

      “I don’t need you as a slave, fool. I need you as a test subject for my next experiment,” he said in a spine chilling voice. When I heard these words, my heart sank to the bottom of my body. I looked at my friends, and they had the same reaction. But then he said, “You can leave under one circumstance.” My heart started to lift again, but then he said, “But you must fight in the tiger pit to earn your way out” I knew that I would rather get eaten alive than to be part of his experiments so I said, “Deal”.

     My friends were half shocked, half not. Charlie asked, “Are you sure about this?” “I would rather be eaten alive than be with him for any longer.” The man heard this and said “Then it is settled. You will fight in one hour”. I received only a knife as a weapon to fight the tiger. After walking into  the pit, I was surprised to see an audience of people excited to watch the fight. 

     As soon as I was about to step into the arena, I was pulled back by Ed, and he and Charlie said, “You got this!” and with that, I stepped into the pit not knowing what was going to happen and not sure if I would make it out alive. 

     Watching everybody in the stands chanting and waiting anxiously for the fight, I locked eyes with the tiger. This tiger was massive- much bigger than I had anticipated, and I knew the chances of me surviving were extremely slim. “Battle!” cried one of the guards. The tiger immediately rushed me trying to launch a fatal bite,  but with the knife in hand, I was ready. I quickly sidestepped the tiger and stabbed it in its rear flank. I was expecting the tiger to wail in pain, but instead it simply shrugged it off like it was nothing. This obviously caught me by surprise, and I had to act quickly. Using my instincts I tried to run, but the tiger easily caught up and started to try and bite me. Since the tiger was so fast, it managed to get a bite on my leg. “Owww!” I wailed in pain, but since my life was on the line, I decided to give it everything I had. I jumped onto the tiger and stabbed it repeatedly in the heart, hoping for a miracle to happen, and surprisingly it did. The tiger eventually began to lose energy and flopped onto the ground, dead. 

     With blood on my leg and all over my body, I came out victorious and beamed in glory. My friends came rushing out and started to hug me with joy. The scientist was obviously mad, but knew he made the deal and accepted the outcome. “You have proven yourself worthy to leave my palace”, he said and gave a quick hand movement to one of the guards. The guard led us out of the palace while bowing and then vanished back into it. We all were extremely happy, relieved, and exhausted. Ed and Charlie said, “We knew you could do it.” 

     “I had some doubts, Charlie,” I said, “until I heard, “You got this!” come out of your mouth.  That’s what led me to victory. Thanks, friend.”  And with that, we started for home.