Dark place
I am in a dark place. I am just standing alone in a dark place. It is so dark I cannot see my own arm. I am scared. I don’t know where I am. I
don’t know why I am in this dark place. I cannot hear anything either. There is no sound and nothing to see. I cannot leave the dark place
because I do not know how to get out of it. I don’t even know how I came to be in a dark place.
I decide to just stand and wait until I can see or hear my way out of the dark place. I wait a long time and being to cry. I don’t like being in
this dark place. I hear the sound of footsteps. I am scared because the sound of the footsteps, sound as if they are getting closer to me. The
sound of the footsteps stops but I know that someone is standing close to me in this dark place. I am too terrified to move.
I want to scream and run but I cannot see, so cannot run. I want to scream but if I scream perhaps the person who is standing close by will hear my
scream and know that I am in this dark place. My breathing is loud and I am trying to hold my breath so not to make a sound. It is hopeless. The
person who is in this dark place will have heard me breathing.
I begin to see light filtering into the dark place. I wait for my eyes to adjust and slowly I see that I am in a room. It is a dark room and there
is light filtering in from underneath a door. As I try to focus on my surroundings, I see that there is a man standing directly in front of me. He
is staring at me. I realise that he could not only hear my breath, but as he was standing so close to me, he would have felt it.
Startled, I stepped backwards and looked at the man’s face. I ran out of the dark room. I ran into another room that had more light in it and
decided to hide. But I could see the door of the dark room was left open and as I hid I could see the man standing, waiting. I cannot sit and watch
the man waiting in the dark room, so I decide to run.
I run, but while I am running I soon realise there is no safe place to run to, no safe place to hide in. I cannot run away from the man standing in
the dark room. There is no escape.
Dark room
I hate this dark room. I wish it would go away. I am sitting in the middle of the dark room. I hold my knees in my arms. There is enough light so
see the shape of the room. The man isn’t standing here this time. I can see a bed. It is my bed when I was little. Now that I see it, I run over
to hide underneath it. I am safe there hiding. I wonder why in this dark room my bed is here? This dark room is exactly like my bedroom when I was
a little girl. I see from underneath my bed my Sister’s bed against the far wall. I can see she is in her bed asleep.
If the bedroom door opens, my bed is the first thing that can be seen. From under my bed, I can see if the door is opened. I can see that the door
is slightly ajar and the hallway light is filtering into the room. I don’t know why I am hiding under my bed and I don’t know why I am scared.
I can hear the sound of someone walking up the hallway. I can see the shadow of the person as they walk past the door. I hold my breath. I don’t
want the door to open.
Standing Room Only
I am in the dark place. The dark place is my bedroom when I was a child. It is dark because it is at night. I hate the nighttime. I am under my
bed again but that isn’t a safe place to hide anymore. I hide there whilst I think of another place to hide. My Sister and I have a small cupboard
for our clothes. One side of it is a wardrobe; the other side has a little mirror and three or four drawers. I decide to hide in the wardrobe. I
quietly sneak over to the wardrobe and stand in there. I hold the brass clasp to close the wardrobe door. I can’t manage to close it completely so
I hold it to keep it in position. There isn’t much room so I can only stand. I am tired and want to sleep but I won’t go to sleep because it is
not safe to go to sleep in this room. My Sister is asleep in her bed again. I wonder why she doesn’t hide like I do?
I stand in the wardrobe a long time. Even though I am tired and want to go to sleep I stay awake and listen for the sound of any movement. The
wardrobe is dark but if the bedroom door opens I will be able to see the hallway light coming into the room. From the wardrobe I can hear the
television in the lounge room.
My arms ache because I have been holding the clasp to keep the door closed for a long time. I rest my head against the wardrobe and want to cry. I
won’t cry; I have to be very quiet. I hear the sound of my Mother coming home. Our bedroom is the closest to the front verandah. I can hear her
keys with her at the front door. It is safe now so I quickly jump into my bed to go to sleep.
