Cerpen : A Family Accident

Assalamualaikum Wr.Wb

Hai! Di post pertama ini aku akan mengeshare sebuah cerpen Bahasa Inggris. Sebetulnya ini tugas dari sekolah. Jadi ceritanya kita disuruh bikin cerita dengan tokoh-tokoh dan latar tempat yang sudah ditentukan. Seru kan? Dalam cerita ini ditentukan ada 3 tokoh utama dan 2 latar tempat. Tapi tidak hanya sebatas itu saja lho, kita juga bisa menambahkan karakter-karakter lain sepuasnya.

Ditentukan :

Characters : Beggar, Judge, and Merchant

Settings : Court Room and Tradisional Market

Other clues : Purse

Selamat membaca 

A Family Legacy

Storyboard & edit: Lubna

Character & Finishing: Ghina

p.s : thanks for Lua for helping our tenses

Georgina and Fred Wellington were intelligent children, and they were charming and resourceful, and had eye-pleasing facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was full with misfortune, misery, and despair. The two Wellington children lived with their parents in an enormous mansion at the heart of a dirty and busy city, and occasionally their parents gave them permission to spend their time in a park accross the street as a sort of vacation as long as they were home for dinner. Their misfortune began one day when when they just walked home from the park. They saw a police car parked in the driveway of their house. They knew something terrible had happened. The door of the patrol car opened and a familiar looking figure appeared. He was Mr. Suparman, a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Wellington's whom the children had met many times at dinner parties. “There’s been an accident,” Mr. Suparman said. And after that in whispers comes the news that the two people they loved most in the world has gone forever.

OH NO. You’re kidding right?

        I’m not.

Mr. and Mrs. Wellington were literally dead. They perished in a car’s accident that destroyed their entire body. But, The Wellington parents had left behind an enormous fortune, which would go to the children when Georgina came of age. Mr. Suparman, a family friend was in charge of overseeing the orphans' affairs, so it was he who decided where the children would be placed in. The orphans was sent to a village to be raised with their distant relative. Of course, Mr. Suparman assumed that a nice and healthy village will help the children regain their happiness, hence the children would be as safe as possible in convenient way. But sadly, he was wrong, all of this was wrong.

        When the departure time has come, the Wellington orphans did not have the money to hire a limousine. It would have taken them several weeks to reach the village by mule, so they were traveling to their new home by bus. On the way to the village, they sat in silence, hoping that their arrival at the village would be a good chance to start a new life. But, as I said before, all of this was wrong. The children had no idea that something awful and terrible was after them.

        When they arrived at the village, they stared doubtfully at the horizon, not expecting the village to be so dull and vacant. On this bare and deserted land, it looked like that the children could be seen from thousands and thousands of miles away. As the children drew closer and closer to their new home, they could see a number of buildings of different heights and widths. But everything they saw from the tip of the highest building to the curve of the narrowest street was pitch black. It was unlike any other town the two Wellington children had ever seen.

        The sun was so high that day. Exhausted, the orphans decided to rest for a moment. They prefered to sit on a wooden chair with a canopy on its roof. While they were observing their new hometown, someone nudged the orphans’ shoulders from the back.

“Are you the Wellington orphans?” asked one of the old men who was standing behind them, in a gravelly voice.

“Yes,” Georgina replied. “I'm Georgina Wellington, and this is my brother, Fred, and and the reason we’re — ”  

“Huush, I knew who you are. We've been expecting you, although I hadn’t expected you two would look so terrible,” said one of the other men.

“Yeah, we’re sorry for that,” said Georgina, the elder child, and nodded her head slightly.

The man with a jaunty hat gave a wide smile and offered his hand to the children. “My name is Britten, I’m the sole judge, the chief and..... ya! Not to be cocky, but I like to call myself a philanthropist. You know? Philanthropist? It’s the certain people that give their wealthy to poor people. Since last year, I recruited all the beggar in this city to be my comrade, see? Beside me is Mr. Lucien, one day he was a beggar and the next he became a wealthy man. Oh ya, I realize that my humble village isn't as fancy as your mansion. But perhaps with a bit of your money we could fix it up to make it a little bit nicer,” he said.

The children's eyes widened in surprise. “What? You know about the The Wellingtons fortune?” Georgina said sternly, “Well, The Wellingtons fortune will not be used for such matters. In fact, it will not be used at all, until I come of age.” The impact of these words were big, and Britten turned to face the children with a certain glint in his eyes akin to an angry dog. For a moment Georgina thought he was going to strike her across the face. But then he swallowed. “All right then,” he said. “It's okay. Children, I will now show you your new guardian,”

        As the sun crept its way toward the west, the children followed the men through the cramped street full of gravel toward a traditional market. Several merchants had closed and locked their stall, while the others were still covering their merchandise with some sort of plastic and were getting ready to go home. The Wellingtons looked downward at their shadows as it faded with their curious steps into the damp narrow aisle of the market. The men suddenly halted. “There he is!” exclaimed Britten, pointing his forefinger.

