Ann read through her story, checking each line for any mistakes:
Once there was a young girl called Anabel. She went for a walk around
the school grounds during her lunch hour, and found a secret passage
leading down below the ground. She walked down many dark steps, until
she finally emerged in a dimly lamplit cavern, which was one of a maze
of many caves, caverns and tunnels. There she met the Primitive Pixies
of Rubbishland. These little semi-human creatures were each about three
feet tall, and they told her of their plans to invade the school on the surface
world the next morning.
"You will never succeed," she said, "There are many girls in that school, and
they are not about to stand by and let you invade the place," said Anabel.
"That's where you're wrong," said the leader of the pixies, as his pixies tied
Anabel to a stone pillar in one of the caverns, "We know all about the girls
in your school up there. We have discovered many things about every girl,
and we will have no trouble defeating them. We will leave you tied up here,
while we finish our plans for the invasion. We shall come back and tell you
of our successful victories tomorrow morning, late tomorrow morning."
The next morning, while the pixies were off raiding the school, Anabel
finally remembered that she had sharp fingernails, because she had not cut
them for days. So she twisted and turned her hands until she could use her
fingernails to weaken the rope enough to enable her to snap it. She broke
free of the ropes and ran back through the network of caverns until she
came to the steps leading up to the cave at the back of the school grounds.
She ran up the stairs and emerged in the schoolyard, where she saw all of
her fellow students, as well as the teachers, forced into serving as slave
labour for the leader of the Primitive Pixies of Rubbishland.
"But how did you do it?" she asked the leading pixie.
"I could ask the same question about your escape, but I won't bother,"
replied the leading pixie, before explaining how his team of emissaries
from Rubbishland had conquered the school, "You see, Miss Anabel, we
had obtained and studied many bits of documentary evidence about the
girls in this school. We knew all your weaknesses before we started our
raid. Our strategies were all designed to exploit your weaknesses to the
breaking point."
"But where could you have managed to find such evidence?" asked
Anabel, "Did you break into the staff room and look at the photocopies
of our report cards?"
"No, of course not. We didn't need to do that. Have you ever wondered why
we call our subterranean caverns Rubbishland?"
"It does seem a little unusual," replied Anabel, hoping to find out a way to
defeat these naughty pixies.
"I'll tell you why. It's because all of our mattresses, pillows, cushions,
furniture and other padded items are stuffed with newspaper and other bits
of paper which we have easily managed to steal from your school garbage
bins, where we found many pages of material written by the girls of this
school. We had to err... unscrunch it before we could read it, but it told us
all we needed to know to have an advantage in defeating you," said the Pixie.
"Now I get it," thought Anabel, "But it's too late to do anything about
stopping them. The pixies know all about us, because one of the teachers has
been confiscating our private scribblings and throwing them into the bin. We
have been defeated by the Primitive Pixies of Rubbishland, all because of
Miss Paperhurler, the teacher who threw our stuff away. All is now lost."
"Now you will join your fellow students and carry more of the school's
resources and equipment down into our caverns," said the leader of the
pixies.
Anabel could only obey them, fearing the worst, because she remembered
that she had had more pieces of paper confiscated by Miss Paperhurler
than most of the other students. The Primitive Pixies of Rubbishland
would have a huge dossier compiled about Anabel.
Anabel continued to obey the Pixies of Rubbishland for about an hour,
until she finally got an idea.
"I'll fight fire with fire, or fight paper with paper anyway. This will give
me a chance to develop some skills as an amateur pickpocket," she thought.
Anabel secretly picked the pockets of all the pixies that lived in the
caverns. Sifting through its contents, she found to her delight, some
documentary evidence which showed that some of the pixies has various
grievances about the habits of other pixies. She then redistributed these
pieces of pixie paper in different pockets. This made sure that certain
items would be discovered. Later on, all of the pixies had assembled
their prisoners in the caverns of Rubbishland, below Anabel's school.
"Before you do anything to us," said Anabel, "you should empty out
your pockets."
The pixies did so out of curiosity, and read various compositions that
were written by each other. They started a civil war among themselves.
"We must leave now," shouted Anabel, leading the girls back to the
surface, while the pixies continued to fight each other savagely.
"We have nothing more to worry about from them," said Anabel, "If
they keep fighting like that, they will demolish one another."
"Let's hope we never have to face them again," said Miss Paperhurler.
"I doubt that we will," said Anabel, "I doubt it very much."
The End