Today I am sharing a story that Alex wrote, which you will soon see is a spinoff of Back to the Future. The opening, in italics, is a the prompt he was given as a starting point by his English teacher. Note: I disclaim all spelling and punctuation irregularities. But I did put paragraphs in, for all our sakes.
I poked my head into the old car. The dashboard was covered with dust, and the passenger seat was ripped and stained. “Why does Grandpa Ed keep this old wreck behind the garage?” I asked my sister Ashley.
“Ben, you know why,” she replied. “Grandpa thinks the car is haunted. He won’t go near it.”
“Haunted? Cool,” I said. I climbed behind the steering wheel.
“I’m outta here,’ Ashley said. “I don’t like smelly, old cars—especially if they’re haunted.” She disappeared around the side of the garage.
As soon as she was gone, I heard a soft whisper. “Ben…let’s go. Take me for a drive.”
“Huh?” I gasped in surprise. I checked to make sure Ashely wasn’t playing a joke on me. But my sister had left.
“Take me for a drive, Ben. I’m so lonely behind the garage.” The voice seemed to be coming from the radio. But the radio was turned off.
I let out a startled cry as the engine started up. The car rattled and clanked, and then the enging hummed smoothly. “Step on the gas, Ben,” the voice whispered. “Don’t be afraid. Let’s GO!”
My heart started to pound. I grabbed the door handle. Should I jump out of the car? I asked myself. Should I tell Ashley what’s happening?
Or should I take the wheel? Step on the gas? Take a chance?
I decided to go tell Ashely about the car. It was really creeping me out. I ran back through the house to Ashely and told her “Ashely, the car really is haunted. Grandpa was right!”
“What?” Ashely said.
“Come on I’ll show you!”
We went back to the car. It had some weird triangle black thing on the back that I hadn’t noticed before. We went inside the car and the “ghost” came back. “Ben,” it said, “I want you to take this car on the road and take it up to 88 miles per hour.”
“Who are you?” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
“I am Dr. Emmet Brown,” the ghost said. “I made a terrible mistake building this car, but you can fix it. I secretly made this car to go back in time or to the future, as you like, but it kept messing up the future or the past. I had one apprentice, your grandfather, Martie McFly.”
“What” I said “that’s, that’s…just so weird.”
“I know it is” Dr. Brown said “but it happens.”
I looked at the rusty old car and asked Dr. Brown “How could this piece of junk ever transport someone back in time?”
“I truly don’t know” said Dr. Brown. “But I hope it will, otherwise your family will be destroyed from existance.”
“How do you know?” i asked.
“I’ve been to the future and back again, remember!”
“Oh yeah, it’s just…brand new. I guess and I’m having trouble believing it.” I said.
“Well so did I.” said Dr. Brown.
“Dr. Brown can I call you Doctor?” I asked him.
“Yes I guess so.” He answered me.
“Well are we going to the past to change history or not?” he asked us.
“Well it’s worth a try.” Said Ashely.
“Back to the past it is then! I do hope you’re 16.” He said.
“I’m 15, 2 day still my birthday. I’m close enough. I know how.”
“Well hurry up then, move it!” Ashley said.
“You can’t rush time” said Dr. Brown.
“Whatever” said Ashley. “Let’s go!”
I turned onto the road and excelarated up to 88 miles per hour. There were colorful sparks all over the windsheild and we dissapeared, into the past.
*
Once we got there I felt weird like I was in another setting witch I was. I was actually back in time when Grandpa Marie was a teenager! “Martie and I changed te future, the original 2015 had flying cars and hover boards. Martie even took one home.” Dr. Brown said. “It was a bright pink one with green and blue camoflage on it. Got it from a little girl when he was running away from a boy called Biff Jr. Biff though, original biff caused a lot of trouble though. He stole an almanac for all the 20th century magor sporting events and using my time machine went back to the past and gave himself the almanac to make himself rich, changing the timestream making an alternate future.” He finished out.
“That was a long explination,” Ashely said
“Yes, I excell at long explinations. Now hurry we must fix this problem before it’s to late!” Dr. Brown said.
“First, what is this problem?” I asked.
“You’ll see in a minite.” He answered.
*
We walked for a while until we got to a sign that said Hill Valley. I hadn’t noticed it before but I could actually see the “gost” we were talking to. He had a mad scientist look, white afro hair, a white lab coat, wild eyes, and I could almost see the ideas popping up in his head. We all looked in the valley and saw a small town that had a school, movie theater, a courthouse, and other buildings.
“What’s this place supposed to be?” Ashely asked.
“This place is where your grandpa went to school when he was a teen obviously.” Dr. Brown said.
“Seriously, doesn’t look like much has changed since, where are we?” I asked.
“When are we is the question, and we are in 1985. What else is new?”
“I still don’t see this problem you were talking about” I said
“That’s because it hasn’t happened yet. You’ll see it in a minite.” said Dr. Brown. “There it is, in the sky!”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Its’ the exazct dallorian we came here in!” He answered.
“But that makes no sense.” I yelled, the noise getting louder and louder.
“You’re in that car and it’s going to crash!” He yelled. Then it happened. The car tilted to the side, flew straight toward a power line, and then right before it hit the power line it righted itself and started falling rapidly.
“We have to stop it!” Dr. Brown said “You, the future you, is in that car and you’re going to die if we don’t save you!”
“I am? Or me in the car?” I asked
“You in the car!” he answered.
“Well how are we going to do it?”
“We can make a crash pad where it’s going to crash.”said Ashley.
“Good idea. Where’s it going to land?”
“On top of the Court house!”
“Well let’s get over there then!”
*
Ten minites later we were setting up a bunch of coushions and “Hover Turbines” (That’s what Doc called them any way) to slow and coushion the dallorian’s fall. “The dallorian will crash in approximately one minite and twenty-three seconds.” Doc said. “All of us have to be out of sight by at least a minute before the dallorian crashes. Otherwise we’ll risk paradox!”
“What’s paradox?” I asked.
“Paradox is when the entire universe is destroyed!” said Ashely.
“How do you know?” I asked Ashley.
“I have science class, you know!”
“Well, let’s get out of here!”
“Not so fast, this will only slow the dallorian down. We’ll still have to give you life support.” said Doc. We tried to find a place to hide but didn’t have much luck. eventually we just decided to hide in the clock tower. a few minites later we heard a whistling noise and then a loud CRASH! “That’s our cue,” I said.
“Exactly right.” Doc agreed. We rushed up to the roof. There was a lot of smoke coming from the dallorian. We rushed over and opened the door. It looked like I had passed out but I knew that it wasn’t true. “Great Scott!” cried Doc.
“What happened to me?” I asked.
“It looks like you choked on something” Doc said
“What did I choke on?”
“I’m not sure.” said Doc. “But it is definitely big!”
*
About a minite later I was out of the dallorian. We’d decided to try CPR first. It didn’t work completely but it got us started, it got junk out of my throat. Next we tried the Heimlich Maneuver (witch I had no idea what it was until Doc showed us.) The Heimlich Maneuver is when you put your hands in front of someone, make a fist pull sharply towards you, and then up. It worked pretty well actully. We had to do a little rescue breathing, but after that we went to the dallorian and took off, into time.
Kathleen M. Basi 