By: Ben  Xu

They led us to the end, to a place where our futures lay barren, and our present became suddenly frozen in terror. I swam in this frigid river, waiting for bloodshed, waiting for terror, waiting for the end.

Despair engulfed me. Terror choked me. I drifted in the water, carried by the current. With minuscule strength, my legs kicked against the water. A bullet splashed above me, and I attempted to swim away but failed. The bullet smashed into my leg, and pain erupted within me. Blood burst into a mist of red. Helplessly, I sank deeper into the river, demoralized and dismayed.

The water shoved me further downstream until I met two bulging yellow eyes: A crocodile. Adrenaline suddenly surged through me, and I swam, broken yet confident, toward the brightness of the sky.

The crocodile bit at my pained leg, which only increased the agony. I howled in immense pain, and a sudden rush of water pushed into my mouth and out my nostrils. With my hands, I pushed at the belligerent crocodile’s face, but it just seemed to agitate the confounded creature. The jaw’s grip tightened, and blood splattered into the creature’s eyes.

Suddenly, the crocodile yanked me up into the air, its jaw still tight on my leg. I inhaled a huge breath of air and panted wildly. We landed hard on the ground, and the pain and agony of the jaw around my limb felt catastrophic. One of the other boys grasped the crocodile’s jaw and snapped it open. My leg escaped from the savage crocodile as blood gushed out of the crocodile’s mouth.

I quickly thanked the boy who had helped me break free of the crocodile.

“No problem.” He responded, “We’re all a team.”

Yes, we are a team. We are the Lost Boys of Sudan.

Image Credit by Pixabay