Written and typed by Jeremiah Hankins

                                                                                                                      October 27, 1996 

                                                             An Eye and I

       
Hi, my name is Jordan. I just got back from Camp Kids.  That’s where you camp out and learn survival skills and things like that.   Today at our Camp Kids meeting they told us we were going to have a camping trip with a partner.  There’s a clearing about a mile away from here, and that’s where we’re going to camp.

My partner had to be my bratty sister, Sharon.  She goes to Camp Kids too.  We both have blonde hair, but hers is long and mine is short.  We’re both a little skinny, and we have a lot in common.  We both like horror movies, we both love to go camping, and we both love tricks.

The next day we woke up and made sure we had everything.  We gulped down our breakfast and Sharon said, “You forgot the map.”

“I’ll go get it,” I said.

We kissed our mom and dad good- bye after they had checked that we had all the supplies we needed.  So we set off.  The map said we go along 16th Street to the woods.  When we got to the woods, we stopped and looked around.  We had a little break.  I looked at the map again.  It said go along the foot trails.

We walked a ways and then we got to a stream.  It did not have a bridge, but the stream was pretty shallow.  I gave the map to Sharon.  She put it in her pocket.  I said, “Come on, let’s go across.”  I went across first.  I went a little ways up ahead.  Sharon slipped and fell into the water.

I turned around and said, “Are you okay?”

She nodded, “Yes.”

We walked along the path and then I asked, “Can I see the map?”

Sharon took out the map and gave it to me.  I unfolded it and splat a big blob of ink fell on my shirt.  “The map’s wet,” I declared.

“I must have gotten it wet when I fell.”

“Good thing I can still kind of read it a little.  The map says go about one half mile up the foot trail and take a left at the fork.  It’s too blurry to read any more.”

Sharon grabbed the map from me, looked at it, and stuffed it into her pocket.  “Let’s get there and figure it out then.”

We walked along in silence.  When we got to the fork there was a pipe and two caps on the ground.  I put a cap on the outside of the pipe and asked Sharon for the map.

“What are you going to do with it?” Sharon asked as she handed me the map.

“I’m just going to put it in the pipe.”  I turned around and got a Sharpie out of my backpack.  I wrote map on the pipe.

After a while we came to another fork.  Just then there was a big bang.  I saw a big streak of smoke across the sky.  It lead to the ground.  “Let’s go take a look.”

We ran toward a clearing.  There was smoke everywhere.  We got down on the ground and crawled like army men.  The smoke cleared.  I saw it was a meteor.  I went over and touched it .

“Ow!” I yelled.  “It’s burning hot!”

There was a large crack around the top.  I peered in.  It was green inside.

I got out a pad of paper and drew a picture of the meteor.  I wrote, ‘ Big crack at the top.  Green inside.  Hot.’ in big letters at the top of the page I wrote, ‘REMEMBER METEOR!!!’

I put the piece of paper inside the pipe with the map.  We went back as well as we could remember except we didn’t end up at the fork.  We ended up at a different path.  I thought  we should go left.  Sharon couldn’t remember which way, so we went left.  We walked along for about an hour until we came to a house.

Sharon said, “We went the wrong way.”

Suddenly I noticed something on my shoe.  I turned around to see what I stepped in.  There was ghost-white slime with my shoe print in it. I noticed there was a dotted line of white slime leading behind the house.  We peered past the corner of the house as something darted into the door.

I looked at Sharon.  We walked over to look through a little hole in the house that was probably made by bad weather.  We saw it!  It was a giant eye-ball that bounced from place to place.  Finally it stop bouncing.  Then paper sucked through it’s pupil like a giant vacuum!  We ran.

That night we camped by some trees that were a good distance away from the house.  The next morning we saw the white slime again leading out of the house into some bushes.

“Let’s go inside the house to see what it is doing in there.”

We tiptoed to the front door.  Crrreak!  I opened the door a crack, and we squeezed through.  With each step we took dust rose from our feet.  There was slime over all the paper  in the room.  I saw a huge spider crawl in front of me.

“ This is creepy,” Sharon said, “let’s get out of here.”

“I want to get out too, but I want to explore a little more.”

I walked up the stairs cautiously testing each board before stepping on it.

Whoofffffffffff!  I thought I saw a gigantic fly rush pass me.  “Did you see that?”

Sharon didn’t answer.  We  both rushed down the stairs trying not to choke on dust balls.  We squeezed out the door.  As we were walking back to the tent I saw the giant eye-ball trying to open the pipe.  I ran toward it and it dropped the pipe and bounced away.

Sharon yelled, “Jordan!”  I turned around.  “It’s after our map.”

I yelled back, “I know that.  I know why it’s trying to eat the map.  The map is made out  of paper.  And you know what paper is made of?”

“Yeah, trees.”

“You know how we saw slime all over the trees?  Well, I bet eye eats leaves. I saw an  oleander bush and they are poisonous.  We’ll tie a piece of paper onto a string, and if  I’m correct, the eye will follow it.  We’ll lead it to the oleander bush, and it will try to eat it.  But it will die because oleanders are poisonous.  Come on, let’s move!”

I was correct.  The eye-ball followed the paper.  When it came to the oleander bush , I pulled the string over the bush.  The eye-ball bounced toward it and gobbled up the oleander bush.  All of a sudden it was turning different colors --- all the colors of the rainbow.  It was jiggling back and forth really fast.  Then ultraviolet light came from the center of it.  It burst open and purple gush flowed out of it as it died!

Sharon and I ran over to the tent.  “We’ll leave tomorrow.”

That night we had bad dreams about eye-balls, giant spiders and flies.  When we woke up we packed quickly and we hiked down the path.

BDrrrrrrrrrrBdrrrrrrrrrr!  A helicopter was flying over head.  It had it search light on us.  It dropped down a ladder.  Sharon went up first, then I jumped on the ladder and scurried up.  “We’re rescued!” Sharon exclaimed happily.

“Thank you,” we said to the men politely.

“Why didn’t you come home on time, kids?”  asked the copilot.

Sharon and I exchanged glances.  “Our map got wet, so we couldn’t read it.”

“Your mom and dad are pretty worried.’

“We found a meteor!”

“Yeah, it was on the news.  They’re still searching for it,” explained the pilot.

“I know where it is,” Sharon interrupted.

“Okay, take us to it tomorrow.”

Another hour and we were home.  We ran to our mom and dad and hugged and kissed them.  That night we had bad dreams again.  The next day the search team was going to look where we had said the meteor was.  They took us with them.  But when we got to there, the top of the meteor was lying on the ground.  All of a sudden the pipe with the map flew out of my pocket into the meteor.  Then the lid of the meteor slammed shut and disappeared in thick air!