STORYMAKERS LEAGUE ENTRANCE STORY-By NurulHaninIman
Bored.To death. I stared out the window as my science teacher, Miss Oakes droned on about the process of breathing, carbon monoxide, and dozens more ‘interesting topics’. I sighed and turned to a random page in my textbook and started doodling pictures of crows and cookies on the border, the most vivid thing I could remember from the novel I recently read. I could feel dozens of eyes on me, as if I was making cotton candy in an orphanage. I looked up and realized, everyone was staring at me. “Gold, the answer is gold!” my friend Chai whispered next to me. I yelled “Gold, Miss Oakes!” and she stared at me as if I were crazy. “I asked you what is the formula for water, not for an example of the periodic table, Miss Franco. How about, since you are not applying yourself to this class, how about you spend some quality time in the library, and look for some reference books for this subject, eh Miss Somers?” It was a good suggestion, since there were beanbag chairs in the library, but, her cold tone almost made it seem like she offered me a one way trip to a dumpster. I picked up my books and walked to the door. Right before I walked out, I mouthed to Chai,’We’ll talk later’
Strange things had been happening lately. Teachers bringing bikes to school, power outages when we ran on solar energy, disappearing students and delicious lunches. I thought as I made a quick stop by my locker to drop off my books and get my library card. I was running to the library when a loud crash greeted my ears. I fell to the ground and covered my head. Thank goodness I did, because almost all the lockers in that area suddenly came crashing down to the floor, along with several lights, books, and ventilation unit lids. I screamed and closed my eyes, hoping to hear running footsteps in my direction. I raised my head, only to see that all the lockers were against the walls, the lights still intact, and the vents perfectly fine. I got up and checked my watch. It was the time I was running to the library right before the incident. As soon as I started walking again, my watch started moving again and I just kept walking. Weird things again.
When I reached the library, I quickly dashed to the science area and searched through the glossy covers of magazines, books and old textbooks. I flipped through some, looking for those with comic illustrations. I finally, found many of them, but the best were written by a professor who called himself Prof. Zaps. I flipped through and found that this edition covered all the topics for my class this year. Delighted, I flipped through and stopped at page 48. He stood at a lab table, mixing a few colored chemicals together. In the first box, he mixed many chemicals together, but by the fourth box, his face and lab coat were stained with the marks of smoke. I chuckled at this and read on. I kept reading as I lost myself in the colorful illustrations and the interesting facts hidden in the comic. I devoured the many issues and when I went through the 9th issue, I stopped at page 42, where I thought he looked up from the experiment, and winked at me!
I started panicking and rubbed my eyes, pinched myself, counted to twenty and ate my emergency piece of KitKat I kept in my pocket to calm myself down. I looked back down at the page and saw that he was gone! I looked around and saw a little leg disappear around the corner. I put the many issues onto a nearby armchair, and dreading what I would see, I peered around the corner. I had the shock of my life!
A miniature version of Professor Zaps was standing in the middle of the library, holding a few bottles of colored chemicals, staring around with a smile across his face. He in fact, looked very different from the Prof. Zaps in the book. In the book, he had snow white hair, wrinkly sallow, skin, purple eyes, and wore a lab coat over an eccentric mix of a kilt and a pair of sunglasses, placed everywhere other than his eyes.. However, in the flesh (or whatever that little guy was made of), he had light brown, silky hair, clear skin, dark blue eyes and wore a neat jumper and a pair of jeans. The only way I could tell that was Prof. Zaps was the way he carried himself and the chemicals. All of a sudden, he whirled around and I had no time to hide. When he saw me, he smiled apologetically and said, “Don’t be afraid. If anyone were to be afraid, it should be me, since you are around 100 times my size.” When I heard the playful way this was said, I relaxed a little. I said to him softly in case my voice should hurt his ears. “Are you really the Prof. Zaps?”
