Writing Workshop Winner!

A long-lost relative, a trampoline gun, or a hero named Jack? Why not read a mystery with all three! Today on my blog, I’m sharing Andy White’s short story “The Mystery of the Space Bombings.” Andy White is the winner of my 6th Grade Writing Workshop Contest at St. Katharine Drexel in Sioux Falls, SD. Please encourage this gifted young writer by liking, commenting, and sharing!

Chapter 1, The Place

There was once a little boy named Jack. I’m Jack. I love to draw and write. One day, I found myself sitting along the edge of a bridge doing my homework with my friend Will. Will is a smart friendly person who likes to express himself.

When we ate supper and got done doing our homework it was nearly midnight, 11 o’clock to be exact (we have a LOT of homework). Once we started walking home, we noticed some strange, out of the ordinary noises that did not make sense. It sounded like something between nails on a chalkboard and a dying goat.

Will and I both love to do things that we know we shouldn’t do and so, naturally, we both went in search of the strange noise. Once we thought we were near the sound, I heard a big crash to my left. I looked and noticed that the crashing sound was actually Will falling through some old, creaky floorboards. EEEE!! CSHHH!

“Will!” I yelled. “Are you okay?”

“I may have a twisted ankle,” Will responded. “But otherwise, yeah I’m fine.”

I noticed that he was hanging by his shirt on top of a ship-like structure. “Whoa,” I said. “That’s cool.”

“What, the way I fell on top of this … thing? Or the room that the thing is in?” Will questioned.

“Both,” I replied. To my left I noticed a ladder, so I climbed down to investigate the scene. Whatever made the sound before either left this unexplored place or was hiding, ready to strike at us.

By the time I got down the ladder, Will had only gotten halfway down the odd ship-like structure.

“What are ya doing in me lab!” something to my left screamed.

I whipped around as fast as lightning and noticed an alien-like figure standing before me. “I … It’s just … my friend fell and I had—”

“EXCUSES, EXCUSES!” retorted the alien.

By the time I had seen the alien, Will was already on the ground of the lab.

“Hey, what’s all of that yelling?” questioned Will.

“Shhh!” I hissed.

“And who is this that ya brought with ya?” the alien said.

The face that Will made when he noticed the alien was unexplainable. “Wha….”

Just then Will fainted.

“I see ya friend here couldn’t process the thought of an alien standin’ right in front of him,” said the alien. Then he pulled out a tranquilizer dart and shot me.

Chapter 2, Home

In the morning I immediately recognized the room that I was in, my room.

“Honey, time for breakfast!” my mom called.

“Ugh,” I groaned. By the way, my mom’s name is Alex, Alex Johansen. I look almost identical to my mom except for one thing, eye color. My mom has dark brown eyes, and I have deep blue eyes. After about a minute or two in my bed, I finally got the urge to start the day.

At the table, I did not want to talk about my experiences I had the night before since I thought that everyone in my family would think I’d gone psycho.

After I ate my breakfast, I called Will. Beep … Beep … Be—click. “Hi Will,” I said.

“Good morning,” Will responded.

“What do you think about the night before?”

Will shuddered under the thought. “Scary, very scary.”

“Yeah, it definitely was,” I responded.

After our little conversation on the phone, we both decided to go back and see what more there was to explore of the secret place. Once we got to the spot where Will fell into, we noticed that the boards that Will broke were fixed.

“Huh,” I said. “Wonder how he managed to fix the floorboard that quickly.”

“Bet he has a floorboard fixer on speed dial for occasional fall-throughs,” said Will.

Once we got done with that, I got out my pocket-knife and started to cut open a floorboard. Before we went down I whispered, “Remember, be quiet. We are not here to make enemies with that hideous alien.”

“ALIEN! That thing was an ALIEN?” Will yelled.

“Shh!” I hissed.

Chapter 3, Jake

As soon as we hit the ground of the secret base, I turned on my flashlight. I noticed some blueprints on the walls. “Hey, Will come check this out.” Once Will got over to me, I pointed out the blueprints. “They look like time travel machine blueprints.”

“Wow,” Will said. “You are such a nerd.”

“What?” I said. “I can’t help it.”

“Look at the name on the blueprints,” Will exclaimed. “They all say JAKE on them.”

“Jake,” I repeated. “Now THAT is an evil name!”

“It must be the name of the weird alien creature,” Will realized.

Chapter 4, Stealing A Ship

“I know what we should do,” I said in a mischievous voice.

“What?” Will questioned.

“I say we should steal the ship.”

“Okay,” answered Will.

“Just okay? You’re not going to argue with me?” I questioned.

