Iwas in deep sleep when someone knocked on my door. I quickly woke up, stretched my arms and lit the lamp. When I opened the door, a golden envelope fell onto my hands. A feeling of anticipation filled my body to see what was in it.

I eagerly cut opened the envelope. There was a map in it!

“Was it a map of hidden treasure or a map of my friend’s house?” I questioned myself. When I carefully looked at it, it was really a secret route to some hidden treasure!

I became very excited and without thinking or investigating how and why it came to my house, I started headed towards the directions given in the map. I kept on moving and then I reached a village but still, according to the map, I had just reached halfway.

I hurriedly walked and walked miles and then I reached the destination marked in the map as the site of the hidden treasure. I was in a spacious field with no one around. There was no sign of treasure. I looked at the map which guided to move to a large tree nearby and take nine steps to the right and start digging there.

I carefully counted my steps and when I reached the place which the map had guided, I took my spade out, which I had brought with me, and started digging. I continuously dug for hours, but still all that came out of the ground was just normal soil with some millipedes.

I was tired of digging when I felt something hard in the soil! I excitedly took it out and saw it was a box! I could not believe my eyes! Without wasting a minute, I wiped off the dust from the box and headed back to my house as fasts as I could.

When I reached my house, I opened the box and saw the same golden envelope and a letter with it which said: “You were the 123rd person who was tricked, now you can trick someone else.”

I ripped the paper in anger and started crying. I was very angry at myself that I had just blindly trusted what was written on it. I learnt a lesson to never blindly trust anyone and should always find out more about a situation.

Published in Dawn, Young World, September 29th, 2018