The Wellington children looked out and saw the prettiest house on the block. Although it was located beside the market, the bricks had been cleaned very well, and through the wide and open windows one could see an assortment of well-groomed plants. Standing in the doorway, with his hand on the shiny brass doorknob, was an older man who was smiling at the children. In one hand he carried a flowerpot. “Hello there!” he called out. “You must be the children!”

The children, were very happy to see their new guardian. His name was Victor, a man in his mid-thirties. He spent his day working at the market, selling groceries and assorment of other things. He had pair of eyebrows that looked similar to a question mark and his hair was extremely greasy. But he really was a kind man. After dragging the children to their new home, Britten plastered one phony and wicked smile accross his face, and headed north, away from the orphans. The children didn’t know that Britten was so obsessed with getting his filthy hands on the money that he had hatched a devious plan.

During the weeks which followed, the Wellington had a wonderful time in their new home. Each morning, they woke up and dressed in the privacy of their very own rooms, which they had chosen and decorated to their liking. Apparently, their guardian had a secret barn which in fact served as an inventor’s workshop. The children were very happy to spend their time inside because Victor's workshop was very well-equipped, with plenty of pliers and glue and wires. The self-sustaining hot air balloon Victor kept in the barn was an enormous, fascinating mechanism. But sadly, soon enough the happiness that the children felt will completely vanish.

One day in the market, when the children were walking around in the marketplace as their guardian was preoccupied with selling things, they saw two mysterious looking figures all dressed in black. They covered their own face with ski masks and were lurking quietly underneath one of the stalls. In front of them, there was a old woman carrying a fancy purse full of sparkling diamonds and was dressed in a gown printed with a floral pattern. She wore very thick eyeglasses.

It happened too fast, the black-dressed man snatched the purse from the woman, ran away, and instantly they put the purse on the bag that the children were carrying. The woman shrieked histerically when she realized her purse had been stolen. She pointed her finger toward the children.

“Thief! They stole my purse” she said. All eyes were directed to the children. Suddenly, the crowd of mobs surrounded the children, inspected their bag and found something. As you might expect by now, it’s the purse.

Thanks to woman blurry and unreliable eyes, the mob brought the children to the court room to be judged.

The judge was Britten, the wicked man that was responsible for this awful fuss in the first place (in fact, he and his accomplice had stolen the purse). “I suggest that we put them in jail!” cried Britten, who stepped forward to wag his finger snidely at the children. “Rule #199 of our village’s 1000 rules clearly forbids any form of theft!” Then, he dragged the struggling Wellingtons through the door of the jail. The children stumbled into a dim, grim hallway, listening to the faint sounds of the mob cheering as the door slammed behind them.

“Haha! I'm putting you in the platinum special Cell, the deluxe edition,” Britten said. “It's the dirtiest one. Haha! You bratty orphans are too stupid to realize it, but a genius like me knows how to deal with it. Soon, Georgina will be forced to be my bride, we will marry and your fortunes will become mine. Afterwards, I’ll throw you away. You’ll be beggars living on the streets. Yuhuu!” He was triumphant. Then, he walked away, leaving the Wellingtons alone.

“What are we going to do?” cried Fred. “Try to contact Mr. Suparman?”

“Mr. Suparman won't help us,” Georgina replied. “We're going to escape.”

“No way!” Fred said. “It’s impossible.”

“I know it's a jail cell,” Georgina said, “but there must be some way to get out”. She had a look of confidence on her face. Georgina took a good look around the cell for any ideas. First she looked at the door of the cell, carefully examining every inch of it.

 “Do you think you could make another lockpick?” Fred asked hopefully. “You made an excellent one when we lived at home,”

“Oh yes! You’re genius Fred,” exclaimed Georgina. Georgina's eyes traveled to the floorlamp as she remembered that evening, and when she reached the electric socket she had an idea. Georgina wiggled the plug this way and that until at last it came loose from its plastic casing. She now had two small metal strips. Georgina then took one of the thumbtacks out of the plug. With the sharp end of the tack she poked the two pieces of metal until one was hooked around the other, and then forced the thumbtack between the two pieces so the sharp end stuck straight out.

 She knelt down to get closer to jail’s padlock, held the shiny silver padlock in one hand, took a deep breath, and stuck the lock-pick into the keyhole. It went inside, but when she tried to turn it around, it scarcely budged. It needed to move more smoothly or it would never work. Georgina took her lockpick out and wet it with her mouth, grimacing at the stale taste of the metal. Then she stuck the lockpick into the keyhole again and tried to move it. It spun quickly all the way around and then snapped in two, right in her hands. The lockpick was destroyed. But, when she put her hand on the jail’s door, the padlock swung open, and the door opened. Georgina fell back down in surprise. 

