Three Shots

I hate school. Why do we even have to go anyway? There’s no point. Maybe I’ll skip today. I thought as I walked down the street to the horrible place we call school. “Hey Squid!” somebody shouted from across the street. Nah. Not today. I turned my head to see the only reasons I don’t skip school every day. My four friends-Ripley, Ryder, Raelyn, and Kaylie. We all have nicknames, so we know when we’re serious. Ripley is Rip, Ryder is Rye, Raelyn is Rae, and Kaylie is Kae. My real name is Sydney, but everyone calls me Squid. It’s been my nickname for as long as I can remember.
“Hey, Rae!” I yelled back I crossed the street over to them. “I was thinking of skipping today.” I said. “Anybody wanna skip too?” I got four “nopes” immediately. Kaylie sighed. “If you keep skipping the school’s gonna end up putting one of those weird trackers on you like they did to Ashley.” “Yeah. I know, but nothing ever happens at school. I could miss school for a month and still ace everything.” “Whatever.”
My school sucks. It’s a school for kids with disorders. Every single kid in my class has ADHD or ADD. The worst part about going to my school isn’t that we get babied and never learn, It’s that we get tested against kids who don’t have ADHD or ADD. A lot. The teachers call the tests “games” but we all know what they really are. They’re tests to see how stupid we are and if we’re paying attention. Ryder swears the government is behind it, but so far he hasn’t gotten any good proof. Anyway, we don’t even really learn anything and when we do its things that we’ve learned before that are super easy. "Alright, class," said my teacher, Mr. Bernard clapping his hands. "today we are going to play a game." "What's the name of the game?" Ripley asked. He likes the ‘games’. Anything’s better than learning. That’s what he always says. “Well, there isn’t really a name, Ripley. This game will test your minds to see how you react in stressful situations.” Mr. Bernard walked to his desk, grabbed a bin off of it and walked around to each desk, carefully placing two big black things on each one. Eventually, I realized one of them was a pair of headphones. When he came around to my desk he put a little black sticker thingy on my arm that said my name and age: Sydney M. age 14. Then he set down the other stuff. Now that I had a closer look at the other things, I saw that they were googles. On the side they said “FOR LAB USE ONLY” on the other, it said “ VIRTUAL REALITY GOGGLES. WARNING: KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.” something else was on there also, but it was smudged and I couldn’t read it. Raelyn turned around in her chair and pointed at the label on hers. It said: DANGER: DEATH HAS OCCURRED. I sighed. Leave it to our school to give kids something that could kill you.
“What are we gonna do with these?” somebody shouted. “The VR goggles in front of each of you are hooked up to a monitor that will let me see what you're seeing. Those little stickers will show me how you feel, or really just your pulse. DO NOT TOUCH THEM!” he shouted as Ryder started picking at his. Mr. Bernard cleared his throat and continued “The headphones just enhance the effect of the VR goggles. Basically, you’ll be in a trance dream kind of thing. You will be under very stressful situations, but remember that this is all fake. Actually, you will have no memory of today at all, but that’s beside the point.” He mumbled that last part. WHAT “Alrighty, everyone understand? Good. On the count of three, I want you all to hold down on the sticker. It’ll hurt but that’s good. That means that you are going under. Oh, and also don’t trust anyone. ” ‘Going under?!’ That didn’t sound good. Before I could raise my hand, Mr. B started counting. “ONE...TWO...THREE! Ok, kids, press your patches!” I heard someone behind me snort from laughter.
I pressed the patch as hard as I could. Mr. B was right. It did hurt. A lot. My entire arm screamed in protest. The pain was horrible. It felt like my arm was going to fall off. My entire body started to burn. This is how I’m going to die a voice echoed in my head before my ears started to ring. I screwed my eyes shut, which were filling with tears. I thought I was going to pass out from the pain. Then, everything stopped. Just like that. Everything that was hurting just wasn’t anymore.

