I have been writing a new story since the end of December. I call it, They Walk Among Us. That probably won’t be the name I end it with, but that is what it’s called now. I will be sending it chapter by chapter. This is only a draft, and feel free to make suggestions in the comments section. It’s probably riddled with misspellings, and I’m only 12, so don’t judge. And the writing gets SOOOOO much better I promise.
Chapter 1 Visions
I don’t remember much about where I’m from. Just that it was hot, red, and scary. We were always afraid of the men in the black masks. They searched for us, but we always managed to hide most of our tribe. It was at least one person to be taken.
Then it was me.
They took me, my four friends, and my sister.
They took us to a place they called “ Area 51”.
It is a myth among humans, but to us, it was all but that.
They beat us for information, they torture us for answers. They inject us for truth.
And that’s just a slow day.
We each have a special trait about ourselves. And it scares them.
“Hey, Lucy.” My friend Annabelle says to me after my morning “interrogation”
“Hey, Ann. What did they do to you today?”
“It seems like they are stepping up their game. That brought out the electricity stick thingy. They are so stupid. My brother has electrokinesis, so it doesn’t bother me.”
I roll my eyes.
“I’m starving. I wonder what AWFUL thing they are going to have to eat” she says.
I giggle
We meet up with our other friends in the dull, grey cafeteria. It hardly meets the standards of a regular cafeteria, but there is no other word for it.
I have never met a human, other than the our vile human captors that hold us in the place. I wonder if all humans are like that.
I see my friend Jacob, and Annabelle’s brother, easily distinguishable with his fire truck red hair, walks to the table with his trademark angry face.
My little sister Ava, who barely touches the ground while she floats with ease.
My friend Danielle, who always looks sad to the fullest extent. I don’t understand why she always looks sad, but I try to help her not to.
My friend Logan, who always looks happy. He helps us not to always feel down in this awful place.
We each have a number tattooed behind our ears. We are not supposed to have names; we have numbers.
My number is four. Danielle’s is three. Annabelle’s is six. Ava’s is nine. Jacob’s is eight. Logan’s is five.
“ I don’t understand why they want to know so much about our planet; it’s not like we came and kidnapped them, tortured them, and sometimes starved them just for information about earth,” Logan says, “ what are they going to do with all this information anyway?”
“I don’t know and don’t care. It’s fun here with you guys.” Annabelle says
I am annoyed with Annabelle for being so happy in this awful place, so I look at her plate, pick up her cheese-roll with my telekinesis, and place it on my plate. She scowls hard at me.
I look at the hallway that connects the cells to the cafeteria. Four people walk down the hall. Melodie Warren, who is classified as the most dangerous of all of us. Her number is ten. She releases gasses that robs you of sight, smell, and hearing. The guards have her arms tied in jacket-thing that makes you look like your hugging yourself. The Walsh twins, who look exactly alike except for their noses, and their numbers are seven and seventeen. Mark Sloan, whose number is fifteen. And Kenzie Green, whose number is thirteen. Kenzie has always scared me, not because she looks angry, like Jacob, but because she always looks like she is plotting something.
“Number 8, please come for mandatory testing.” someone over the P.A. calls.
Jacob rolls his eyes.
See you.” He walks off, scowling. I see him scratching his number tattoo behind his ear. I wonder if it irritates or embarrasses him.
“I wonder why they are testing him?” Annabelle says. I wonder too.
He comes back hours later as we are talking in our makeshift “living” area. He has plenty of injection scars and a swollen shut eye. I suspect he resisted some of the liquids. Or they beat him for information about our planet.
“What happened to you?” Logan asks.
“I don’t want to talk about it. I’m going to my cell. See you.” He says and walks off.
“Jeez, they messed him up GOOOOOOD-“
“Annabelle! Don’t be so rude!” I say.
“Okay, MOM,” she says. She rolls her eyes at me and resumes talking to Logan.
I return to my cell with an angry face. I sit down on my bed and look through my window that connects my and Jacob’s cell. He sits on his bed with and angry face and tears running down his face. I knock on the window to make sure he is okay. He looks at me with a surprised face and turns away to wipe away his tears. He looks back at me with a sad smile. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile before.
“You okay?” I ask
“Yeah, fine” he lies.
“Tell me the truth.” I say.
“Ok. They started beating me, just because I was asking them about the serums. But that’s what they do. They beat us for no reason, because we are not the same as them”. A tear squeezes out of the red lump. He lies down on his bed and sighs. He is asleep. I place my hand on the glass and watch him sleep.
The next morning, Jacob is gone. I suspect he went either to the cafeteria or the living area. He was at neither. I hope he isn’t in the lab.
“What are you looking for?” Danielle asks. Her voice is scratchy and rough. It is hard on my ears. Her voice is also hard to get used to when you don’t listen to it consistently.
“Nothing. I’m just concerned for Jacob. He seemed really messed up last night.” I say.
