When I was in the 5th grade back in Athens, GA, we were given an October creative writing assignment where the only instruction was that the title of the story had to be "On Halloween".
Apparently I decided that my story was going to be a rip off of the Friday the 13th series, only with my classmates and teachers as the victims.
I can remember writing it at the time and never once having the thought that what I was writing might be considered "wrong". And at the time, people thankfully took at as it was intended to be taken... a 5th grader's version of Friday the 13th with his friends as characters and no malice intended. But I have no doubt that if I was a kid today and wrote this exact same story, I would have been expelled.
The story was popular amongst my friends, and shortly thereafter I decided to make it a running series, writing a new chapter every so often. My best friend Chad did illustrations (which looking back at them now are really, really good for a 5th grader), and pretty soon we had ourselves a schoolwide phenomenon. Kids I didn't know would come up to me on the playground asking to read it, and then asking to be in it, even if it just meant getting killed. I was a god amongst children. I was... oh, sorry. Got carried away there.
Now I tried revising the story several times during my childhood, all the way up to high school. Elements of later versions even made their way into a screenplay (which I've since abandoned). But that first, serialized version, written on my Radio Shack Color Computer 1 and printed on alternating green and white paper from my slow as hell dot matrix printer, is probably the most memorable version.
And so, against my somewhat better judgment (and because I needed a topic for today), I present the original version of that first chapter in my Jason story. I'm reprinting it completely as is, despite my struggle to correct my awful 5th grade sentence structure and other problems.
On Halloween
One Halloween, ten years ago, me and my four brothers Inky, Blinky, Jason and Darth were sleeping in our beds at Camp Gonnawatchyoumama. Jason woke up and decided to go swimming. Jason slid into the pool and screamed for help. Ms. Jones, the camp counselor, ran out to help but it was too late. Jason had drowned.
On the girls side of the camp, Heather, Jodi, Cyndi and Kelsey were playing football when they heard something behind them. Jodi turned around. A knife hit her across the chest. The other girls screamed. Then they ran into the boys side of camp, jumped into our cabin and under our beds.
We yelled, "What are you doing here?!" "Somebody killed Jodi! And he's coming after us!" Cyndi yelled. Vaughn shouted "Nonsense!" and ran outside. He got his head chopped off. Cyndi said, "See, I told you!" "Cyndi shut up!" we yelled. We ran to Ms. Jones' cabin. We heard the shower and saw Ms. Jones dead.
Cyndi said, "I like Ms. Jones' clothes!!" so she hopped to the closet. Jason jumped out and killed her. We ran back to our cabin. I slipped on Vaughn, hit my head on a rock, and was knocked out. The next thing I knew I saw our cabin burned down. I also saw Kelsey in front of Jason saying "Peace". So Jason chopped off her fingers. He ran to the bushes. I took Ms. Jones' corvette and drove off.
I drove to the Air Force and told them to blow up the camp. So they did. Then I drove to a police station. I jumped out of the car and ran inside. I started explaining. They said "Did you get something out of your mama's purse?" After they heard my story they insisted that I killed everyone. So they threw me in jail with a drunk. He said, "What ya in for?"
"They think I killed 10 people!"
And scene. Wow, that's hideous. Rewriting that made me cringe. Such basic logic problems like how everyone's sleeping yet the girls are out playing football. Or how Jason drowns but then immediately goes on his killer rampage. No build up, no legend, just 30 seconds later he's a killing machine.
Or how the story takes place "10 years ago". I'm the hero of the story at age 1?
I gotta admit though, I still love the name I came up with for that camp and how the Air Force just blew it up because I told them too. And the phrase "I slipped on Vaughn"? Genius.
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