Chapter 2: Abbie
I woke up lying in the grass on the ground ground. The last thing I remembered was walking to school with my friends. They were all laying around me. My whole class was around me. We all sat up. What?
My arm was throbbing. I checked for the patch. Where’s the patch? What patch? Nothing was on my arm.
Raelyn sneezed. I looked up. I forgot. Why was I looking at my arm again? Alarms went off in my brain as I glanced around for the fourth time in a minute. Where are we?
I opened my eyes and looked at my arm. It looked fine there was no blood or anything. I couldn’t see the patch anymore either. What patch? my mind asked. I sat for a second, utterly bewildered by that thought. What patch? Why would there be a patch on my arm? I don’t know I just feel like there’s supposed to be something on my...uh...arm…?
The few people that weren’t lying down just randomly popped into existence within about five minutes of me waking up. It was the most bizarre thing ever. They would just kind of like, appear out of nowhere. And the thing was, there was no warning, so there were a few instances where people would appear on top of other people and they would both just tumble to the ground mid-conversation.
After we knew everyone was there, we started to separate into our normal friend groups. I had no clue where I was and I don’t think anyone else did either. We were in the front yard of an old house I didn’t recognise. Some of the kids wandered inside. Others just sat in the grass and talked. We didn’t know what to do. Then something dawned on me. I had no clue how I had gotten here. I decided to go ask my friends if they knew why we were here. I started to walk over to Ripley, Ryder, Raelyn, and Kaylie. While I was still a ways away, I saw Kaylie and Raelyn scream and back away from something on the ground near an old stump. “What the heck is that?!” Raelyn screamed, her face was as white as a sheet. When I stepped closer, I saw an ugly, chubby, little man wearing nothing but a loincloth. I backed away immediately. Ew.
“Why, hello!” he said cheerily, waving at us like it was just another day in a creepy old abandoned house’s front yard. “I am Übel. You don’t happen to have any food, do you?”
I heard a pop behind me and Ripley go “SWEET!” We all turned and looked at Ripley and found that his mouth was full of cheetos from a jumbo sized bag of Crunchy flamin’ hot white cheddar cheetos. We all glanced back at Übel.
“Do you know where we are?” Übel asked. We all shook our heads. “I do. I can help you. I can get you back home. All I want is a cheeto.”
“Rip, can we please just have one cheeto?” we begged.
“No way man! These are mine!” he sprayed cheeto bits all over us when he spoke. He made a face and we knew it would be hard for him to part with even one cheeto from what had miraculously appeared in his hand.
“Come on, please?” The little man pleaded.
“Just give him a cheeto, what’s the worst that could happen?” Ryder said.
“Fine!” Ripley sighed and gave in, he reached into his bag of cheetos and took one out.
“Wait,” Kaylie said slowly, “I don’t know why, but I have a feeling that we were told not to trust anybody.” But, it was too late, the little man had already chomped down on the cheeto.
“See,” I said, my back to Übel, “ that wasn’t bad. All the little guy wanted was foo-.” I looked over at the four of them and saw that they weren’t listening.
“Aw no, man!” Ryder said. He looked disgusted. Ripley dropped his bag of cheetos on the ground. “BROOO!” Some of the other kids in groups near us stopped talking and started walking away from us very slowly.
“What?” I asked. “Sydney,” Kaylie said softly, her eyes wide, “Turn around. Very slowly.”
I knew it was bad as soon as I hear her use my real name. We never use them.There was a loud, low, grumble behind me. This is definitely not good. My mind screamed.
I turned around and looked at Übel. And it looked like he had grown about six feet. He was now at least a head taller than me. I screamed and he laughed. He kept growing. I wanted to run but couldn’t I was glued to that spot on the grass. Vines sprouted out of the ground and wrapped around my ankles. I struggled as they started to pull me under the ground. I screamed some more, but nobody came. Raelyn and Kaylie tried to come to me but the vines wrapped around them too. Some girl who was a ways away ran up to me. I think her name was Abbie. She pulled me out of the vines without any trouble. For some reason she didn’t get covered in them. “ Übel want food!” Übel shouted and picked up a tree. He chomped down on it, then cried out in pain. “Tree too hard. Übel WANT HOOMAN!” he reached out to try and grab us,but couldn’t. I ran around him and grabbed some vines that were lying on the ground then kept running and wrapped them around his giant feet a couple of times. He struggled to keep his balance as I wrapped the vines tighter and tighter. Then, he started to teeter. “RUN!” I screamed, waving my arms. “TIMBER!!” Kaylie screamed. Somebody else screamed behind me. I turned just in time to see Abbie, who struggling to rip the vines that were growing around her legs, get crushed by the falling Übel. “Abbie!” someone shouted she ran up to Übel. “ GET UP YOU BIG LUMP GET UP!” she cried while punching him in the face. He seemed to be totally out of it. Like he was on laughing gas or something because he just sat there with a big dumb grin on his face and said “i hurt.” we pushed him over so we could find Abbie’s body. We all braced ourselves to see her crushed body but found that there was nothing there for us to see. Not even a dent in the ground. Raelyn bursted into tears and so did most of the girls. I cried for a second. She had saved my life and I just left her there to die. Somehow though, I knew she was ok. I knew that she was safe. I felt like I would see her pretty soon. Not in heaven or anything, but in real life. Real life? What's that supposed to mean? I thought, I don't know. Just later, I guess.