“Nope,” Will responded. “I’m shooting towards an argue-free weekend.”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s the weirdest thing I have ever heard you say.”

Afterwards, we gathered up (I mean stole) all of the stuff needed for the trip.

“Oxygen tank, check. Suit, check. Money, che—wait, why would we need money if we are traveling to a different planet that probably won’t have the same currency as us?” I pondered.

“Beats me,” Will said back.

“Weapons, check. Alien Ships for Dummies, check. Okay, we are ready to get going,” I said.

Once we got in the ship, we heard the odd noise again. “Eeeraah!”

“GO, GO, GO,” yelled Will.

Right then and there, the alien swooped down with his hideous wings and caught Will in its grasp.

“Will!” I shouted “NO!” I pulled out a plasma rifle out of who knows where and shot the alien.

In agony, the alien dropped Will. “AHHHHH!”

Ploosh! I shot a trampoline gun at the place where Will was about to land, and he bounced all of the way up to the cockpit of the spaceship.

“Oh, my gosh,” said Will. “That was super scary.”

“And cool,” I admitted.

Finally, we climbed into place and started our adventure.

“Oh man, I think I’ve got the Hebejebies,” Will explained.

“Setting route for Hebejebies, the Planet of the Great Space … nothingness,” said the spaceship.

“And where is this?” I questioned.

“This planet is in between Kilefay and Hoogojay,” answered the ship.

“And how far away is that?” pondered Will.

“Approximately 6 light years away,” said the spaceship.

“Whoa,” I said. “That’s pretty far.”

Chapter 5, ATTACK!

After we took the spaceship, Jake the alien called up all of his minions, who were now attacking the ship from a second vessel.

“Incoming bogies,” said our spaceship.

“WHAT!” yelled Will.

“You know what to do,” I said. “SHOOT ’EM!”

PEW! PEW! PEW! The other ship shot at us! CSHHH! CSHHH! CSHHH! WEOO! WEOO! WEOO!

“First engine down … second engine down … loosing main power source,” said the spaceship.

“AH …” The spaceship hit the ground of a planet. “You have arrived,” explained the spaceship.

“Good,” I replied, holding my aching head.

Chapter 6, Hebejebies

When I woke up, I found myself in what looked like a hospital room, a heart monitor displayed to the left of me. Right next to that was an airbag.

“Finally you’re awake,” said Will.

“Wha—where am I?” I questioned.

“You’re in a Hebejebies hospital. Have you met the locals?” Will asked.

“Well of course not. I just woke up … what the heck are you wearing?”

“Oh, this?” Will said, pointing to his head. “This is just a cultural hat … they’re pretty cool.”

“I don’t think we have the same definitions of cool Will, and besides what is the currency here?” I questioned.

“I’m glad you asked my dear friend. It seems as if there is an intergalactic bank here and they exchange all types of currency including the American currency that we stole earlier,” explained Will.

“And how much did we steal?” I questioned.

“About 1,400 jebe-coins,” Will responded.

“And how much of that did you spend on the hat?”

“80 coi—”

We heard a loud bang. I got up as quick as I ever could before … and fell back down. “Uuugh,” I moaned.

“Bro, you need to rest,” Will explained. “Eeeeeugh! Are you drooling? Oh man I’m going to send this to the entire school of what-cha-ma-call-it prep!”

“Dude, the school is called Canyon Prep, and I’m NOT drooling.”

A nurse standing at the foot of my bed was talking an alien talk that I did not understand. The nurse jabbed a needle into my arm. “OUCH!” I screamed. The pain left me just as fast as it came. I stood still, frozen in shock about what just happened. It seemed as if all of the pain in my body had left me.

Slowly and surely, I got up from the bed, and we set out to find what made the loud bang.

Chapter 7, Mankind

After what seemed like hours of walking, we finally reached a big group of aliens.

“Hey, what’s happening?”

“Bgit,” replied one of the aliens.

“Oh yeah, you don’t speak our language.”

“Tbbbbb,” the alien said in what seemed like disgust.

“Well we’re the first to speak to an alien I guess,” Will said just as I noticed what looked like another human being.

“Will,” I said, tapping his shoulder. “I don’t think we’re the only ones here.” I turned Will around showing him the human. We walked over to him.

“FINALLY, someone that can speak our language,” I said, directing it to the man. It seemed like he was looking at something that was placed in his hand.

“Hey.”

“OH MY GOSH!” The man whipped around and we stood face to face. “You boys almost gave me a heart attack!” the man yelled.

“Sorry, we were just—”

“Hey what’s that you got in your hand?” interrupted Will.

