Chapter 1
Anaconda Island
Anaconda Island by Asmaa Nada
Chapter 2
My friends and I used to laugh at these stories and consider them pure fantasy, and there is no existence of that legendary creature whose name the grandfather keeps repeating or even drawing shapes on paper. I do not deny that my friend Alice did a search on the Internet about that creature and found some pictures of this type. One of the huge snakes that reach a length of several meters, but it does not represent the horror that appears in my grandfather’s eyes when his name is only mentioned. Anyway, three years passed, and my grandfather’s illness became severe, but he refused to come out of that trench, and my father was forced to bring doctors to the palace and design a complete medical room. In one of the rooms of that trench.
I used to go down and sit with my grandfather a lot of the time and draw the maps he asked of me along with his instructions. The maps were not of the ocean or even the external appearance of that island, but rather the maps of the island itself from the inside. Of course, I did not understand at the time, but I loved my grandfather very much and wanted him to be reassured. If I happened to be a prisoner of that island, I would use the maps so that I would not spend a single day on it and leave. I did not understand at the time that he meant that I would use those maps so that I could remain alive for as long as possible and search for the ingredients to make a wooden boat from within those maps. The first thing I can do is make the escape boat.
At the end of the fourth year, my friends and I had finished our university years, and my grandfather had died, so my father did not want to celebrate my success. Only weeks had passed since my grandfather’s death, so he bought a huge boat as a gift for me on the condition that when I used it, I would not leave the water borders of our country. I was very happy about that. The boat and many times my friends and I would gather and sail a little on it, but we would not go too far or go too deep into the ocean. The rest of my time I would spend inside the trench, among those books, maps, and memoirs that my grandfather had written. The memoirs were, to me, nothing but stories from legends.
For example, at the beginning of the diary, the grandfather wrote:
(Among the folds of complete darkness and the stillness of the night, beware of whispering, stand still and do not move, be like the statues scattered throughout the island, refrain from breathing if you can, and if you cannot, know that you are just an appetizer inside a large plate of food, made especially for him, that you are on his island, his kingdom. Enjoy the day as you wish, among its picturesque charm, but we advise you not to delve deep into it, lest you be devoured.)
You can imagine what he wrote in the middle of the first page of the diary. How could anyone resist what was written inside the diary, an accurate description of the day’s events and attempts to escape from something that you cannot even see in its entirety? All you can see is his head and part of his neck with his body while he is high in it and preparing to attack. On its prey, or you see the traces of its crawling body on the ground, inside which a two-meter-tall human being can sleep as wide as the hole left by the crawling effect, or a description of the snowy surface of skeletons hanging on some trees and covered with the creature’s saliva as if they were its Christmas decorations.
One day, while I was examining one of the maps, trying to understand what my grandfather had drawn and what was written on it, I was frightened by the entry of my friends into the trench, so I jumped from my place while closing the map with my hand and trying to hide it. Then his friend Antoine shouted next to my ear, and the laughter of my friends rose around me. I sighed and wiped my face. I was trying to control my nerves, Antoine said playfully, trying to grab what was in my hand
"What's wrong? Have you been reading a women's magazine?"
Mark said sarcastically, “Those magazines belong only to you, Antoine.”
Alice was able to withdraw the paper in my hand, then moved away a little, examining it, and the rest of the eight friends gathered around her, and she said enthusiastically:
"Wow, that's scary."
Elizabeth tried to repeat some of the words written at the top of the map in an acting manner as if she were on stage
"Stay firm...be a statue...don't dig deep...you are an appetizer."
Tina interrupted, laughing, "What is that? Is it the map of Vampire Island?"
Mark said, “I don’t know what that map is, but I found it among my grandfather’s belongings. You know, Antoine, the story of my grandfather, Arthur Vladimir.”
Antoine replied, "Yes, the man who disappeared for several years in the heart of the ocean and was found one day on a wooden boat floating on the surface of the water. He could not speak and signs of terror were evident on his face, and this thing was in his hands."
Raymond said, “It is an internal map describing roads within an island.”
Mark said, "I also found this in my grandfather's library, inside a book that talks about the types and shapes of snakes. Also, I was helping my grandfather in his last days by drawing some maps that I did not understand."
Mark took out another map from one of his desk drawers, but it was a map drawn with gold water. Raymond looked at it and shouted excitedly.
“Man, it is an archaeological map that should be inside the museum. Did you know that there are only two copies of it, one is already in the Egyptian Museum and the second is here with you?”
Antoine said, “Well, great historian, have you told us what is the difference between that map in your hand and the one in Alice’s hand, except that this one is drawn with gold water?”
Raymond spread the map on the table, placed some small statues on the edges, and began to point inside the map and explain
“Look here is the Asian continent that we are on, and here is the African continent, and that is a group of islands in a semi-circular shape around the island with the head of a golden snake drawn on it. Did you understand that this map indicates the location of the island and the difference between it and the one in the Egyptian Museum is that this one has the head of the snake? The one in the Egyptian Museum is just the shape of a flag for the islands, while the map in Alice’s hand is a manual map indicati
ng some of the roads inside the island itself.”
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