He looked at me and cocked his head. “Of course I am. Is the grass green? But please, call me Zaps” “How did you jump out of the book?” “I am not a usual book character, you see. I am part of a ….how do I say this…..a..science fiction memory? See, the real Prof. Zaps has moved on. He grew up in a very suffocating house , with immensely strict parents and no other siblings. Naturally, he felt very curios about how life would be if he hadn’t been born into his family. And so, invented a magic recording device and he recordedthe person he wanted to be, but couldn’t there. He pretended he was a teenager who could do all sorts of things.
However, all things have their limit, and he exceeded the recorder’s limit. Thus, I was born, with all the memories and experience of all I had supposedly done. But, Prof. Zaps was not pleased. He said he did not need an imaginary friend, he said. But I was more than that. I was a living, breathing and of course, younger version of him. One day, I was reading this issue and he pushed me into this book. Since I was in the book as Prof. Zaps, I morphed into him, and started talking like him, walking like him, and the worst, I started looking like him. But when you opened the book, you opened up the portal for me to be free once more.” He finished with a smirk. I could not find anything else to say other than “Awesome.”
I stared at him for several minutes, at the same time muttering I have not finished hearing the life of a science fiction memory….I have not finished hearing the life of a science fiction memory……I have not finished hearing the life story… again and again. He however just looked at me and said, “here’s a little something to thank you for letting me out”, pressing a normal sized wristwatch into my hand. When I looked up, I saw him crawling into my jeans pocket. I opened my mouth to ask him why he was doing so, but shut it, seeing I was his ‘transportation’. Inthe power of him, two things to do with ran through my mind. One, flush him down the toilet, Two, make him my portable friend.
I grabbed the issues and slid my library card on the way out. I rushed to AP (Advance Placement) Math, pit stopping at my locker to drop the magazines off and get my Math books. I put Zaps in an empty sharpener case, but removed the blade on the way to Math. I slid in right before the bell rang. That was the good thing. The bad thing was that Chai had gone up a notch and was now in my once only Chai-free class. I groaned and set Zaps in my desk, so he had space to breath and move around. Mr. Janz came in and set up a few slides for the projector. As we were watching the slides, Zaps crept to Chai and tied her right shoelace to the table leg, and her left one to her chair. I quickly slid him back into his case and hung around to see Chai leave. She quickly stood up and fell all over the place. I held my laugh in until I was in the corridor but I could hear Zaps laughing in his case. I silently settled on it that Zaps was the best friend you could ever have.
I went through all my other classes like normal, and since Chai wasn’t throwing me dirty looks, I guessed she didn’t know I did the trick. I giggled with glee when I thought about it. Zaps remained quiet but occasionally poked my leg or did and undid my laces. I stopped by my locker after the last bell rang to drop off my books and get my homework. I ran out through the front doors and straight to the bike shed. I deftly unchained my bike and slipped both lock and key into my jeans pocket. With a satisfied smile, I pedaled out of the school compound and pedaled straight home, right after a pit stop for juice at the convenience store.
I reached home and dashed to the kitchen to fix myself some lunch, and maybe some dessert. I settled for some simple mushroom soup, some juice which I bought on the way home, and some jellywhich was a gift from my friend. Speaking of friends….Where’s Zaps?! Oh drat! I must have left him in my locker! I daren’t go back to school and get him, it’s raining quite heavily now. Oh drat! I tried (failed) to stop thinking about Zaps in my cold, dark locker. So I thought tomorrow I’ll try to make it up to him. I went to bed that night with uneasiness.
