Midnight struck as he grasped his keyboard. Faint echoes of his friends rang in his ears. The large glowing green text imprinted in his brain, “Deus Ex Machina Short Story due tomorrow.” Nothing could alter his mindset - he was going to fail, and he had accepted his fate.
Hours before, he had remembered the story but brushed it off. I’ll get it done later, he had said to himself, continuing to procrastinate with his friends. Time slipped by, and before he knew it, he was wrapped up in a lengthy AP Biology assignment that swallowed the night. When he finished, it seemed to be too late.
He lost all sense of hope. The assignment would take too long to finish with enough time left to sleep. His pride and happiness diminished as the minutes slithered away. His impending doom flooded his head with thoughts of failure on the horizon. He had begun to type, and the words appeared to make no sense. His fingers were too tense to form a sentence properly, and the missing keys on the broken keyboard merely caused more struggle. Drowsiness began to overtake him; his eyes shuttered as he attempted to remain awake.
Dark clouds stormed into his surroundings, and a hurricane swept him from his house. As he flew through the air, he could hear the stern voice of his teacher raining hell upon him. Despair ensued as everything slipped away.
Dropped from the winds, he fell towards the concrete which surrounded his house. Time seemed meaningless; hours passed as he fell to his death. He was seconds from hitting the ground.
A piercing beeping filled the room. He awoke, startled, covered in sweat. To his surprise, he found that it was 7:00 AM, and he had fallen asleep at some point during his nighttime session. He scrambled to find his phone, opening Google Classroom, and immediately checking for the short story assignment. He gripped his phone tighter; it was completed and turned in. With no recollection of writing the story, his problems had been solved. The thought of figuring out what had happened was too daunting, and so he went about as if it had been a normal day, not giving it a second thought.
Othelius’s adventure began after his slumber was ended by four men swiftly storming his sleeping quarters. Shouting a foreign language, they ruined his dreams of flight and wealth. In surprise he reached for his sword, only to find he was pinned down by all four men. Their shiny, metallic masks reflected the sunlight bleeding in through the shades, blinding Othelius as he resisted their entrapment.
The men tied Othelius’s arms and legs, immobilizing him completely. They dragged him down three flights of stairs, where they then carried him into the sunlight. The public merely stared as Othelius was trotted into a horse and carriage, covered by dark shades, preventing any light from seeping through. His cries for help and attempts to fight back were futile, and Othelius soon realized he would have to suffer his fate. Once in the carriage, his only option was to question the perpetrators.
“Who are you and what do you want from me?” he begged for an answer.
Othelius’s friends spent hours upon hours in the night, making plans for their complex practical joke. They had the perfect prank to play on their friend, whose birthday had just passed. As they brainstormed, one of the four men suggested a kidnapping, provoking the others to shout out ideas and suggestions. They had it all worked out: shiny metal masks would cover their faces in order to convey the idea that the kidnapping was real. In addition, they would arrive in a horse-drawn carriage to abduct Othelius once he was tied and unable to escape. Then they would continue with the next phase of their plan.
His questions remained unanswered, and Othelius offered everything he could give.
“Please, just let me be. What do you want, money? Power? Name anything and I’ll give it to you, just let me live”. His pleas for survival were ineffective as his captors shoved cloth into his mouth, muffling his voice.
The carriage stopped abruptly, and Othelius was blindfolded and carried outside. The scents of the woods filled his nose. Aromas of pine trees, mud, and pine cones swirled about, only emphasizing his sense of distress. He began to compulsively shake and squirm, forcing the men to drop him to the soft, swampy ground. The impact hadn’t hurt, but he soon noticed that mud was beginning to consume him. He began to sink into the Earth.
Their whole plan had crumbled before their eyes. The four men had initially wanted to carry Othelius to a cabin in the nearby woods to throw an informal birthday party in his honor. A prank and birthday surprise all in one. However, they hadn’t expected so much resistance from Othelius. As they were carrying his limp body, he started to thrust and shake, forcing himself into the muddy swamp ground that surrounded them. After he fell, the four men looked puzzled; it appeared that the ground was swallowing him whole. He began to scream into the cloth they stuffed into his mouth as they tried to lift him from death.
As he sunk into the abyss, Othelius had a spark go off in his mind. A renewed sense of motivation grasped him when he realized his arms and legs had been united by the slippery mud. He could feel the men grabbing him, so he began to rip off his blindfold. He spotted a sheathed knife on the right thigh of one of the men. Grabbing it, Othelius began to stab at anything and everything around him.
He was hoisted out of the mud only to find two of the four men lying in a pool of their own blood on the surrounding ground. The other two were hit but attempted to escape. A fire ignited within Othelius, and he leaped towards the last two trying to escape. He swiftly stabbed one and pinned the other to the ground. He slowly lifted the kidnapper's mask as he sunk the knife into his gut. To his own surprise, Othelius found his friend, Maximus, lying dead on the ground under him. Confusion filled his head and tears swarmed his face.
Othelius and his friends were found weeks later, the five all dead from knife wounds, Othelius’s being self-inflicted.
Anthony Guzzi is the name of a student at Dunellen High School who initially never found any interest in writing. However, once exposed to the different genres and methods, he quickly became consumed by the art of expressing himself through literature. The ability to express himself, while absorbing stories from others was one he wasn’t accustomed to. He did adapt quickly and soon learned to enjoy the art, providing him with numerous memories and stories to be shared with others, providing him with genuine happiness which can’t be found in many other places.