“We did it!” Georgina said, and stepped through the door in the cell into the courtyard. She looked up at the sky just in time to see the sun rise from the eastern sky. “We escaped!”

The two siblings quickly made their way to their guardian’s residence. The prison was an isolated location, a long way from the center of the village where Victor lived. The Wellingtons were exhausted, a state not helped by the godawful food they served in jail, but they both would rather be dead than return to being imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit. So they kept running, praying to the heavens that they would not be found out. (This, obviously, was a futile wish, since there was hardly anybody who didn’t recognize the faces of two child convicts, but you should at least allow them whatever little benefit of the doubt they could have here.) For a little while, their prayers seemed to have worked; there was nobody trailing behind them, waiting for them to exhaust themselves. However, the situation took a turn for the worse when they reached the center part of the village. The morning was still early; the villagers would be making their way to their job by now, which was exactly what they were doing right now, at this precise moment, when the two children were desperately trying to reach their guardian. These two coincidences would mix as well as you might expect.

“There they are!” a voice cried, and in an instant the children realized that their luck was running out. Behind them, as well as in front of them and around each corner, they were surrounded. About two blocks behind them was Britten, leading a small group of torch-carrying citizens lining straight up the street. The bright sun casted a light against Britten’s face, illuminating his smirk, cutting and sharp like a knife. “There are the orphans! They escaped!” Britten cried triumphantly, as though he’d been expecting this eventuality to happen sooner or later. Almost as if he’d been rehearshing for it. “After them, citizens!”

The children ran and ran away from the citizen toward their guardian’s house with a combined speed they never thought was possible even in the face of impending danger such as right now. Finally, the two children reached the outskirts of town, and stared at the dull, bare landscape laid out before them. The Wellington searched desperately for a sign of their guardian and his invention, but only the shape of his house and the barn were visible on the horizon.

“Where's Victor?” Georgina asked frantically.

“I don't know,” Fred said, with a sort of flatness to his voice that suggested defeat. “I can’t see him either.”

“Where can we go?” Georgina cried. “We can't hide anywhere around here. The citizens will spot us in a second,”

“We're trapped,” Fred said, his voice suddenly hoarse with panic.

Georgina pointed behind them. “Look!”

The children took their eyes off the approaching mob and looked up. Up there above their heads was the greatest machine they had ever seen. Floating just over the children's heads was the enormous sight of the hot air balloon. 

“Here I am!” Victor called from the control basket. “And here it is, my greatest invention! Climb aboard, and we'll escape from this wretched place.” He flicked on the switch, and a long ladder made of rope began to fall down to where the children were standing. “Hurry, you'll have to climb up this ladder.”

Britten knew exactly what he was going to do. As he ran accross the market area and, bumping indignant grocers on his way there, he was confronted with the impossible sight of a hot air balloon, Victor in the controls and the children frantically hanging onto the ropes like dangling keychains. The odds were beginning to stack up against his favor. Britten was apparently getting dumbstruck, but even then he couldn’t stop himself from uttering a long line of various expletives far, far too profane to be listed here.

“You’re not going anywhere! Not yet, not now!” Britten took out his revolver and loaded some bullets into it. Victor asked the children to climb up faster but suddenly a gunshot from Britten almost injured Georgina’s arm. She looked terrified. Fortunately Victor caught her just in time.

Victor and the Children finally gathered again. Meanwhile down there Britten had used up all his bullets, rendering his revolver useless.  The citizen noticed the gunshot and moments later Britten was surrounded by a gathering crowd full of curious, accusing eyes piercing him from all directions. His head is now a mess; he had to find a way out, quick.

“Hey, I know this man,” said someone with high-pitched voice, peeking inside the crowd. It was Britten’s fault that the children imprisoned in the jail. “I saw him putting on his black mask in the aisle, before he snatched the purse from the old woman, retreated, and immediately slipped the purse into the bag that the children were carrying. The jailed children, you know them right? It wasn’t their mistake. This man did it!” blurted the girl.

The girl’s explanation immediately make the crowd feeling sympathic. “and he is our mayor,” someone said again in regretful sound ”what we should do to him then?” a solid silence just happened when a loud shout came from behind “let’s burn him!”

Then everything was a blur. Britten was there, tied to a stake, his state hopeless and pathetic like a worn ragdoll smothered in gasoline and set alight. It took minutes before his screams finally quieted under the roaring flames, burning bright all left of his depraved self.

Just then, a hot air baloon that Victor and the Wellington children just ride passed over the village where Britten was burned by the angry citizens. As Britten slowly dissipated into ash, Fred began to laugh a little, followed by Georgina and Victor. Moments later, Victor steered the air baloon direction to the west, either to find a new home for him and the children or a sandy island to sleep, or to keep traveling on until the citizens eventually forgot about the matter. And their life is going to be so happy, sooner or later. All as well.

The end