“I’m sure he’s fine. He acts all manly, so he should actually BE manly.” Logan says.
The next morning, I am summoned to the lab. I walk with dread. I wonder what they have in store for me. I pass Jacob in the hallway. He looks at me briefly, through his one good eye. He looks sorrowful, regretful. I hope he is okay.
“Sit down, please.” Lori, the head chemist/torturer says. The niceness won’t last long.
I sit on the ice-cold metal chair. She approaches me with a lengthy needle. She injects it into the pit of my elbow. The pain is excruciating. It gives me visions of my greatest fears.
The hallucinations are torturous. In the first one, I am in a forest. I stand alone, but I see fast-moving objects around me. They get closer and closer until they are almost touching me. They circle me, until I use my telekinesis to move them out of the way, until I transport to a different place. I am in a room, with one of the men in black masks. I don’t care that they are only humans; these men used to haunt my childhood. He approaches me; I turn and run away. Next I see a killer clown with an axe, and it runs towards me. It grabs me by the arm and begins trying to sever my limb off.
“Bring her out of it,” Lori says, “She’s had enough.”
I gasp as I come out of my deep trance. My face is beaded in sweat, my hands shake, tears fall from my face.
I feel different after the visions. I wonder what they did.
- I instantly pity Jacob, because if they did this to him, they would break him.
“Are you doing this to all of us?”
“Of course,” Lori says, “What else?”
“You can’t!”
“Yes we can. Good afternoon.”
I storm off. I need to warn the rest of my friends.
I find Annabelle, staring in the mirror switching her hair color using her shape-shifting powers.
“Blue, or pink?” She asks
“Pick one. Hey listen, they are giving people hallucinations, like awful. They could be deadly.
“Blue it is. Wait, what?”
But I am already gone.
I run to Ava’s cell. She plays with her makeshift doll whilst she sits on her bed.
“Ava, they are going to call you into the lab, but whatever they do to you, I don’t want you to be scared, okay?” I say, knowing perfectly well that she is going to be scared.
Her lip trembles
“Okay.”
I think the hallucinations are to make us crazy, so we can’t be dangerous. Or they are taking things from our head while we are subconscious. I see Annabelle run to Logan and Danielle’s cells, probably to warn them.
We aren’t normally allowed to just roam about the compound, but we have figured out a way to pick the locks on the cells without the guards knowing. I look around for any guards, then I run to Melodie’s cell. We aren’t friends, but I wanted to see what the outcome of the tests were on her.
I see her sitting on the bed with her knees drawn to her face and rocking back and forth. She looks like she is muttering something to herself, maybe something to keep her sane.
“What are you doing here? Are here to watch me and judge?” She asks through the window that separates us.
“I just wanted to see what the hallucinations were doing to other people.”
“You would do well to leave.” She says
“Or what? You’re going release your EVIL gasses on me? Oh, wait, you can’t. You’re all tied up till your weak, and hopeless.”
I walk off.
Later, in our secret living area, everyone has a solemn face. Annabelle has pink hair, despite the dreary mood. Logan tries multiple time to crack a joke, but they always fall flat. Jacob is a no-show. Danielle looks like she is trying to sleep, though she is really moping. About what I cannot say. Ava lies on my lap with her doll. Annabelle tries to shape shift into silly things to make us laugh. She even gets a, but none are long-lasting.
Logan uses his elemental powers to keep our small fire going. Ava jumps up into the air and does airy flips. Danielle, using her “seeing in to the future” powers, tells us that in twenty-two minutes, Jacob will storm into the room. Though her visions are subjective to the path people are on, I don’t doubt Jacob will storm into the room sooner or later, and that Logan was going to tell plenty more jokes.
“Okay, okay, I got one. A B-flat, an E-flat, and a D-flat walk into a bar, but the bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve minors’” Logan says. He laughs hard at this joke, but I don’t understand music jokes. Wait, scratch that. I don’t really understand things they would have out in the normal world. I don’t know why he does.
“How about this one? A goat, a drum, and a snake jump off a cliff. Ba-dum-tss.”
He screams in laughter at this one. I roll my eyes. It’s funny, but dumb. But at least I understood it.
Twenty-two minutes and forty-some dumb jokes later, just as predicted, Jacob storms in. I don’t understand why he looks so angry. Multiple emotions shows on his face. Rage. Terror. Sorrow. Regret.
“What happened?” Annabelle asks. “No offense, but you look terrible.”
“She’s right. You look absolutely awful,” I say. “You have like, bruises and cuts and-“
“Shut up, alright? Just shut up.” Jacob says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Annabelle’s hair changes to green from embarrassment. Sometimes it changes with her mood or feeling. She isn’t quite strong enough to control it all the time.
The room is quiet for at least an hour. When Logan’s umpteenth joke fails, the room falls silent again.
That’s when someone knocks
Books, Paper, and Pen, Oh My! 