Ailey Stromm's Nightmare

My family and I were on a camping trip since it was a long vacation at my school Hersley Comprehensive High School which was a boarding school. My parents decided to make up for their absence in I and my twin brother, Ailee's life by deciding to spend time with us on a camping trip for a week, trust me I would rather be somewhere else like the Bahamas or something with my friends and a black card, daddy's that generous he feels like his money will compensate me for the time he doesn't spend with me so i blow his card on shopping sprees and spa trips with my girlfriends. Last year it was Paris ,the year before Cuba I could go on and on about beach resort holidays but that would be deviating. So dad and mum happen to magically squeeze out time to spend the holiday with their forgotten children for the first time in sixteen years, OK not really sixteen years i guess they were around when i was younger but i cant really give account for that timeline so now they happen to have time for us and decided the best place to bond is in a bush with mosquitoes and wild animals their reason being they want us away from civilization so no phones, no internet, no water system ,no Jacuzzi just us and the wilderness. I cried the day i heard the news and tried to make my dad change his mind Ailee wasn't excited about it either .He had many girls to hook up with whom he met during his time of bribing his way out of school and getting free passes to go clubbing and partying plus there would be nobody to give him his junk ,my brother was a crack head he had money to buy crack because daddy was so generous Ailee had a black card too, you can imagine how much fun it will be for him in the wilderness when he runs out of crack in the wilderness, yeah Zilch. The thing is my parents didn't know about his cocaine addiction because they never had time to notice the changes in him like his restlessness and frequently dilated pupils considering they were always in the air I think they were more familiar with the color of their air hostess eyes than they were with the color of my hair literally or they would have put him in a rehabilitation center. Ailee and i tried to make our parents change their mind but they refused they felt their decision was best so on the fifth of August we flew out of the country to go spend the holiday in the wilderness for a week after which our jet will pick us up and from there we will go to Almond Beach village, St.Peter, Barbados that's how my parents bribed Ailee and into agreeing to spend a week in the wilderness, I call it wilderness because that's what it felt like to me.

We got to the port and took a boat to our camp site we sailed the boat for about two hours before we got to shore and daddy docked the boat. We hiked for a while before dad selected a camping spot. Ailee and i helped him set up three tents while mum fixed another spot to warm up our dinner .It was a really big task clearing up the area fetching wood for our bonfire and setting up our tents but we finished before the sun set. We had dinner afterwards and I excused myself and went to lay on my air mattress in my tent ,I was too tired to have a conversation with my family and pretend we were a happy family enjoying some time out together. I really missed my bed at home i could not wait to get home, five minutes later I saw Ailee go into his own tent, i knew he was going to take a hit i felt like going to stop him or shouting at my parents are you blind? can't you see what's going on with Ailee ? but i was fine with pretending everything was fine so i slowly drifted off to sleep.

The next morning I woke up to shout and cries. My dad was shouting at Ailee at the top of his voice asking him when he started using ,why he decided to do this to himself and my dad was going on and on about he worked so hard to be able to give us all we need ,how he sent us to the best schools , how we never lacked anything and all my brother could do to repay him was to become a drug addict and he was so mad he started hitting him my mum was crying her eyeballs out begging my dad to stop but dad kept kicking and hitting Ailee who was too high to care and that angered my dad more. I could not take the scene playing before me in anymore so i ran till my legs couldn't carry me anymore and i fell and cried. I cried for Ailee and wished he wasn't a crack head ,I cried out all the tears i held whenever my parents missed my birthday or Christmas holiday i cried for all the time i wished we were really a family. I missed what it would feel like to actually be a family and i missed how close Ailee and I used to be before he started using. I stayed huddled up close to an Oak tree for a while until it dawned on me that my family had not come to look for me which was really weird even for my family. I dried my tears, brushed off the twigs and leaves that had stuck to my dress and started to trace my way back home which wasn't too difficult i just had to follow the smoke cloud rising to the sky till i got to our campsite.

I couldn't believe my eyes before me was Ailee and my parents all covered in blood with their guts on the ground. They looked like they had been mauled by a bear which added up since i saw bear paw prints on the floor seemed like our shouts and wails attracted the local residents. I think i fainted because i opened my eyes to see a cottonmouth slithering so dangerously close to me, my first instinct was to stand up and run but where could i run to my family and i got to the campsite by boat and i couldn't afford to go deeper into the bush I just laid there instead and pretended to be dead and waited for the cottonmouth to slither away . I knew i had to leave the campsite so after closing my family's eyelids, something i had seen in the movies, i packed up some supplies and walked to the boat climbed into it covered myself and passed out. I couldn't call for help since we had to leave our phones at home all i could do was wait for the jet that was supposed to pick my family and i up in a week. I ate all the cold canned food and cold marshmallows occasionally a deer or some other animal will come to river for a drink and i would stay frozen in the boat so i would not alert them.I drank from the river and urinated in it too. I never left the boat because i was too scared of been attacked by the bear that killed my parents . Some nights i had bad dreams where a bear came to attack me ,some nights i had dreams where my parents became zombies and attacked me while other nights i had dreams where everything had all been a dream but i would always wake up to the nightmarish reality i was living. Days went by until the jet came, Boy was i so happy to see another human being and my ride home if i could still call it that, what is a home without family? but i couldn't wait to leave all the same.

My body hungered for a real bed ,my stomach hungered for a hot meal and my mind hungered for all these to be a nightmare which i would wake up from but as i looked out the window of the jet i realized that i would never wake up and my family would never come back , i would have to learn to live through this trauma. I know it would be difficult i know and my nightmares will haunt me for as long as forever i know but i am Ailey Stromm and if i could survive a week in the wilderness i guess i'm stronger than i give myself credit for I thought as i drifted off to sleep.