This is a story I wrote for my 6th-grade English class. The original title was just "Erik". I salvaged this text from an old floppy disk in Dec 2018. The date written in the original file was ; I'm not sure if this is the date I wrote it or the due date. When I uploaded this piece, I made a few fixes/improvements for writing conventions, added italics to book and movie titles, and tweaked a few words, but otherwise the text is the same as when I first wrote it.
Despite what you might assume, Erik is not a reflection of myself. For example, I had at the time of writing this never seen The Simpsons, never read Star Wars books, never ridden a go-kart, never gone to Paris, etc.
Erik started doing his homework when he got home from school. He was half figuring out 82 divided by 16 and half imagining that he had his very own go-kart and paintball gallery. When he finished his homework, he decided to walk to the mall to play one of his favorite games, laser tag.
As Erik was walking down his driveway, a giant hole opened up in front of him! He didn't see the hole until he had fallen in. The hole, after swallowing Erik, closed back up at the top while Erik kept falling. He finally landed in a big pool of water.
Suddenly a big light turned on so Erik could finally see. A huge group of gray, three-eyed blobs with long curly tails were all staring at him. They slowly oozed up to Erik and carried him away. As the blobs were walking, they squirted a strange liquid out of their tails. When the liquid hit Erik, he slowly drifted off to sleep.
When Erik woke up, he was lying on a small table. As he got up, he felt dizzy. He looked around the room. In a small corner, a few blobs were fiddling with a control board. Not knowing what had happened after he had fallen in the hole, Erik asked the blobs what was going on. To his surprise, the blobs—confident that their plan would work no matter what—answered him. They told him that their plan was to get rid of humans by getting rid of things humans liked, and keeping those they didn't like, which they hoped, would drive humans crazy. Erik was to be the first human in a series of tests to find out what humans like and dislike. While he was asleep, the blobs had read his mind and found out that Erik's least favorite movie is Mother and his least favorite show is Barney & Friends. They also found out that Erik likes paintball, go-karts, laser tag, a book called Star Wars: The Swarm, basketball, The Simpsons, submarine sandwiches, and going to Paris. The blobs typed all of Erik's favorite things into their control board so that if a big green button was pushed, it would rid the world of those things!
At Erik's house, his parents had gotten worried about him. Five hours had passed since Erik had left. His parents decided to try looking at the mall. They got into their car and drove over the hole Erik had fallen in, but they were going so fast that the soil didn't fall until they were past it.
In the hole, Erik saw a bottle of the same strange liquid as the blobs had squirted on him. He snatched the bottle and threw it on the blobs. The blobs were stunned, but didn't fall asleep. Erik looked around again. On another wall was an extension cord going from a wall socket to the machine. Erik pulled the cord out and broke it in two. When the power was disconnected, the screen on the computer blanked out and all the information was lost.
The blobs kept oozing closer. There were two doors that Erik might be able to escape from, but he couldn't decide which one to open. Since the blobs were coming from the right, he ran up to the left door and opened it. Inside, all Erik saw was darkness, but the blobs were too close to hesitate, so Erik ran in. He kept running through the dark tunnel until he felt water and saw light. Erik was back where he had fallen in and the hole was open again. On one side of the wall was a gigantic ladder. Erik climbed it until he was outside again.
Just then his parents pulled in the driveway and stopped in front of the hole. Erik ran up to the car and quickly told them the whole story. Erik's parents didn't believe him until they looked down into the hole and saw the blobs trying to get up. Erik's parents got a board to cover the hole temporarily and the next day they had it paved over so that no one would ever fall in again.