Drowned By Money, 6-8, p. 1
      My name is Chris Jackson, and I'm twenty-seven years old.  My physical features include brown curly hair, green eyes, and a tan skin tone. I'm six feet tall. Socially, I don't associate with many people. Hence, I don't have many friends, nor do I have siblings.  People generally don't like me and have been known to describe me as being greedy, selfish, and self-centered. They may call me these mean names because they are jealous that I'm filthy rich. I live by myself in the most expensive house in Tampa, Florida (The Guisando De Avila). Maybe they feel this way about me because I don't donate money to charity. I still think it is extremely rude to call me names like greedy. I worked hard for the money I have. If the citizens of Tampa want to donate money to people or causes, they should do so. However, they shouldn't judge me badly because I don't want to donate to charity. I earned all of this money through my work as a writer and my investments in stocks.  

	My biggest money making opportunity happened when I was sailing.  Sailing, by the way, is one of my favorite hobbies (as well as going to Tampa Bay Buccaneers games).  On one of my sailing adventures, I saw something shimmering in the water. When I got a closer look, I realized it was a massive amount of gold and pearls. I claimed the treasure, and I hired people to dig it out for me. If people call not giving away my hard earned wealth greedy, then that's their opinion.  If people are correct and I am selfish, then I have to believe that the reason why is because of my parents.  My parents, who live in the nicest county in Colorado and also live a rich life, raised me in a very spoiled way and encouraged me to have whatever I want.  My view of life is that you can't have a good life or be happy if you are not rich.          

        Riiiiiiing!! Riiiiing!! Riiiiii-Thud. Ouch, I looked at my hand and saw that there was a small bruise because I hit my hand on my alarm clock (which looks like a hundred dollar bill) really hard. I looked at the clock; it was 9:30, September 20th. I was about to turn on the T.V. when I realized I was 30 minutes late to my conference with a publisher. "Shoot," I thought. I ran to my closet and grabbed a blue button down shirt and nice dress pants. I took my fastest elevator to my garage. When I got to the garage, I was 
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trying to decide if I should drive an Aston Martin, a Bugatti, or a Mustang. I chose the pink Bugatti because it is the fastest car I have. Vrooom. I sped out of my drive way. I was almost to my office building when I heard a police siren. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the police car right behind. Then I looked at my speedometer and realized I was going twenty miles above the speed limit. Instead of pulling over, I kept driving. I thought I could just pay the police driver not to take me to jail. When I was a block away from my office building, I looked at my rearview mirror and saw three police cars with police men pointing guns at my car while driving. I decided to pull over before the police men could shoot my beautiful my pink Bugatti. 

	A tall, muscular policeman walked over to the passenger window of the car and in a deep voice he said, "Looks like Mr. Jackson is going to be locked in jail."

	 Without thinking I said, "Good luck doing that."           

	 I jerked my steering wheel to the left and hit the policeman. The impact caused him to go flying over the side of the car. His pistol fell out of his holster and wedged tightly between the windshield wiper and the windshield. Before the other policemen had time to react, I turned my car into a hidden alley which I'd noticed before I had gotten pulled over. I kept driving fast, avoiding trash cans and dumpsters. When I looked in my rearview mirror, the police weren't behind me. I had lost them. The alley ended in an opening that led to a shady, broken down street. I was driving a little bit slower now when I heard a pop, followed by a hissing sound. For a second I thought there was a snake in my car. However, it was only the popping of one of my wheels and that was why my car suddenly tilted. Instinctively, I started to slow down because I didn't want to hurt my car any more.           

        Fifteen minutes later when I was still driving on the broken down road, unaware of where I wanted to go, I heard on the radio,"Chris Jackson wanted for an assault to an officer and reckless driving." As if the radio broadcast was a signal, I then heard a faint 
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police siren. It was probably only a couple miles from my car. Now I needed to hurry up. I drove faster for a few minutes when I realized I should go to my boat. It is a forty-two foot Pan-Oceanic Center Cockpit. (It has one room with a king-size bunk and shower, and another room with two twin bunks. The boat has an oven, refrigerator, freezer, GPS, an auto pilot system, eighteen opening ports with screens, compass, and seven fire extinguishers.) I turned on the GPS in my car and typed in the location where my boat was docked. The GPS said I was eight minutes away from the dock. If I drove fast, I probably could make it in four minutes. I stepped on the gas pedal and started to speed off. Every now and then I would hear a creeeak! The sound came from my car's popped wheel.           

        I got to the dock in exactly four minutes. I parked my car behind an old parking structure so the police would be fooled into thinking I was hiding in the parking structure. I then grabbed the gun from the windshield, unsure what I was going to do with it. I sprinted to my boat and quickly unwrapped the dock lines from the knob on the deck. When I was getting in the boat, I heard a police siren that sounded closer than the last one. I quickly unrolled the head sail and the mainsail and scrambled behind the steering wheel. My boat and I were expeditiously  heading out to sea.           

        The sun was setting and I was a safe distance from shore, so I decided to put my boat on auto pilot and go to sleep. I was dreaming about being chased by the police and helicopters when I woke up abruptly. I opened my eyes, and I was on the floor of the boat. I got to my feet and there was water up to my ankles. Slosh, slosh, I took two steps then immediately fell down. The wind and waves were so hard it was as if two big fists were punching the side of my boat. Holding on to rails and taking a few steps at a time then falling, I managed to get to the deck.          

