Personal Narrative

By Travis, period 4

The leaves of the forest rustled softly. I could hear leaves and twigs crack beneath my feet. That was bad. One loud snap from under my boot could alert my dad to my position. That, and I had someone else to worry about.

"Do you see him?" asked my sister from under her mask, her gun cocked and ready.

"No, Reanna- and be quiet! He could be anywhere, not to mention Cassy." I said, watching fog form on my goggles. "Better take your gun off safety, just in case."

I took my own safety off, hearing the soft click. I relaxed a bit. My dad and other sister had the same model of marker as my Reanna, an all-plastic pump job. I had an alloy-steel semi-automatic high-grade paintball marker. This would be no sweat.

Unfortunately, I was mistaken. My cammies were warm to begin with, and the sweltering heat and steep hillside did not help. We found nothing as we searched for him, checking every place we had gone before. To try and get a vantage point, we ascended the hill. What we found was an unyielding sea of green revealing nothing that was underneath. Frustrated and tired, we waited there for a bit.

Suddenly, we caught a break. We heard a shot from somewhere below. It seemed that dad’s short patience had finally died. We carefully went down the hill, making as little noise as possible. We reached the ditch and headed west toward a second discharge. Suddenly, Reanna spotted him halfway up the hill.

In retrospect, I should have at least considered that it could have been an ambush with Cassie hiding partway between us and dad as bait. In fact, that was his intention. Instead, with a primal battle cry, I did the thing that no rational being would expect, the stupidest, craziest, most tactically insane move that any deranged idiot could think of. I charged.

His eyes almost bugged out of his mask as he dived behind a nearby cedar tree. My sister followed me on this insane second charge of the light brigade, firing and yelling as she ran. She found partial cover behind a tree, covering me as I ran right up to the other side of the tree.

We faced each other like two tigers, sizing each other up. All of a sudden he opened fire at an amazing rate. While we circled the tree, it registered in the back of my mind that the rate of fire from his gun was awfully fast for a pump gun; however I had no time to act on that now; I was committed. I had the tiger by the tail, and I now had to figure out what to do with it.

I heard my sister yell, then yell again. He had got her, even though we were not supposed to shoot at the girls. As I wondered where Cassie was hiding and wished that I had chosen a wiser strategy, I felt a searing pain on the top of my head. Game over- he had gotten me.

"That’s no pump gun!" I exclaimed.

"You’re right." He grinned as he displayed his gleaming new semi-automatic paintball gun. "I just got it."