Young Writers Society

prompt: Your story is about a football player in an Irish castle munching on melons.

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I've decided I don't like Irish castles.

First, they're hideous to look at, though I'm too afraid of saying that out loud. Pretty or not, I do not want to risk the wrath of some old Viking-Zombie.

Second of all, they're GIGANTIC.

I mean, what if you were a foreigner, come for a visit down this old dandy castle that's just your average haunted house; and then, just because it would be funny, the rest of your friends leave you down in the dungeons'-area (at least, it looks like a dungeon; if it were a bedroom, I can't imagine anyone sleeping in it), and you don't have anything to eat but watermelons. I mean, seriously, you'd think those morons could've at least left me with some potato chips, right?!

Under normal circumstances, by which I mean when there's sunlight and rats are not running about in my stomach, I would have tried to find my way out. But, geography and mapping isn't exactly my strong point. I'm the quarterback of my football team, for god's sake! I cannot think like a compass!

Which is why I'm sitting on what I think (hope) is a bed, munching on melons (my good-for-nothing friends had the decency to leave it cut).

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Thirty minutes Later.

Status update: Cell Service dead (just your average cliche, innit?), halfway through my third melon.

Good news: I'm thirty minutes closer to seeing sunlight.

Bad news: There's only one melon left.

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Someone's laughing at me.

From behind the pillar in the room.

I don't really feel like going up and checking. My last watermelon is currently undergoing severe breakdown through gas juices (or was it gastric juices?), and I've very recently just discovered that melon seeds are much, much more tastier than the melon itself.

The person chuckles again. At least, I think it's a chuckle; it's sounds more like a lot of huffing.

I sigh (nope, it is not a shiver; just a sigh).

"Delilah? Jones? Okay, joke's over! My last melon's been stolen by some rats, so time's up! Come out from there!"

The person comes out (nope, was definitely not expecting that), and my heart panics just slightly- I said slightly- upon seeing not two, but only one figure, so thin it couldn't have been either Delilah or Jones.

Jake Timberr does not panic.

So, very calmly, I say, "Do not come any closer; I have the sudden urge to pee."

"Don't do that!" the boy shrieks.

A young boy. Very normal. And very alive.

Relief floods through me.

It's a miracle how much living things calm me down. Delilah's just the opposite: she says she would rather prefer the non-living; I guess 'dead' and 'non living' are two different things.

So I'm definitely better now, and my curiosity piqued at the earnestness with which the stranger asked me not to pee.

So I say, "Why ever not? Peeing is a human right."

"You can't, because....because I'll have to clean it up," he says.

I tilt my head (more for effect, because I can think without tilting my head, thank you very much).

"You're the caretaker?" I ask.

The boy nods.

"But you're so young!"

He sighs; shakes his head. "Ah, saibhir Brit."

Did he just curse at me? At me? School quarterback, fastest track runner; I could beat this guy to pulp; and did he just curse at me?!

"You should go back to your friends," he says.

"Yeah, except I'm stuck here because I don't have a bloody map."

The boy just looks at me like I'm the dumbest person on earth, which is totally not true (Jones is the dumbest person on earth).

And then suddenly it hits me.

"Hey, you know your way around! You can take me to the light! Can't you? Will you? Please?" And to think that I wanted to strangle him some time ago. Why, this person was godsend!

He just rolls his eyes.

"Come, I'll show you the bathroom too; just don't leak your pants in the castle. It's mine."

The statement of possession doesn't really bother me, I am too busy thinking what Deli and Jonsie would say when they see me, clean and well-feasted on watermelon seeds.

In a minute, we're upstairs, and Oh! Sunlight was so underrated.

"The bathroom's just left around this corner," the boy says. "Try to hold it in before you reach the toilet."

Suddenly, I see Jonsie and Deli come out from the other side, and as soon as they see me, their jaws unhinge; they look like they've seen a ghost.

I turn to the boy, who was looking like he might leave any second. "That's okay, I don't really feel the urge to pee anymore, it's settled down." I grin at him.

I turn back to my friends.

"Don't believe it, do ya? Reckoned I'd be down there for an hour at least, eh?"

Jones shakes his head. "Man, we thought you'd be down there for the night."

We laugh, and then Delilah says, "Who were you talking to?"

"Oh, yeah," I say. "He's the one who helped me find my way."

I turn back to introduce him (and just realized that I didn't even know his name).

But he isn't there.

"That's strange. Where did he go?"

"Where did who go?" Jones asks.

"You know, the boy I was talking to when you found me?"

Delilah frowns. "Jake, when I saw you, you were talking to thin air. Honestly, you looked mental. Loco."

I don't reply, my brain is whirling, until it freezes; everything inside me freezes.

"What's up, Jake? Let's go home, mate. It's getting a little chilly," Jones says.

I manage to nod.

"You guys go on; I'll be with you in a second. I just really need to pee."