“Oh, this?” said the man pointing to his hand. “This thing is like one of those rubix cubes you have back on earth.”

“Oh, cool,” Will said.

After about a minute or two, I finally said, “STOP! Will, you and this person we don’t even know yet are spending SO many minutes solving that … thing and we haven’t gotten anywhere deeper with that explosion we heard earlier.” I stopped, short of breath.

“You guys know about the explosion?” questioned the man.

“Yep,” we said simultaneously.

Chapter 8, At The Table

Once we finished the conversation and got to the man’s house, we did a little introduction on ourselves.

“Hi, I’m Jack, Jack Johansen,” I said to the man.

“Nice to meet you Jack. I’m George, George Fogarty,” the man explained as Will stood, mouth gaping open.

“I … I’m a Fogarty,” Will said, still in awe of what George had said.

“Then it may appear that I’m your father,” explained George.

Will’s assumed-to-be-dead father explained that he fell though the same hole that Will fell into, except he was alone and it was broad daylight outside. Instead of the JAKE that we found earlier, he’d found FAKE, who he assumed to be Jake’s son.

“Oh man, look at the time. I’d better get you two to bed,” George said looking at a weird gadget on his arm that was not a watch.

After we woke up, we ate a weird meal that was packed almost identically like the meals that they ate in The Giver (a book from my homework). There was something like beans except they were purple and there was a turquoise mush that looked like slushy snow. It actually tasted pretty good, and I could tell Will agreed because he made the face that explained so.

Chapter 9, Investigation

After our two-day, one-night stay, we finally started to investigate the explosion. When we got to the place that it happened, the whole street was evacuated.

“I wonder where everybody went?” questioned Will.

“We have no time for chit-chat. We need to get to the bottom of this mystery,” his father, George, said.

After about an hour or so, we found only these things:

One stinky sock
Three old newspapers
And a smoldering piece of wood

We kept all of the things that were needed, which were obviously the newspaper and the wood piece. We examined them both. Will and his dad noticed that things like the explosion were happening when we were asleep, and the evacuation also took place when we were asleep.

After the examination, we threw away the wood piece because it served no purpose. We heard the sound of a space shuttle overhead.

“Well, well, well, look who we have ’ere!” Jake said from a speaker overhead. “I’ve been settin’ off bombs all ’round ‘ere just to find ya!”

“Jake,” I said, except all that came out were muffled sounds because of the sheer sound of the shuttle overhead.

When Jake’s shuttle landed, he opened a hatch at the bottom of his ship that exposed a ray gun. “I’ve waited a long time for this,” Jake explained, and with that he started to charge up his gun.

“RUN!” George, Will and I all said in unison and ducked behind a trashcan.

On the verge of Jake shooting the ray gun, something strange happened.

“Well, come to think of it,” Jake said, powering down. “I should kill ya me’self.” And he opened yet another hatch, this time a walkway down to us. He came out, looking like a 1980’s superhero, cape and all, carrying a gun in his hand.

He took a shot, missed, took another shot, and hit. And guess just where it hit? It hit George right in the arm, just when he was about to unholster his gun, and it clattered to the ground.

Except, being the quick thinking me, I picked up the fallen gun and shot Jake as well. He also dropped his gun, and Will and I went to his ship, carrying the limping George.

When we got inside the shuttle, we immediately gunned it, leaving that crooked planet in the dust, heading straight back to earth.

 

 

 

8 Comments

  1. Quintin Honerman on January 16, 2018 at 1:19 pm

    Wow! Andy you are a very talented writer. Well done!

  2. Sandy on January 16, 2018 at 1:37 pm

    Wow! Great story. I enjoyed it! Good luck with your writing Andy! You have a wonderful future ahead of you.

  3. Elena Hartwel on January 16, 2018 at 2:43 pm

    You write the best cliffhangers at the end of your chapters! Makes me have to keep reading. Great job, Andy, can’t wait to read your first novel.

  4. Samantha Engberg on January 16, 2018 at 2:49 pm

    I loved your story, Andy! I really enjoyed all of the surprises and descriptive words. Keep up the good work!

  5. Kathy on January 16, 2018 at 6:03 pm

    Great story Andy! Loved it! 🙂

  6. TaMara Hanscom on January 16, 2018 at 10:49 pm

    Fantastic! Can’t wait to read your first full length novel

  7. Mike Fiedler on January 17, 2018 at 4:34 pm

    Andy,

    You have a special talent. I hope to see more from you in the future!

  8. Brandon on January 18, 2018 at 10:38 am

    Great story! Keep up the good work!

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