No Places Left To Hide
The wardrobe isn’t a safe place to hide anymore so I try to think of other places I can hide until my Mother gets home. I can’t hide under my
Brother’s bed because his bed has draws underneath it. I need to go to the toilet but I am too frightened to leave my bedroom. I don’t want to
walk past the person who is sitting in the lounge room watching television.
I can’t think of anywhere left to hide. I get into bed with my Sister. She tells me to get out and go to my own bed. We will get in trouble if we
are not in our beds. I get in my bed and hold onto my dolly. I don’t like this bedroom. I want to run away.
I can hear the footsteps in the hallway. I lay very still. The bedroom door opens and I hear him waking my Sister up. She gets up out of her bed
and leaves our bedroom. I hear her walk into my Mother’s bedroom. I go to sleep.
Little Dolly
I was in the sports stadium playing basketball with my friends, when I saw a little man whistling as he walked along the white line marking out the
basketball court. I stopped playing basketball and couldn’t believe my eyes: there was a little man walking along the white line! I picked him up
in my hand and just observed him.
I stood there thinking about what to do about him. I walked over to the desk where there was a little garden box and decided to place him there as it
would be safe. I then ran out of the stadium and went straight to my Teacher to talk to him.
“I saw a little man while I was playing basketball”
“What was the little man doing?” He asked.
“He was walking and whistling”
“Where is the little man now?”
“I put him in the garden box on the desk” I replied.
My Teacher told me to go back to the stadium and play basketball.
I ran back to the stadium and as I closed the door behind me, I found myself immediately in a garden. I was confused and thought I had gone out the
wrong door. I immediately turned around to go back the way I had come, but as I turned around, the door had gone; there were only trees. I began to
panic and feel for the door that was there before. It was no longer there. I sat confused for a moment and then I decided to walk around to see if I
could find another door so I could get back to the stadium.
As I walked, I saw the man in the little hat and tiny little jacket that I had found walking whistling in the sports stadium talking to people in the
garden, but he was no longer tiny, he was same size as me. I ran up to him and shouted: “Hey! Do you remember me? I put you in the garden
box?”
He looked worried.
“You were walking along the white line of the basketball court. I nearly stepped on you!”
He knew I had put him in the garden box but pretended not to know what I was talking about. He just stared at me as I spoke.
“We are obviously trapped in the garden box that sits on the desk!”
“I am in a garden box that sits on a desk, a desk?” he asked.
“Yes!”
I was determined to get the little man and myself out of the garden box.
“We are in a garden box, if we go to the edge of the box then we can get out of it”…
There were other people in the garden and we all began running to find the edge of the boundary.
I realised that the people didn’t know they were in a garden box. At the same time, I wasn’t sure myself but as I had put the little man in the
garden box and there he was, that is where I must be. I had to get back to the stadium where I was playing basketball.
We reached the edge of the boundary and all began pushing on the retaining wall. We all pushed together and after some time, the wall began to
buckle. As soon as we saw the wall moving we began to push with more fervor. With one great push we fell with the wall onto the desk in the stadium.
We got up off our knees and looked around. I could see my friends I play basketball with. They were standing on the basketball court. I began to
yell and wave my arms around. “Hey! Hey! Here I am. I am here!”
Nobody could hear me so I kept yelling and waving my arms about to try and get their attention. I saw a big me sitting down on the basketball court.
I could not believe my eyes. How can I be here and be sitting down on the basketball court? I slid down one of legs of the desk and ran over to
where I saw myself sitting. People were standing around me. I could see my Teacher talking to the big me sitting in the middle of the court. The
big me had her head between her knees. (2)
I ran up to myself and yelled at the big me. “Hey! Here I am!”
The big me just stared at the little me. The big me then picked the little me up, got up and ran off the basketball court and sat in the corner of
the sports stadium. I could see my friends resume playing basketball, one of my friends were angry with me because I had interrupted the game. My
Teacher walked over and sat with me. “I didn’t know I had a small me, I am going to look after and protect her”. My Teacher told me to go the
sick room and rest.
continued