        The weather was terrible. The sky was gray and dull. Rain was falling extremely hard like rocks diving from the sky. There were enormous waves, many of them twenty to forty feet high. I was kneeling on the deck, grasping for my life to a railing, while the 
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wind was whipping at my face. I had to move fast. Boom!! Lightning struck the back of my boat. I got a really long rope. Then I tied one end to the mast and the other to my body. Then I got a big bag and started to grab everything I thought I might need, and I put it in the bag. In the bag I had food, a few fire extinguishers, a blow up mattress, the air pump to blow up the mattress, a compass, rope, a wooden pole, and a sail. Once I had as much I as I could fit in the bag, I started to bail the water out of the boat. Eventually I gave up because the water was up to my stomach and was beginning to flood out of the boat by itself. When I was putting my life vest on and I was loosening the rope, the boom came around from behind me and hit me in my head. I was out cold.          

        When I woke the storm had cleared, and I was shivering violently. My boat was shattered into a million pieces. I looked down and realized I was half positioned on a few planks of wood floating in the middle of the ocean. Luckily, my life vest was still on me. I got fully on the planks of wood and realized I could make a boat out of what I had. I grabbed the air mattress and started to inflate it. While inflating it, I had a sudden revelation.  I realized that that I wouldn't be in this situation if I wasn't selfish and greedy. So I promised myself I would be less greedy when I got back, if I survived. Once I finished inflating it, I tied the wooden planks under the mattress to make it float better. Then I tied two fire extinguishers in the front on each side and on the back of each side.  I did this so that if I wanted to go faster I could press the fire extinguisher and the force of the stuff coming out would make me go faster. After that, I tied the pole to the mattress and tied the part of the head sail from my real sail boat to the pole. Then I connected two poles and put them in the front of the boat to make it aerodynamic. Lastly, I got two poles and made one a rudder and the other the boom.           

        Shockingly, the handmade sailboat I made worked very well. I was probably moving at sixty knots per hour. I didn't even have to use the fire extinguishers. Everything was going well until I saw two dark figures moving in the water right by my boat. They were following me for about thirty minutes, sometimes moving under my boat and hitting it, almost tipping it over. Then I saw a fin brake through the surface of the 
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water, and I immediately knew that they were sharks. I became really worried. Panic was rising in me. Out of the blue, the shark jumped and grabbed the sleeve of my blue button down shirt. It started to drag me off the mattress while I punched its nose. Finally, I remembered the gun. I grabbed the gun and shot the shark. It slid lifelessly off the mattress and sunk into the depths of the ocean. I was celebrating my victory when a second shark bit my leg. Needles of pain shot through my spine and spread throughout my body. I hastily grabbed the gun and shot the shark two times until it died and fell off the mattress. I ripped off part of my shirt and firmly wrapped it around what was left of my leg in order to stop the blood loss. I had no energy. I lay down and I was just able to steer. Hours, passed and I thought I was going to die. I thought about killing myself a couple of times, but decided against it because I liked myself to much.          

        After hours of pain and misery, land came into view. Once I got closer to land I used the fire extinguishers and started to go extremely fast. In no time I was half a mile away from land. The closer I got to land, the more barbarous the waves got. I was going to push my boat until it could move no further. Weakened by the blood I'd lost, my vision started to blur and it became hard to think. I was probably two-hundred yards away when a big wave came and capsized my boat. I was only able to float because of my life vest. Using the last of my energy, I grabbed two fire extinguishers and pressed the handle. The fire extinguishers shot me forward, and I started to skid through waves. Every now and then I would plunge under water and get water up my nose or get scraped by shells. I was fighting with all my might. Each time a wave moved me back, I used whatever energy I had to move forward. When I thought I was going to die and I ran out of luck, a big wave came. It scooped me up and tossed me to shore. Feelings of joy filled every part of my body. I saw people rushing to my aid. Then I was out like a light.          

        I woke up on a bed in a white room surrounded by doctors. The uneasy feeling in the room was almost tangible. They were whispering things that I could not make out. I made groaning sounds, and the doctors all stopped talking. It was dead silent with the 
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exception of the heart rate monitor. Finally, with an extreme effort, I managed to sit upright.  The vision that I saw sitting up shocked me. The area that the shark bit on my leg was now transformed to a small sewed up stub. 

	After a long moment of silence a doctor said, "Chris, once you heal, you are going to have to go to jail until your trial." 

	I responded with, "Thanks for the news." Then I passed out.
	                         
	On a cold day a week later when I was heading to my trial I saw an old man on the street begging for money. Usually I would pass them by as if they were nothing, but from some reason this time I told the person who was hired to drive me to the court to pull over. Once he pulled over I gave him my wallet and told him to give a couple hundred dollars to the old man. I couldn't because my hands were cuffed. 
	 
	When we got to the court room I did not try to plead my case, because I knew I did something wrong and I should be punished. I just asked them how long am I going to be in jail. They told me I would be in jail for eighteen months.

	I got to the jail and they gave me my own jail cell. Right before I went to bed I promised my self I would donate money to charities. That night I slept peacefully.