Pitbulls I Have Known by Jeff Hogan
in response to Pitbulls I Have Known exercise

Lunch money. At school it was a valuable resource, like gold was to goldminers, clients were to lawyers and at least one trip a year to somewhere in the world was to my grandmother. However, with all these things, there was something to steal these resources. Other goldminers, lawyers, deaths in the family and, with lunch money, school bullies.

The school bully at our school was James Mortimer Rela. He was rich, had a family who didn’t give a damn and he received everything he wanted, and if he didn’t, he stole it. Like the time when he was eight, he nicked a women’s handbag so he could buy a racing car. Or the time when he was eleven, when he stole a computer game from the library. The librarian, an overweight and elderly male, could never catch him. But the one I’ll never forget was when he shoved me into a video stand at an electronics store. While everyone was helping me up, he walked out with a brand new, shiny Playstation 2.

You might ask why I never stand up to him. The reason is, his weight, speed and strength. He weighed a good one hundred and sixty pounds. He could run the four hundred meters and never get tired as well as being able to lift up his own bodyweight, and more if he tried harder. He was as indestructible as a tank, as powerful as a nuclear explosion. But then one day I had an idea.

The one thing James could never resist was to take lunch money. He could make fifty dollars a day and not even have a job. And almost always he would spend the money on the canteens most valuable, edible cuisine, the Mister Feaster. It was ten dollars though, but it would have all you’re eating needs. Chocolate, sandwich, fried rice, soft drink, hot chips and more. It costed a pretty penny but it was worth it and James would always get it. However, James also had a fear. Pit bulls. Large, fierce, ugly, mean, slobbering, Pit bull dogs. That’s what James called them. My plan was hideous but it just might work.

It was photo day. I came into the canteen with a ten-dollar note in my hand. All the people in my class gave up fifty cents each to put into my plan. I walked right past James’ gang. There were a lot of teachers around getting their photos taken so they could do nothing but stare. I went up and ordered the Mister Feaster. Once I received it I slipped on the, ‘Mister Dumb Jokes sleeping potion,’ and sat right near the gang. The teacher’s left and James struck. He picked me up and threw me into the garbage. He then started eating and soon afterwards he had zonked out. A group of nine kids helped me carry James away and towards the pit bull cage.

James never returned to my school after that. The shock when he woke up and found himself surrounded by pit bulls made him think he shouldn’t come to school anymore. As a celebration, everyone ordered the Mister Feaster and ate it in piece. No James came and took it away. However, I didn’t end up going to the party. I was suspended for throwing James to the Pit bull’s but I’ll always remember that experience.

Mysteries of A Sea Shell
based on Guided Imagery

The seashell had a beautiful inside, pink, white, a variety of colors moving in and out with the tide. The water was crystal clear with fish swimming around it. I was on something like a pier, surrounded by water, in a shell. It was a lot like the shell’s my grandmother collects and pastes on picture frames. I especially liked the one of her and me at Cabinosa, the place for people too lazy to pitch a tent.

I heard a drip, drip, and drip sound somewhere within the shell. I turned slowly and walked up the pier. Inside was a spiral of mystery. Jellyfish, fish, sea snails all around, riding slowly along the water elevator which went up and down with the tide, in the middle of sparkling silver. I stepped between a toadfish and a sea snail and rose up into the next room.

The next room was incredible. A hole in the top acted both as a chandelier and fountain as water poured with seawater upon a fountain of coral. The coral was beautiful, a sky blue with little starfish around it. The starfish were dancing in the sunlight while the toadfish dished out at the all you can eat buffet, with all sorts of bits they had stolen from unwary fishermen. The sea animals looked so happy. I wanted to have fun, sing, and dance with all the animals but I needed to know where the dripping was coming from. So I left the buffet, squeezed past two salmon and rushed into the next room.

The room was full of fountains. The pressurized water gushed up towards the spiraled ceiling. All the baby fish, who would have just hatched from their bubble like eggs, were testing their cute fishy bodies by swimming past and dodging the gushes of water. They were laughing and talking, bubbles flowing from their little mouths. Suddenly all the fountains blasted up at once. Everyone even more soaked then we were before, laughed out loud and talked some more. I had found out what the drip, drip, drip was and now it was time to leave. I exited the shell and onto the sand below.

I looked down upon a city of crab holes just under the shell. Beyond the city, was a forest of seaweed poking out from the sandy ground. Before long a sea horse drawn carriage greeted me. I sat next to a crab, and with a loud ‘Crack,’ of a whip, we were off riding towards the forest. I looked towards the enormous shell and as it grew smaller I tried to catch it, but I knew what would happen to all my sea bound friends if I did, if I raised it from the ocean floor. I lowered my hand, and I was greeted to the surface by a bright light.

As I pulled myself out of my trance, I returned my gaze to the shell. In the shallows of the beach, just near Cabinosa. It had hypnotized and brought me into a dream world. If only, if only, it had all been true.

Crime Baron's Table
inspired by Crime Baron's Table

The smell of death filled the bloodstained room as the police opened the doors to the crime scene. Three men, two women lay slaughtered on a dusty, bloodstained stage in the Hirsdan theatre, three miles south of Newcastle. The hideous crime took place when a part of a play took the turn for the worse three hours ago.

Three hours ago Mark, Jake and Brad were talking about their trip to the pub the night before while waiting for the girls Jess and Liz to arrive. Mark and Jake were brothers, both with black hair and brown eyes. Brad had spiky blonde hair and blue eyes. Jess had a brown ponytail, a lot of bangles and green eyes. Liz had her black hair in dreadlocks. The girls as usual made a big entrance by blasting their vans horn and slamming open the stage door. The started rehearsing for the play straight away, the play that would never go on.

The play was about four teenagers entering a hotel led by spooky Mr. Jockson, who was played as by Brad. Mr. Jockson was meant to murder Liz and Jake over the night and Jess and Mark would escape and call the police. But Mr. Jockson would track them down and murder them all. They started to practice. As they approached the final scene the janitor came to sweep up so they all went to have a soda. Liz and Jake went back to the stage to practice in the inn scene. After the soda Mark and Jess went upstairs to do the final scene. They didn’t notice the blood on the wall of the inn scene.

The police discovered Liz and Jake’s bodies in the inn scene and Mark and Jess’s bodies in a set made to look like Liz’s house. The body of the janitor was found strung up as well with a phone in his left hand and the numbers ‘000,’ dialed into the phone. Brad was nowhere to be seen and he seemed to have disappeared.