Chapter 2: let the games begin

After the whole Übel and the disappearing body thing, everyone just kind of waited. We didn’t know how to leave or what to do, so we just sat. After a couple of minutes of talking, a big screen popped up on the giant tree in the front yard.The words on the screen said: “CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THAT HAVE SURVIVED THE PRACTICE ROUND! LET THE REAL GAMES BEGIN! THAT IS ALL.”
Then it disappeared. None of us knew what that meant at all. The ‘real games’? What does that even mean? Everyone was super confused and tense after that. We all jumped at the slightest sound after that message. If Übel wasn’t real enough or scary enough, what was yet to come? Somebody had died in the practice round. How many more would die in the real games, whatever that means.
Nothing happened for what felt like hours except for the sunset. All of us were too afraid to go into the house so we just sat outside in the darkness until we all fell asleep huddled up in groups.
The next morning, all of us woke up pretty quickly. It wasn’t even really morning when we woke up, it was still kind of dark. When I say “we” I mean me, Kae, and Rae. Rip and Rye hung out with some of the other guys so I didn’t really see them most of the time. “Hey Squid, I have to pee. What do I do?” “I don’t know...Hold it I guess.” “I want to find a bathroom though. Will you come with me?” I sighed. “Kae, we could get killed. Did you not see what happened?” I looked into her eyes. They were pleading me to go with her. “Ok, fine. Let’s go.” I sighed.
We both stood up and I made eye contact with Rae who stood up too. A couple of the girls looked over at us and stood up too. “We’re just going to find a bathroom.” I whispered, so we wouldn't wake anybody else up. The other girls nodded and we all got up and walked toward the shady house in the yard.

random different exerpts pls ignore


Chapter whatever: zombie problems
While we were all still sitting, we heard gunshots. Everyone turned their heads to the street and saw a giant truck with men in the back. They were all holding guns. I don’t know why but we all stood up. “Duuude.” Rye said. “Are you guys seeing this?” “Heck yeah we are!” Rip shouted. The men hopped out of the truck and walked toward us. We all backed up.
“Hi there.” One of the men said. “We’re here about the zombie problem.” One of the kids, Wilks, walked up to the front.
“What ‘zombie problem’?” We all stepped a little closer.
“Oh,” The man said “You don’t have a zombie problem?”
“No,sir.”
“Well, we’d better make sure you aren't mistaken, because I’m pretty sure you have a zombie problem.”
“Okay, well, what do you have to do?” Wilkes asked.
“Not much” he said. The men around him lifted up their guns. “Just gotta sweep the peremesis. You little pests are in the way though.” The man glanced at the men and smiled right at us. “Fire.”
Wilkes's head snapped back and I was sprayed with blood.



“This can’t be happening!” he shouted,”This can’t be happening!” he inched closer to the edge every time he spoke. “All we have to do is die,man.” he said, shaking his head at Ryder. “All we have to do… It’s an illusion! We’re not really here!” Everyone around us was crying at that point.We knew we couldn’t save him. He was going insane.
Ryder tried anyway. He scooted up behind him and reached out to grab his shirt. Before Ryder could touch him, he jumped. We all screamed as his body flew to the ground. Right before he landed, there was a huge flash of light and Ripley was gone. This isn’t real.