The Strange Story of...

The Strange Story of the Soldiers

         AJ sat on the couch, nervously watching Alyssa type on Facebook. She wasn't completely on board with her plan, but she was new to town; she needed to make friends.

        Anna Jocelyn "AJ" Murphy and her parents had moved to Martha's Vineyard from Boston only a few weeks ago, and she had never been great at making friends. So when Alyssa Smith, the most popular girl in school, invited her to a slumber party, she'd jumped at the chance.

      At first, everything had gone okay. The two other girls there, Molly Ackerman and Hilary Mallard, were nice enough, and they had mostly been watching Twilight movies for two hours. Until Alyssa got a "brilliant idea".

     The four girls were all on the school volleyball team, and they all knew that the least popular girl was Whitney Lewis. AJ knew of her, and didn't think she was too strange, but the other girls all made fun of her for what seemed like no reason. Alyssa, while scanning Facebook, had found a friend request from Whitney, and, instead of responding, posted a list of reasons why people should avoid her, listing a number of things such as that her late father was a magician in Las Vegas who was fired for stealing from a toy store, and that she had a disturbing habit of uttering gibberish under her breath.

    "How do you know all that?" AJ asked her. Alyssa shrugged as she posted the list.

    "Those rumors about her have been around since the seventh grade. I don't know or care if they're true."

    "Besides," Molly added as she tied her fake-blond hair into a knot at the nape of her neck, "what's she going to do when she finds it? Turn us all into frogs? Make us all fall asleep until some cute guys kiss us?" She laughed.

    "I wouldn't exactly mind that last one," Hilary added, as she got off her phone. "Pizza will be here in twenty minutes."

     Alyssa popped Twilight: Breaking Dawn into her Blu-Ray player and they watched in silence. After a while, someone knocked on the front door, and Alyssa ran to get it. When she came back, she looked confused and was holding a cardboard box, taped shut.

     "Someone left this on the doorstep." She put it on the floor. Molly took a pair of scissors off of Alyssa's desk and cut off the tape. The second the last piece of tape was off, the box practically exploded.

      The other girls screamed and ran from the room, but the box blocked Molly from the door. AJ heard her screaming and stopped the others halfway down the stairs.

     "We have to go back for her!" she pleaded.

     "We don't know what's up there, and I'm not about to find out!" Alyssa started for the front door. AJ grabbed her arm.

     "We can't just leave her there!"

     "Who gives a crap? I'm getting out of here!"

      AJ heard Molly scream again, and this time turned and ran back up the stairs. When she got to Alyssa's room, her mouth dropped open.

     A miniaturized army stood in front of her, complete with tiny soldiers, Jeeps, tanks, and tiny helicopters that flew around like flies. And at the center of it all was Molly, who was backed into a corner of the room, with an array of tiny soldiers, guns, helicopters and other weaponry pointed at her. She saw AJ, and screamed.

    "The guns work!" She held up her hand. It was covered in tiny puncture wounds, each one bleeding. At that moment, the tiny army turned its attention to AJ, who was so shocked she couldn't move. A tiny man, who could've been a commanding officer, screamed (though to her it was more of a whisper).

  "Fire at will!" Tiny explosions were heard throughout the room, and AJ felt a small but sharp pain in her bare foot. She looked down and saw that a tiny puncture in her foot was bleeding. When she turned around, she heard a tiny explosion, and Molly didn't make another sound. She ran down the stairs, into the kitchen.

    "Over here!" Hilary beckoned to her from her hiding place in the pantry. AJ ran in and shut the door. Tears were streaming down her face, and she held back a sob.

    "What's going on?" Hilary said, on the brink of tears herself.

    AJ took a roll of paper towels from a shelf and made a makeshift bandage for her foot. Then she told Hilary about the small army. Hilary looked at her dumbly.

   "I know it sounds crazy," AJ whispered, "but you have to believe me." She was crying. "I think Molly's dead." Hilary put her hand over her mouth and stared at AJ in horror. "We need to get out of here. Where's Alyssa?"

    Hilary shook her head, as if to say she didn't know, when a blast came from behind AJ. She turned around and saw that there was now a quarter-sized hole in the pantry door. Another blast sounded, and an identical hole appeared about an inch away from the last one.

   AJ swung the door open, taking out the tiny helicopter that had been firing missiles at the pantry. The teenage girls ran from the kitchen, and almost made it to the front door when they heard Alyssa scream from the basement.

   Hilary ran to the basement stairs, and AJ followed. Once they'd descended, they saw Alyssa pinned to the floor by numerous nets thrown over her. AJ could just make out the tiny soldiers driving stakes into the floor to hold them in place.

    "Hold it right there!" AJ looked down and saw a group of fifty or so more soldiers pointing weapons at them. What looked like a tiny general was shouting up at her with a miniature bullhorn. AJ couldn't take it anymore.

     "What do you want?" she screamed at the army. She realized how loud her voice must have been to them, as most of the tiny soldiers fell to their knees and covered their ears. When they'd recovered, the tiny general resumed shouting through the bullhorn.

     "We have been given orders to search and destroy the giant known as Alyssa B. Smith by President W. Lewis! We were ordered to take out any other giants we perceived as a threat, such as you! We are giving you the chance to surrender or be taken out like the previous giant!" Hilary gasped and looked at AJ.

   "We surrender..." AJ whispered, mindful of her previous mistake.

    "Are you serious?" Alyssa was struggling under the nets, and the tiny soldiers were straining to hold her down. "I tried to have a good slumber party, I invited some skinny nerdy new girl to look all nice, and Whitney just has to ruin it because she can't handle the truth! I mean what the--" She lapsed into a string of profanity as she broke free of the nets, sending many small soldiers into the air.

  The general and the rest of the small army turned to her, and AJ heard him say into a microscopic walky-talky a sentence that sent her and Hilary back up the stairs: "Ready the bombs."

   As AJ and Hilary stumbled out of the basement, an ear-splitting boom shook the ground and shot fire across the house. The two girls barely made it out alive. Alyssa didn't make it out at all.

   First responders came to the house and fought the fire, but the structure burned to the ground. They found the body of Molly, but Alyssa's body was never found, just a large group of half-melted plastic soldiers in the basement. AJ and Hilary were questioned, but no one believed their account of the tiny army. Eventually it was concluded that smoke inhalation had caused the girls to hallucinate. The cause of the fire was stated to be a gas leak in the basement and a frayed electrical wire.

   However, Whitney Lewis was seen near the sight of the fire that night, and the witness claimed that she had been holding something in her hand. It had almost looked like a tiny man in a soldiers uniform. And as the police had taken Molly's corpse out of the burned house, Whitney had smiled.

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Hi! I just wanted to say that, yes, this is much darker than my usual stories, but I hope it isn't that dark. My next piece won't be this dark, I promise. Ok, I just wanted to apologize to anyone who doesn't like super dark stuff.