Chapter 1

McKenna's last Earth memories are terrifying. While she is held hostage, she becomes a storm traveler and accidentally ends up on a different planet where she sees her true maximum potential emerge.

Good day to you all!  My name is McKenna and I’ll be playing the role of your local bard today-- except without the aid of a musical instrument or poetry for I am afraid I’m given to neither of those fancies.  So sit back, relax, and grab some popped corn as we are about to embark on the most perilous adventure I’ve ever traveled.  But first a quick disclaimer: if your seatbelt is not secure or non-functioning, there will most definitely be mishaps as this journey has more contingencies than any other, especially seeing as I’m not particularly known for my prudence.  You have been forewarned.

 

Some would argue that what I’m about to write in this journal is brazen impudence, but I have given this intricate matter much thought and I have decided that being as I’m in another world than most of my assailants, I can safely tell my story.

 

It begins, on planet Earth, at the sixteenth hour on the divine spring day of April 27th.  I was home alone, as per normal on a school day.  My favorite noise proof headphones were on my ears, doing what they were advertised to do"which would have been unfortunate for me if I didn’t have such a keen sixth sense.  I was bopping along to my favorite Korean song, which I can’t even pronounce the name of or understand for that matter, when I felt my senses heighten; the fast tempo of the sound blared into my ears.  I tore the headphones off, with a speed that would surprise a Tae kwon do master, and threw them on my neon orange comforter and at that moment, even after my ears had been deafened by the music; I could hear the sounds of footsteps below in my kitchen. 

 

Now, I don’t have any siblings and both my parents work late so I immediately knew something fishy was a-happening, especially when I realized I could hear four sets of feet creeping around downstairs. 

 

Adrenaline had hit my veins now.  With even faster speed than before, I tore, delicately, across the room to my jewelry box and grabbed my firefly brooch that my favorite grandma had given me before she had departed.  I rubbed the clear glass head and the inlaid topaz eyes, my birthstones, for luck while with my right hand I grabbed my favorite stuffed animal from under my pillow and stuffed him in the front pocket of my sweatshirt.  Now, I was ready to escape.

 

I could hear footsteps coming from the stairwell a couple feet below my room.  An exciting feeling of terror overcame me as I sprinted through my bathroom into the adjoining guest room on the other side and looked out the window.  The excited feeling faded away and was replaced by the precursor of pain when I realized my idiot of a father had lined up all the metal decorative deck chairs underneath the window.   I started opening the window, already knowing that it was going to make some horrible squeaky noise and give my location away to the intruder who was now in my room.  I  almost slapped myself in the face to release the mounting pressure building up in me, but my hands were busy holding on to the window ledge as I lowered myself as far down as I could. 

 

A salvo of gun shots broke through the peaceful, bird-chirping atmosphere and, out of surprise, my hands slipped off the ledge.  My head bumped into the ornamental swirl adorning the side of one of the chairs while my right shin and my left elbow collided painfully with some other metal parts of the chairs.  Hot tears were forming in my eyes, making it difficult to discern the stairs of the deck staircase as I lumbered down them.  More gun shots rang out as I limped along as fast as I could around the house. 

 

My heart was pounding furiously as I remembered the back of my house was made almost completely out of glass.  There were at least 30 windows from which my gun-happy assailants could shoot me from.  I sighed; I was going to have to run.  Suddenly, I remembered a long-forgotten tip from my Uncle George.  He’d said, “The smartest way to stay alive in a sticky situation is to decrease your surface area.”  I’d looked at him puzzled and I’d asked him if it was actually feasible to do that.  He had laughed at me when I’d asked him if he had some magic shrink-ray gun.  “No, no, silly.  You turn sideways.”

 

So now I was going to lopsidedly gallop, sideways, across the lawn toward the trees on my neighbor’s lot.  At that moment in time, besides feeling amped-up on adrenaline and pain as I lurched awkwardly side to side when I galloped, I was wishing that someone could tape this; I most definitely looked hilarious. 

 

I made it to the cover of the trees unharmed.  No shots were fired at me.  Even the trigger-happy guy who had shot at me from my room hadn’t fired a shot.  What was going on?  Was I missing something?

Then, I heard a car engine start. 

 

My first instinct was to threaten that I’d kill them if they stole my car, which is a dumpy 11 year old van by the way, but then I remembered I was not in a good position at the moment.  In fact, I was being hunted!

 

I heard the squeal of wheels as a black SUV turned the corner out of my court doing at least 40 mph.  I looked over my shoulder and I saw the side door opening and a barrel of a gun emerge. 

 

Oh, crap!  I ducked behind a tree and fell to the ground.  The machine gun fired and fired, blasting wood chips everywhere and hurting my ears.  Abruptly, the shots stopped.  I peeked around the side of the tree and to my horror I saw three men getting out of the SUV.  And they had their guns with them.

 

I hauled myself off the ground in a panic and sprinted around the other side of the house, releasing a big sigh of relief when the house was in between me and the gun-holding men.  Then, as I reached the sidewalk to the side of the house, I saw the black SUV sitting on the corner. 

 

I was dead meat.  The only thing I could do now is run the other way from them while the SUV driver and his buddies shoot at me with their powerful weapons. 

 

A sudden squeal of tires, ripped through the air startling me.  It was another black SUV, the exact same model, and it was coming from the direction I was currently running toward. 

 

I was trapped.  I could hear the three men panting as they ran around the corner of the house and I could hear the driver of the first SUV scrape the bottom of his gun on the car window as he prepared to shoot me.  But something was off; the other SUV was speeding toward me.  Someone yelled at me to get down and I felt something heavy land on me, crushing the air out of my lungs.  Shots rang out, but I was too busy trying to fight the darkening black curtains enveloping me to care.  They over-powered me and I was forced to succumb to its darkness.      

Author's Note

Just drop me a line about anything you particularly liked/disliked. Thanks :)

Reviews

[Brie]

I was smiling throughout the first few paragraphs. The way you introduced this story was so original. Your character, too, also had me smiling. She's relatable (though I'm not sure about that in the future!) and your writing style, vocabulary, and sentence structure are excellent.
Can't wait to read more!