I examined the newest prisoner. He was a little older then I, probably around fifteen. I had never seen a 15-year-old boy as terrified as he. As I looked at his face, which was overtaken by horror, the kind you have when you have just seen the most frightening movie of your life, I thought of the day I was first brought here, and how similar the look on my face was to his.


My story starts the Saturday after 7th grade was finally over. How happy I was to be free of the stress of homework and tests and striving to maintain my A- average! I had total freedom for 3 months! It was a wonderful feeling. So, as I was just leisurely watching Saturday morning cartoons, my best friend Emma knocks on the door. “You know the old abandoned carnival about a mile away?” she asked. “Well, some weird clowns opened it up and are only letting kids in! Let’s go!” I told her I’d meet her there because I still had my pajamas on even though my mom had been bugging me to get dressed since I had gotten up.


As I rode my bike to the carnival, I looked up at the sky. It was dark and gloomy; the way it looks when you know it’s not going to be a good day. Maybe I should call Emma and tell her that I’m not coming after all, I thought to myself. I shrugged off the thought. It will be okay, I reassured myself, even though you’re not exactly fond of clowns, it will be okay. How wrong I was!


I arrived at the carnival to find Emma eating cotton candy and waiting for one of the clowns to make her a balloon animal. She waved at me to come over, but I waited until he was done. There was something about that clown that I didn’t trust. He had big, black eyes and kind of a greenish tint to his skin. He was creeping me out. And as I thought about it, all the clowns here had a greenish tint.

Emma came over she showed me her balloon animal. “It kind of looks like a-wait, what does it look like?!” That was a question I could not answer. I had never seen anything this bizarre before! “Throw it away!” I yelled. “It’s scaring me!” We went to the nearest trashcan and dropped in the balloon animal with no identity. I hoped never to see another one of those balloon things, and it seems that many of the other kids didn’t either. The trashcans were full of them!

Suddenly we heard a creepy voice over a loud speaker. “Attention all children: come over to the Alien Invasion ride now, and it’s free of charge!” “Come on! Let’s go! I love this ride!” Emma grabbed my arm and dragged me away. I hate those rides. We lined up behind all of the other kids. All the clowns were directing us into the ride, making sure we didn’t get out of the line. They had a sort of smirk on their long, wide faces that made me feel uneasy and scared. I was already reluctant to go on the ride, but those disturbing clowns made it all worse.

“Emma?” I said. “Emma, I really don’t want to go on this ride. Please, can we just go home? This place is really freaking me out. Emma?” But she couldn’t hear me; she was too excited about this ride. After all, the carnival hadn’t been in town in 5 years. If Emma wasn’t leaving, then I wasn’t leaving.

Finally, we were inside the ride. As the last in line, they closed the doors after us, those creepy clowns. They locked the door. But not just locked, bolted. There had probably been 20 locks on that door. They strapped us all in. By now my mind was screaming help! Get me out of here! But I myself was silent; silent and afraid. I could see that many of the other kids were scared, too. But then came the part where everyone, even Emma, screamed shrieks of shear terror.

The clowns were not clowns at all, but aliens; real, live aliens from somewhere not of this galaxy. They took off their clown suits and their skin glowed green. Their eyes were black as night, not any white to be seen. They laughed their sinister, horrifying laughs and the smirks on their horrible, deformed faces grew. The room started spinning, and I could feel the ride lift off of the ground. Except it never came back down, but went faster than I could have imagined as we left the Earth’s atmosphere.

It seemed like we were going a million miles an hour, but I bet we were going even faster. And then, I fainted out of fear and worry. When I woke up, I was sitting in a chrome room, with the aliens all around me. A bright light was above me, and it was blinding me. I turned away, sat up, and looked around. Emma was nowhere to be found. In fact, no one was anywhere to be found. I was completely alone with these aliens and these glass jars with weird things in them. I focused harder on them, and realized that they were human body parts. In one jar, an arm. In another, a pair of eyes. I wanted to puke, but cried instead for those poor beings that were now dead, and for my fate that would probably be the same.

The aliens turned around to look at me. One slapped me and yelled at me in an unidentifiable language. I screamed, and I guess they had had enough. Two of them grabbed me by the arms and took me down a long hallway and threw me into a prison cell. I was alone; except for a 2nd grader that I remembered was also at the carnival. She was crying. I walked over to her and held her in my arms. She must have missed her mom. I sure missed mine. Then I myself burst into tears and the 2nd grader and I sobbed together.

That was a whole month ago. I know, because I have been making tally marks on the wall with a “toy” the aliens had given me. A whole month I have been in this confinement; a whole month of wondering when they will kill me. Most of the time, I have been alone. The 2nd grader was taken by them 3 weeks ago. I am so glad that they put this 15-year-old in here, although we are not allowed to communicate. I waved at him; he just stared at me with his look of terror. “Hi,” I said. “My name is-“ But before I could speak, one of the aliens burst through the door and grabbed me by my shirt.

The boy started went into hysterics as he watched me be dragged out of the room, leaving him alone in the cold, cruel prison cell. I walked down the hallway once more, but it looked different. There were more body parts. Heads, even! I turned my head away from them, but thought I saw something familiar, so I looked back up at the wall. There, in one of the big glass containers was Emma, her full body, but she was dead, floating in this iridescent goo. I turned my head down and two little tears went down my face.

Once again, I was placed in a chrome room, different then the other one though. This one had red streaks across the wall next to a metal bed with sheets in the form of a body laid over it. Two aliens strapped me on a different metal bed, this one also having red streaks. I tried to fight back, but they were too strong, and I failed.

I started to scream as one of the aliens brought a needle toward my arm. It is no use, no one can help me. So I started screaming out the names of the people I loved. I said Emma more than 5 times, I know. Too late, the needle is in. I lie very still on the cold, bloodstained bed. “Goodbye world.” were the last words that I uttered before I closed my eyes, never to open them again.