The Midnight Wonders of The Midnight Bite

Manoj Lokam, Age 12

Manoj, age 12, lives in Michigan. He likes to write because it’s interesting and fun. In addition to writing, he enjoys new stuff. Snakes inspire Manoj’s writing. He would like to live in a world where climate change is no more

The Midnight Wonders of The Midnight Bite

Dallas, Texas June 2, 2018 One day, you plan to go to a nearby mountain for a short hike with a few of your friends. Your friends agree to follow you on your hike and prepare for your hiking trip, so you get the essentials of hiking such as bug repellent, sun cream, etc. Now, you’ve finished packing, so you decide to go to bed and be aware of your upcoming journeys. At 7:30am, your iPhone rings and you get up right away. You take a shower and brush your teeth. You leave the house at 8am and drive to the place. You arrive there and see that they’re not there yet, so you just decide to wait for them. Half an hour later, you get a text from your friend, and it turns out his car broke down as he was leaving. You go to Whatsapp on your phone to tell him, “It’s fine, and we can always do it later.” Your other friend arrives, and you guys go to the front of the hiking trail. The forest is dark and seems old. Right away, you can see it was a great idea bringing your lantern. Two hours after you start the hike, your friend wants to take some pictures, so you stop and relax. Twenty minutes later, your friend still hasn't come, so you go to check where he is. You see him on the ground, and he is not responding to you, so you call 911. You take him down the hiking trail and see an ambulance is coming straight his way. The doctors come out of the truck and put him in the ambulance. You get in your car and go to the hospital. The doctors explain that he has been bitten with a deadly venom and say that his leg is also badly damaged, as it seems something constricted around his leg. You decide to go on the hike alone even after hearing the news from the doctor. It takes a few hours. You finally reach the midpoint of the hike, but there’s a sign that says don’t go past that point . . . You decide to go past that point anyway, but the path up ahead is darker than the other spot. Your lantern dies, but at least you brought your flashlight. Twenty minutes later, you can tell how this was marked as no entry, as there are creepy sounds and it is very dark. Only a bit of light comes from underneath the trees. After a few minutes, your flashlight dies. Now you panic. You can’t see anything and as you begin to take out your phone, you realize that you forgot to charge your phone. It is at three percent. You call your friends, but no one responds. Now you’re stuck. Lucky for you, there’s more light than the last point. You attempt to call your friends one more time, but your phone dies before anyone can pick up. You have no choice but to go down the trail. A few minutes later, you find a dead end. You realize you took a wrong path on the trail, but as you start to move, you hear a hiss from an unknown direction. But you got some snake repellent from your house, so you use it right away. Suddenly, while you are walking you feel something hit your head. You jump back unexpectedly. You see a snake that fell down, and it hisses at you. You run as fast as you can from the snake, outrunning him as fast as you can, but in no time, you fall down in desperation. Unfortunately, the snake has the speed of a fast cobra. You start to realize that this must be a special snake, a snake that no one knows about but has special abilities. In the corner of your eye, you see your friend’s phone, so you realize that he couldn’t answer as he didn’t have a phone. You take his phone out right away and see that it is at fifty percent, and you find out that his real name was James Marsden. You find a riddle behind the phone case that unlocks the phone. The first one is, “I am an odd number. Take away a letter and I become even. What number am I?” After a second, you type out seven, a mere coincidence that it was only one number. You think, He should have got a better password, with your eyes rolling.