Coming back from a camping, at Ellie’s home

Written by Lee

We have played for a long time in camping and yesterday was the last day of

the camping. So we returned home. We came home by Ellie’s dad’s landrover. We

talked about the snake incident, which was very scary. Kevin said that he was very

upset because his precious sleeping bag became dirty and that incident disturbed his

sweet time with Corrie. I was so scared at that time that I went up to the tree. I think

that was just a stupid reaction. Time passed quickly while we were talking about our

camping and then we arrived to Ellie’s home.

Something was wrong. The first thing that I noticed when I arrived at Ellie’s

home was that Ellie’s dogs were dead. Their eyes were terribly popped out and they

didn't move at all like a rock. They just lay down on the cold ground and didn't move.

The furs around the dogs’ necks were covered with red liquid, it looked like their

blood. Their snouts were dried. I instantly looked at Ellie and she was surprisingly not

upset. She checked her dogs one by one and suddenly ran away to somewhere and

came back with a dog that was still alive. She shouted to Corrie to take care of her

dead dogs and went into her home. Then I followed her.

I looked around her home. It was clean, tidy and very neat. Nothing was

actually wrong or bad. But once again I looked around the house, I suddenly figured

out that there were no parents. There were no parents and no welcomes from

parents. Did they go somewhere? I was not sure but they might be somewhere else,

I hoped. Ellie looked for a note from parents which might tell her where they are but

there wasn't any. So I started to think of something else. Homer went to refrigerator

and tried to get some foods for the dog but he came back with nothing. He said that

all the foods in the refrigerator were rotten so it smelled like under the sun dried

milk. We tried to call mom and dad but there was no electricity so we failed to reach

them. Ellie looked very scared. Including radio everything related to communication

was shut.

I have a gut feeling and that has been always very sharp and correct. That

time, I could only think of two possibilities depending on my feeling. They went to

commemoration day’s showground, or worse they got an invasion. I got this feeling

from my Taiwanese dad and Vietnamese mom. She experienced cruel Vietnam War

so she knew well about wars. She always told me about the war and the way to be

safe in dangerous situation. At that time Robyn was next to me so I talked to Robyn

about the possibility of the invasion. She agreed but didn’t want to talk about that

anymore. If it were invasion then it would suffer my friends and confuse them, so I

didn't mention. Friends started to be scared and horrified. I thought they felt the

same way as I did. I guessed their instincts in their inner mind were shouting and

telling them that situation was not good but terrible.

Suddenly, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me like

they thought I had an answer, but I didn't want to tell them. I couldn't assure about

the invasion thing, however we couldn't just sit there and do nothing so we went to

Homer’s home to check his home was same as Ellie’s or not. Ellie drove the

landrover to Homer’s place. When we arrived, she just parked it in front of his house.

At that time, I suddenly thought of this. If that was a case of invasion and soldiers

might notice the car wasn't there before, we might get in dangerous trouble.

Therefore, I went to hide the car behind a palm tree. While I was driving the car, Ellie

was staring at me. I thought she got an idea about the war and came close to me and

shouted out that I was wrong and what I thought would not happen. She seemed

like she was scared to mention the word ‘war’ or ‘invasion’. Robyn came close to us

and relaxed Ellie, however Robyn seemed like she completely accepted the theory of

the invasion.

I went into Homer’s home and the situation was just same as Ellie’s home,

even dirtier. He told us that he has a RF radio at office. We rushed to find it to check

what’s going on. When we found that, Ellie thought their parents might have

escaped from their village on huge fire. But Homer reminded her how the bad fire

destroys everything cruelly but her and his houses were too clean. She easily

abandoned the theory of the fire.

Everyone started to lose control after Robyn told us about something bad

was happening and we couldn’t just avoid that thing. The first one who lost control

was Ellie therefore she started to cry and scream at Robyn and told her that her

father would never leave her dogs to the death. After her shriek, I did lost control

too, like others. Corrie started to scream louder than Ellie and Kevin grabbed his hair

hardly. Fiona put her whole hand into her mouth and became pale. I was so sad

about I could do nothing. I was becoming rigid and made a fist very hard.

Involuntarily I started to cry. I couldn't stop dropping hot tears on my face. The place

that we were standing was just in chaos. Suddenly Homer made us laugh by making

a hysterical joke about Fiona’s reaction so all of us could calm down stably.

On that, we started to think of some theories about the reasons why parents

weren’t here, dogs were dead and there was no electricity. I was pretty sure about

the invasion thing, but I thought nothing would be worse than the invasion so I

listened to my friends. First, Corrie thought of commemoration day, as same as I

thought and everyone accepted and then Homer told an idea of a needlepoint of his

mom (he said that she always displays her needlepoint at Honour Wall).

Furthermore, not everyone would be there where Homer’s mom was and for a

minute Homer went Hounour Wall and checked. But no one was there.

Robyn was the most adaptable person among my friends at that time, thus

she started to make friends accept the invasion situation with a new fact. As Ellie

mentioned the airplanes we saw at Wirrawee had no lights. That fact made me

became assured of the invasion but Fiona didn't want to accept it. She talked about

some theories, which sounded too impossible and irresponsible for me. No one

actually regarded her ideas seriously, so she started to shout and cry out loud. I had

never seen her shouting before, by that I found out she was not a princess-like

anymore. Anyway I was the one who made her cry out by bad reaction so I had to

soothe her in logical ways. Even though she started to understand but didn't stop

crying.

After that, I found out that I couldn't avoid the fact just because my friends

were scared. I knew that the invasion had been started and we were in dangerous

situation, but I also didn't want to accept the fact. I was a young boy same as them. I

loved my family and loved peace. But for now, we all have to be really cautious and

know the circumstance of this case. I had to tell them to consider of invasion, not

avoiding it just as one case. It was very hard to keep my control either. I said ‘just as

one case’ because I really didn't want to accept the fact just like the others. Now I

am very confused and I know that we have to be prepared for some unexpected

events just in case of war.Blue = AdjRed = AdvYellow = conjunction