THREE
STEADY KNOCKS
Jack sits alone
in an empty house. His first day of middle school is over and his
mother trusts him to stay home while she runs to the store. Three
steady knocks hit the door and his heart races. The room is now
filled with the sound of a heartbeat. He walks to the door slowly. At
the door he pauses and decides whether or not he should open it. His
hand touches the handle. He turns the handle and swings the door
open. No one is in the doorway. He takes one step out side. Then
another. He turns left and sees no one there. He is about turn right
but before he can a hand sweeps over to cover his mouth. He is
paralyzed with fear so he just stands there. He is pulled into the
dark were he faints.
Jack’s mother
returns to the house. She does not see Jack anywhere in sight so she
calls the cops. They send off a search party and assure her that they
will find her son.
Jack awakens in
the back of a van. He is not tied up or blindfolded. The van hits a
large bump and the door gets thrown open but the van is still in
motion. The van is going too fast for Jack to hold on and he rolls
out onto the road and then into the woods.
He stands up and
has no idea where he is. It is warm and it smells like pine trees. He
looks up to try to see the trees but all he sees are black shapes. It
is too dark for him to see clearly. He takes a few steps to see if he
hurt anything and he did not. Nothing seems real, it all feels like a
dream … but it’s not. He walks back up to the dirt road and walks
in the opposite direction panicking, with tears dribbling down his
face. He feels alone and scared of what is coming next or if ANYTHING
will come next. There is not a car or a house in sight so he keeps
walking. Step after step.
About an hour
later he falls to the ground. There is still no one in sight. He just
lies there in the road. It is too painful for him to take any more
steps because of all the walking he did. He tries to crawl to the
side of the road, but it is too hard. On the ground he falls asleep.
He is lucky that throughout the night no cars drive by.
As he dreams
images of his baby sister float through his mind and her voice echo.s
It’s full of laughter and joy. Jack knows he may never hear that
voice again. To Jack hope just seems like a hallucination.
The sun rises
above the trees and Jack awakens. He walks for about four hours and
his feet start to bleed in his shoes. He doesn’t notice the blood
and keeps going. He isn’t even sure if he’s going the right way.
The sound of roaring thunder pierces his ears. Rain comes pounding
down and morning becomes afternoon.
His stomach
feels like it’s flipping and turning inside of him and his mouth
feels bone dry. He knows he will not survive. Now there are puddles
of blood mixed with rain. Jack looks down. He sees his blood soaked
shoes and he sits down on a rock to take a break. He tilts his head
back and opens his mouth. But he still needs more. The rain slowly
drips in. In panic of dying from thirst Jack starts digging as fast
as he can but he is weak, so it is painful in his back. When he
finishes the hole, it slowly creates a handful of water. Jack cups
his hands, dips them into the water and brings them up so he can
drink. The water is brown and has the taste of mud, but it is still
some of the best water he ever tasted.
The road makes a
crackling sound and Jack sees a car. The first car he has seen in
days. Jack gets a closer look. He realizes that it is the van he had
rolled out of. Jack starts running. His feet pound the damp ground,
but he slips in the mud and launches forward. He puts his arms out in
front of him and crashes into the cold ground. The van stops, a door
opens and a man steps out.
The man has a
creepy smile on his face. With each step he takes towards Jack his
smile gets bigger. Jack gets up but as he does the man reaches for
Jack’s throat and squeezes. Jack grabs the man’s arms and pushes
them away from his throat with a struggle and starts to run again. A
voice sounds in the distance and the sound of chopper blades rip
through the air. A bright spotlight shows over the man. The man
shades his eyes and looks up.
When the man
sees that, he runs towards his van and starts driving away. He drifts
of the side off the road into a ditch where his car flips.
When the police
officers go to get the man out of the burning car, he isn’t there.
In fact he has completely disappeared from the scene. The police
search the area but he is nowhere in sight. The only hint the
officers have is a short trail of blood. The blood stains the dirt
red.
The search
continues but there is not much evidence. On the way to take Jack to
the hospital the officers question him about what the man looks like.
Jack’s description of the man isn’t what the officers are
expecting at all. Jack says that the man had a scar going from the
right eye down to his left lip, his face was extremely pale and that
he looked barely alive. When Jack arrives at the hospital
he drifts off to sleep. Jack stays in the hospital for a week.
Jack had never
seen the man who abducted him before. The person who did it must have
lurked in the darkness like a ghost of fear and destruction. Now
because of him Jack is forced to live in constant fear of his return.
Jack wonders if they will ever catch the man and if he will ever feel
safe again.
WEAR A SEATBELT
By Erick
I think seatbelts should be used in
the front seat and in the back seat at all times no matter what. The
whole reason we wear seatbelts is so we don’t walk out of a car
crash with a life changing injury or not walk out of the car at all
and that injury or death could have been prevented with the click of
a seatbelt.
Wearing a seatbelt can save your
life. Did you know that about every hour someone in the United States
of America dies, because of his or her lack of wearing a seatbelt?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has estimated that
an amount of 5,500 people could be saved each year if only 90 percent
of Americans wore their seatbelts, but think about that 10 percent of
Americans that are lying on the sidewalks dead.
The most common injury people get from not wearing
a seatbelt is neurological. Neurological means something that has to
do with the human nervous system. Think about it, that could change
the way you move permanently!
You may think that you don’t need
to wear a seatbelt, because you’re a good driver. You might be a
good driver, but what you need to realize is that not everyone is a
good driver. You may also say, "I don’t need to wear a seatbelt,
I have airbags". But do you really think airbags are going to keep
you from getting tossed around in a crash? It is true that people who
wear seatbelts can be trapped in a burning car, but you’re more
likely to die in that crash without a seatbelt anyway, because you’re
going to got thrown into the fire.
You can also say other things but
none of the reasons you suggest is worth dying for. In fact you
should just think about Dr. C Hunter Sheldon’s point of view if you
think you don’t need a seatbelt. He was the one who thought of
retractable seatbelts in the early 1950’s when he noticed a large
number of people in the emergency room with neurological damage
because of not having a seatbelt to keep them safe. You should also
thank Nils Bohin for inventing the seat belts we use today.
Seatbelts are important. To motivate
you to wear a seatbelt think of how sad your loved ones would be
walking to your funeral because you didn’t put on your seatbelt and
think about the other people that died too. A lot of deaths are made
possible because people don’t wear their seatbelt. Accidents
happen, but death in a crash can be prevented if you wear a seatbelt.
These are the websites I got
information from and were you can get more information:
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