Secret of the Fox Kingdom

The Wizard

I woke up, jumping with fright, I was breathing heavily, my heart was pounding like never before and I was drenched in sweat. I've had some pretty scary dreams before, but none can come close to that one, it just gave me this horrible feeling that I can't explain. I stepped off of my bed and walked towards the curtains, I slowly pulled the curtains back, revealing day light. I could see the children in the window, opposite my house, staring at me. They pointed at me, jumping up and down, their mother then came in and told them off before closing the curtains. Something was special about me, that much was obvious, but what was that something? I walked away from the window and scanned the room, my bed was at the top left corner, the small kitchen at the top right. In between those was the cupboard... Where the body was, well, most of it anyway. I shook my head, trying to forget what happened, but such horrors cannot be forgotten. There was a little round rug in the centre, and nothing at the front of the house. I noticed a bucket on the kitchen counter, it was quite large and was made out of oak wood, there was a piece of paper next to it. I walked towards the bucket and read the message, it said:

"Dear hero, if you haven't noticed yet, there is no bath in your new home, so you'll have to fetch water from the well with this bucket and use it to bathe. Sorry, yours truly Shazimao."

"Hero? What does he mean hero?" I asked myself, I scrunched the paper up and dropped it in the bin. I then searched the shelves for coffee, no coffee to be found, I noticed a jar behind the kettle, I walked towards the kettle and moved it out of the way. The jar was filled with coffee, right to the top, but I still had to find a mug. It was a little easier to find a mug, it was in the small cubpoard above the kettle, I pulled one out trying not to knock the others out of the cupboard. I took it out and placed it by the jar of coffee without breaking a thing! This is unusual for me, as back home I was always the clumsy one who drops his plates and cups. Speaking of home, surprisingly, I was coping well without my mother, I missed her non the less but not as much as I thought I would. I grabbed hold of the kettle lid and pulled it with all my strength, it was extremely hard to open, but after a while the lid clicked and flew off. It hit the ground with a loud smash and rattled continuously on the floor, I ran over and placed my hand on it to stop the rattling, I then picked it up and placed it on the counter. I grabbed the kettle and headed towards the door, I grabbed the cold door knob and twisted it, the door opened and I walked outside. I had to ask a random Fox where the well was, he told me it was outside the temple on the hill, east of the kingdom, I thanked him and waved goodbye before setting off east. There were many little stands in the fox kingdom, the majority were fruit stands, they sold all kinds of fruit that you can eat on earth and they sold fruits that are only grown on this planet. I had to stop at one stand and take a look, there was one fruit that caught my eye, it was shaped as a pyramid and was a mix of purple and blue, it had no skin and was like the flesh of an Apple. I asked the man at the stand what it was called, "Persiu." the fruit was called a Persiu, the man kindly let me have one for free! I bit into it, to discover that it was more like the flesh of a donut peach than that of an apple's, it was so juicy and thirst quenching, the more I bit into it, the more I found out about this fruit, the flesh gradually changes to a red-ish pink-ish colour as you reach the centre, there is also no core. I ate the final piece of the fruit and licked my lips with satisfaction, I then quickly continued my tiring journey to the well. After a few more minutes of walking, I had reached the well, it was a typical cobblestone well, with a smooth stone roof held up by small logs. in the centre was the rope, rapped around a stick that was attached to the logs, I grabbed hold of the end of the rope and tied it onto the kettle's handle. I took the lid off and placed it on the ground, holding the kettle in the other hand, I then dropped the kettle into the well. The weight of the kettle made the stick rotate, the rope unraveled at the speed of a racing car's tire! You'd think it'd only fall for around 2 seconds, but it kept on going. "That's one big well!" I told myself, expecting to hear a splash any second now... Nothing, nothing but the tweaks of the stick spinning and the sound of the rope unravelling. I wondered how long the rope was, but my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of breathing. I felt an icy finger go down my spine and a cold breath on my shoulder, all of a sudden the unravelling rope goes into slow motion and slowly everything turns black and white and cartoony. It was as if I was in a 1930's cartoon, except it had a depressing and nerve-racking feeling to it. Music began to play, it was the type of music that is played when something is about to jump out on you, but nothing ever did. That wasn't a good thing, it made me extremely paranoid, I just stood there waiting for something to happen. Around 10 seconds later cartoony versions of my little twin sisters crawled out of the well, all of their actions and movements were done in an unreal, cartoony way. Once they were out of the well and onto the ground, they looked at me with a blank face for 10 seconds. They then acted shocked, again in a cartoony way, and did this long exaggerated tiptoe towards a building. Half way there they stopped, turned around and then looked at me with a sad face, they than began devouring eachother slowly, limb by limb, organ by organ. They did this in a realistic way whilst crying and screaming in agony. A pit was formed in my stomach, I took a few steps back before bashing into something behind me, I immediately turned around. Shazimao was there, staring at me, his head slowly tilted "What's wrong, Kim?" he asked in an unnatural, disturbing voice. "Don't you like your party?" He asked, his horrible voice growing louder. Suddenly his head tilted completely upside down, and blood came gushing out of his mouth, splattering against the ground. His skin began peeling off and bubbling, a horrible sizzling noise could be heard and a stench unlike any other filled the air. His head tilted back to normal and as his bubbling face slowly melted he screamed "Why would you do this!? Why!?" he sounded just like shazimao now, he was screaming and groaning uncontrollably. His flesh then melted over his mouth, I could just about hear his faint screams. Soon he was just a skeleton with bits of flesh on his rib cage, "Save me, Kim!" he plead with a voice similar to that of my grandfather's. I kicked it in the stomach, it fell to the floor. Suddenly, the loud thump of the unravelling rope coming to a stop shocked me. I clenched my eyes shut, "K-kim, what?!" said a voice, I opened my eyes, to my relief everything was back to normal, the sound of the rope creaking as it sways gracefully could be heard. "Kim?" I looked down to find Shazimao lying on the ground holding his stomach "Are you okay Kim?"