“Everybody, sooner or later sits down to a Banquet of Consequences” Robert Louis Stevenson

One day not so long ago there lived a very angry little boy. Everything in life and everything about life made him angry. The more angry he was, the more frustrated he became, and the more frustrated he became the more he began to hurt the people around him who loved him the most.

With each and every new insult and angry outburst, he was hurting those who cared most about him but he wasn’t seeing the consequences of his anger. He couldn’t understand that his actions were causing others pain and hurt; he was too consumed by his own rage to even notice.

After a particularly bad outburst, his mother had sent him to walk in the woods and think about things until he had calmed down. It was on this day, walking in the woods, that he saw a nearby shed deep inside the woods where he would enter not knowing that his life was about to be changed for the better.

During his aggressive stomping into the woods, was when he came across the witch’s shed. The angry little boy decided to break into the shed, thinking he might find something that might be interesting or useful to calm his anger down, and keep him entertained from his issues.

So he went through the back window of the shed secretly climbing in and fell into the shed. When the angry little boy got inside, he looked around but he didn’t see anything exciting. That made him more angry so he decided to toss all of the witch’s spell books onto the floor.

When the witch sensed that someone had broken into her magical shed, she quickly appeared magically to where the angry little boy was. Then the witch showed the annoyed, angry little boy flashbacks of the time when he refused a gift from his mother that she had saved up for. And he called it ugly and useless, not knowing what his mother had gone through to get it for him. The witch started to show more of the angry boy’s flashbacks to let him know what he did that left those who truly cared for him hurt.

“Stop it! Stop showing this to me! Please – I get it. I know what I have done! I’m sorry. I just want to apologise to all of them now, please.” The little boy cried.

Then the witch agreed to let the angry little boy go.

“Remember, be wise and know what you’re doing.” she said.

Coming out from the woods, the little boy ran to his home and hugged his mother, leaving her surprised.

“I’m so sorry, Mum for everything. And your gift – it’s beautiful, Mum! Now I’m going to go and apologise to all the others for what not using my manners did. I hope they will accept my apology and let me have a second chance to make everything right.”

Ariana Pearl McFall is a Year 9 student at St Mary’s College. This literary piece won her the first place in the Year 9 English category of the Samoa Observer Short Story Competition.