T-minus eight, T-minus seven, T-minus Six, T-minus five, Tminus four, T-minus three, T-minus two, T-minus one.”
I jumped out as the T-minus one just about stopped and the door almost closed. As I jumped out of the vehicle, I reached my pockets and pulled out my diminutive parachute which could expand to eighteen feet as you would go down. I opened up my parachute and I strapped the straps to my shoulders. Finally, the parachute expanded and I went down through the sky. I penetrated the clouds at the approximate altitude of fifteen thousand feet. I knew that my altitude was fifteen thousand feet above sea level was because I always carry a Pedtimiter.
This Pedtimiter looked like a typical pedometer, except that this device measured both the steps that a person would walk and the paces the person would take. Also, the Pedtimter measured the altimeter or the location of a person above sea level. Basically, their altitude. Now I saw the land and the land looked urbanized but dense, it looked like New York.
I said to myself “Can it be I am heading home? It appears to be so.” With my parachute I was not able to head down to where I would like to arrive in the urbanized area. In fact the urbanized area looked just like California, New York. I had more thoughts that I would be heading home. From three miles from the surface to one mile to the surface I saw a more dense woodland. As I approached closer to the main surface my newfound happy personality began to suddenly change. From blowing through the wind with a happy face, my two red colored cheeks in the wind turned to two pale cheeks through the wind and a happy face suddenly changed to the face of a nervous wreck. At one thousand feet, I didn’t know if I arrived without a fight with the trees, and at a one hundred mile per hour speed, it would be ten minutes before I arrived to the earth. As soon as ten minutes reached, I was one hundred feet from the canopy tops in the trees.
By luck, I was going to end up in a hole in the middle of the dense forest. The forest was so thick, that I was not able to see California, New York and finding town would be like finding a needle in a haystack because it was super hard to escape the forest. A loud thud happened with an abrupt halt to my falling. Than, I fell asleep.
And from the afternoon daylight before I knew it, night fell. I said, “What a long day. Today seemed like ten years.” I fell back to sleep. I could tell you that it is a far cry from the beds and blankets instead, now, the reality is that I am stuck in a tree, sleeping.
Well, why not make the most of it. I may meet an owl or two in my dreams and the owl might tell me a nighttime story. Right before I fell asleep, I heard the sudden coo of an owl. The owl kept cooing and cooing. I shouted to the owl, “Over here, over here!” The owl flew over to my location. The owl was on the branches and I looked at it and stared at the creature and the owl stared back at me.
The owl had large, bulky eyes that had a golden color. The pupils on the eye were almost the size of the owl’s eyes and the owl had a white head and a brown body. The owl cooed and then said, “Who are you?” The owl had a British accent that sounded like an urbane, old man who presents himself in a very neat way. I said and stuttered in astonishment, “I’m, I’m…”
The owl interrupted, “Well, who are you?”
I continued, “I’m
Joseph.” The owl said, “Well Joseph, my name is Cornelius Von Owl.
Say, did you know that I was a descendant of Cornelius Von Alien, and did you know that aliens inhabited the Earth?” I said, “Well, no I didn’t know that aliens inhabited the Earth. I thought all those rumors about aliens were just a bunch of fallacies.” Cornelius Von Owl said, “Oh, no, sir you are completely mistaken and your knowledge is misunderstood. You see, Aliens have been on this earth before humans have been here.” I said, “Tell me more about what you just said my
Alyson Noël
Wilson Harris
Don Bassingthwaite
Patricia Reilly Giff
Wendy Wax
Karen Kingsbury
Roberta Gellis
Edited by Anil Menon and Vandana Singh
Alisa Anderson, Cameron Skye
Jeremiah Healy