I pedaled to school after breakfast at seven in the morning which with class starting at nine, I was a bit out of the norm. However instead of bursting into school I found a small colony of red ants crawling all over the handle for the doors. That’s weird. The exterminator came last week, I mused. I climbed up the birch tree near the library’s window in an attempt to break in but slid down a few minutes later. Why? The windows were locked and blocked, which was odd. I checked the whole school compound but found that all windows were locked and blocked. That is it. I’m getting in there no matter what. I kicked off my left shoe and aimed. A loud, satisfactory crash greeted my ears. I scaled up a tree andswung myself through the broken window, grazing my left ankle on the sill. “Oh stupid, stupid!Why didn’t you check if the sill was sharp?!” I grabbed a hanky from my backpack and quickly tied a temporary bandage around my ankle. I walked out and wanted to run down the stairs into the second floor landing, but was suddenly swept off my feet by huge metal, cold, 6-foot tall cyborgs.
There were 4 of them. each one held one of my hands and feet and pinned me to the ground. While they did that, Zaps strolled onto my forehead and looked at me. “Do you like this?” I looked at him like he was crazy (which he was) and said “Why are you doing this to me? What did I do to you? If you’re mad about last night, it was an accident! I promise!” I screamed in fear at him. He looked at me and whispered some words I didn’t understand to cyborg furthest from my fingers. The cyborg whistled sharply and a mallet appeared, carried by another cyborg. He glanced apologetically at me and said “Sorry. We ran out of anesthetic.” And they knocked me out cold. I woke up in a dark, dank room and it smelled really musky, like, a million sweaty jocks had bathed in the same water, then the water was sprayed all over the room.
As my eyes adjusted, I saw that the room was filed with chemicals of every kind and all sorts of traps were laid, like poisin traps, some minefields and maybe a few pressure plates which I did NOT want to find out their purpose. I muttered a curse under my breath and a colossal bang on the door almost made me have a heart attack. “shut your stupid face! We are still debating whether or not o kill you!” a husky voice yelled. Darn it. I must have been shucked and gone to the land of boys and jerks. I pulled out the watch Zaps gave me, the only memory left of the nice side. A tear rolled down my cheek. This is how it would end, trapped in an unknown place, left to starve or be blown to smithereens by Zaps, the guy I thought could’ve been my best friend ever. I stroked my watch and silently wished I could turn back time.To when, Iris? I looked at my watch, and actually, I just realized that the face did actually look like a real face.
“Um yesterday, science , 3rd period?” I peered hopefully at the watch and before I knew what was going on, I was whirling through the eye of a virtual tornado, everything that happened yesterday appearing here and there in little snippets. I landed with a bump on the floor of my classroom. “Miss Franco, if you fall out of your chair one more time, it will be clear you don’t want your chair, and I shall remove it from this class.” finished Miss Oakes. I apologized meekly and sat back in my chair. I checked my watch and it was a few minutes before I was sent out of the classroom. I sighed in relief as I looked up at the board to study the question. Miss Oakes looked at me and said, “Miss Franco, this might be your chance to redeem yourself. What is the answer of the question?” she glared down her long nose. I, fortunately answered correctly and sat down.
During lunch, I pondered even though my besties were discussing a new hot topic. If I didn’t go to the library, then, I didn’t meet Zaps and didn’t get locked in the janitor’s closet and everything is back to normal. I went through school with a spring in my step for the rest of the day.
THE NEXT DAY
I woke up and found it weird that I was already fully dressed. I rubbed my eyes and saw a little parcel with a tag on my beside table. This puzzled me. The wrapper was clearly wrapping paper, but felt as soft as silk. I carefully opened the parcel, only to see the time-travelling wristwatch in it! I squealed with joy as I saw it. Sorry for yesterday. I’ve been sentenced to 7 years more in ten different books by the graphic security. This is one of the five prototypes I made. Use it wisely. Zaps
Tearsof joy and pity ran down my cheek as I put the note down.
THREE YEARS LATER
I zoomed to class on my rollerblades. I met a few people on the way, and I lost track of time! Shoot I rubbed my watch and wished to be 4 minutes ago. Time-travel used to make me a little woozy, but now it didn’t anymore. I was about to ride on, but I couldn’t. I looked down and realized that I left my legs and rollerblades in the future. Shoot.