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The Eclectic Pen - A Funny Thing Happened on The Way to Class

By: Katelin C. (miztheatre)   + 12 more  
Date Submitted: 3/8/2012
Genre: Literature & Fiction » Short Stories & Anthologies
Words: 1,626
Rating:

It started out as any other normal Friday morning. I woke up to the sound of my cell phone alarm clock singing to me, (which had very rudely interrupted my long dreamy kiss with Taylor Lautner. Emphasis on dream.) I dragged myself out of bed and went to knock on my roommate’s door. “Sarah, you up?” I yelled in, “It’s time to get up.” “I’m up.” She replied groggily. Just then our other roommates, Nichole and Laura, ran down the hall. “Guys, look outside!” Nichole managed to say between hysteric gasps. “Calm down! What’s going on?” I asked. “Just look!” Laura pushed us to the dirty window in Sarah’s room. (Why don’t they ever clean these windows?) And that is about how ‘normal’ my day was. Everything that happened next was right out of the Twilight Zone or something. If I hadn’t seen it for my very own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it was possible. The first thing I saw wasn’t so weird, just an abnormally long jagged streak of lightning that lit up the entire sky. That is when I realized, it was dark outside, and not dark like a storm was coming so the clouds made it dark, but it was dark like it was midnight. What’s weird about that you ask? Well it was now about quarter after 10…AM! And that is when I noticed the florescent purple, golf ball sized rain drops. “What the hell is going on?” I asked more to myself then to my three roommates. Nichole, being the logical one of the four of us suggested “Why don’t we turn on the weather channel? They might have an explanation.” So we turned on Sarah’s TV and turned on the weather channel. The weatherman, Josh Altman, was acting strange, but I guess it was getting to be on par with the rest of the day. He was stumbling around and randomly clicking through each weather map, laughing hysterically. “What the…is he drunk?” Laura asked. “It seems so, but…” “Wait!” Sarah said cutting me off, “Listen! Turn that off, and listen!” I turned off the TV and we all listened. “Do you hear that whispering?” “Yeah, it sounds like its coming from the front door!” I said, and suddenly there was another sound coming from the same direction. “Wait, did you hear that scraping noise?” “Come on, how much weirder could today get, lets check it out.” Nichole suggested. “It’s probably just the girls from next door.” So we all went slowly to the door, acting like there was a crazed killer on the other side. Hell, by the way things were going, it wasn’t a completely ridiculous notion. We opened the door, and you would not believe what happened next. Sitting right outside our door were four squirrels. OK, so yeah, I know, squirrels sitting on the porch may not be totally out of this world, but it is when one of them is holding a jar of mustard, and the other three are cleaning it with three huge bars of green soap! “OK guys, this may be a bit crazy, but we still have to get to class, it’s…” I looked at my watch, “that’s weird, my watch is broken, and it was just working a few minutes ago!” “Maybe the battery just ran dead.” Nichole offered. “No, I mean it’s really broken! Look, the face plate is cracked and the hands are spinning around wildly!” I shook my head like I was trying to shake out a bad thought. “Wow, OK today is more then a bit weird, Katie!” Sarah said to me. “But your right, we still have to go to class.” Yes, today was considerably more then a bit strange, and even with everything I had already seen, nothing could have prepared me for what happened on the way to class. I grabbed my iPod and left the apartment. I walked past the squirrels (who, yes, were still washing a jar of mustard) and down the stairs, and as soon as I hit the bottom of the steps I started to smell something juicy and sweet. I couldn’t place the smell, but…oh wait, it smells like nectarines. (OK, so yeah I know that isn’t weird, but it was nice.) I pulled out my umbrella (would a regular old drugstore umbrella shield me from the florescent purple rain?) and began to walk through the purple puddles. I checked my mail; I only got one thing, a letter I had written to my cousins in Kentucky, with big letters spelling out RETURN TO SENDER on the outside. “Huh” I thought to myself, “I wonder why I’m getting this back, maybe they moved again.” I didn’t think anymore of it, because as I was walking I noticed there was a garbage truck, which normally wouldn’t have been that strange, but there was a man in a black suit sitting on top of the truck with a pair of binoculars, eating a vanilla ice cream cone. I walked up to the truck and noticed about twenty men in a black suits and sunglasses sitting in the back, where the garbage would normally be (what’s this, some kind of Men in Black convention?) “Um, what’s going on?” I asked the Men in Black. “SHH!!!” One of then men said, “Not so loud! Were observing this…ritual…I guess you could call it. Take a look.” The man handed me his binoculars. I looked over to where the man was pointing and saw a bunch of people gathered around what looked like some old vandalized car. Just then I realized the ‘leader’ of this ‘ritual’ was my friend Amanda. “Wow, thanks guys, I’m going to go check it out.” I gave the man back his binoculars and walked over to the group. When I got close enough I noticed they were all wearing long black cloaks. It surely did look like a ritual. But Amanda was on the programming board, so if there was anything supposed to be happening it would have been plastered all over facebook the day before. “Amanda?” I asked getting closer. “Oh, hay Katie you finally made it! Beautiful day were having!” I must have looked at her like she had three heads, because I realized she wasn’t being sarcastic. “Amanda, what the hell is going on? Your acting like you were abducted by a UFO or something.” That’s when I noticed there was indeed a vandalized car, and on top of the car sat the most random things (which I guess made since to those in this strange alternate universe.) There was a pentagram drawn on top of the car with toothpicks. At the top of the pentagram sat an autographed picture of Mr. Rogers (yes the “wont you be my neighbor” Mr. Rogers.) and at the center of the pentagram was a dead blue jay with a string of pearls around it. “We found this dead baby bird and we are using him as a sacrifice to our god,” she pointed to the picture of Mr. Rogers. “But Katie, you’re going to be late for class, let me walk you.” Amanda and I walked away from the crowd. “How do you feel?” she asked me with concern in her voice. “Um, I feel fine, why?” “Well that’s good, but just so your not alarmed, its normal to feel a bit…off” she laughed as she said this last part “when your first arrive here.” “What are you talking about? Arrive where?” I looked around, wondering what she meant. “Have a good first day!” I looked back to where she was standing but she was gone. What did she mean, have a good first day? Classes had been in session for almost two months now. And what did she mean by ‘arrive here’? Just then I noticed a sign on the door that I was standing next to. On the sign, written in big block letters, was ALIEN UBDUCTION 101.

The Eclectic Pen » All Stories by Katelin C. (miztheatre)

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