going to be books for children and adults alike; books on History, Adventure, and Classic literature like William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and John Bunyan. There was also going to be toy trucks made of metal and wood for the boys and china dolls for the young girls. Indeed there was going to be a big sale planned for the 4th of July weekend but due to the fact that the supplier was not going to be able to get the shipment there on time the sale had been cancelled; no one had bothered to ask Mr. Johnson why the sale was cancelled.
TWO LOCAL TEENS FOUND
Some readers out there may have already come to your conclusions on this story as to who the teens were, what they had been involved in and what they were found doing. If these teens were your kids would you want the facts about the situation or would you be happy with the tradition that has been established by the Mighty Junction Express? I submit that it would not be the latter of the two choices but instead you would choose to know the whole story. Upon reading this headline I had to ask myself some questions about situations that would require a person to be found: Were the teens found doing something illegal? Were the teens found doing something immoral? Were the teens found doing something that could hurt them or others?
I did some checking around and I did discover that there were some teens that were involved in some acts that were illegal, some that were immoral and even some that had degrees of both type involved. Then I had to ask myself what does the word “found” mean? The word may mean “discovered” as in the sense of being found (discovered) doing something that should not be done. (He was discovered hiding in the room behind the office after breaking into it.) Or, the word “found” could be (discovered) (they were discovered helping someone carry the many bags of groceries upstairs) Then the word “found” is often used in the sense of what happens when you (discover) something that was lost.
However, by checking with the source of this headline I discovered that by not giving the whole facts of the story the “reporter” has done this community a great injustice. There were two teenage youth that were found (discovered) by a man and his wife walking home Sunday evening. The brother and sister both fourteen years old had been out riding together on his horse when the horse got spooked and ran into a tree. The girl had been knocked from the horse and her brother was trapped under the horse and couldn’t get out from under him. The horse was unconscious and the girl had broken one of her legs and was unable to go any further than the road and wait for someone to come by and see her. The teens are now at home recuperating from their injuries and the horse never recovered and had to be put down by the local vet.
ZEBRAS AT LOCAL ZOO ESCAPE ALONG WITH A LION
Common sense would tell the person writing this one down, that a headline of this type could, and probably would cause great concern and perhaps distress among the community. As I made my way through the town of Mighty Junction I was warned by a number of people to be on the lookout for three lions that had killed a zebra and escaped the Mighty Junction Zoo. When I showed them the copy of the paper and what the headline actually said the response to it was, “I know what the headline says, but this is what happened. Be careful there is a killer lion on the loose.” Before I had tracked down the facts of this story that poor lion was responsible for the disappearance of a hundred cats, dog’s squirrels and had even attacked a small child. As a matter of fact there were a dozen groups of men armed with everything from handguns to large caliber hunting rifles looking for the “rogue” lion. Now here is what happened according to the Mighty Junction Zoo staff; the two zebras were bought by LJ Kingsley a lion tamer from the Cowboy Circus and were going to be released on a wild game preserve that the circus had established for the protection of exotic animals. The source had overheard the words; escape, zoo, and the word lion as Kingsley told the waitress at the diner what he was working on and the source decided that with those three words he could build an exciting headline.
TWO MEN TRAPPED WHILE GAS STATION BURNS
This particular headline, or rather the comments that it caused resulted great dissension amongst the firefighters’ at Engine Co. 45, because they had searched the service station at fifth and main for any signs of life while they were fighting the blaze that was in the back of the building. As a matter of fact one firefighter had been seriously wounded during the battle against the blaze. They were sure that there was no one inside the building when the order was given to allow the fire to burn itself out. There were the rumors that with this headline being made known that there was to be further investigation into this company’s qualification to continue fighting fires. However, the facts that I uncovered while investigating this story show that the members of Engine co. 45 did their very best in fighting this fire and there were two men that were trapped, but they were trapped in the building across the street, a shoe store that had been locked up while the men were in the back room hiding out from the police that were looking for them for setting fires in the town of Brownsburg. They had set the fire at the gas station and hid themselves in the shoe store to watch it burn. When the owner of the shoe store came back later that evening and found the men there they told him that they had been in the bathroom when the store was shut down and could not get out. When asked why they had not used the phone they said they tried but the line was dead, oddly enough the line had been cut from the outside.
There have been a great many residents here that have commented that they wish the paper would report the news stories as well as the headlines in their paper and the editor from the Mighty Junction Express could not be found for a comment. The top headline in the next day’s paper read as follows: BUSINESS AS USUAL AT THE EXPRESS
My mission in this life has been established and it will continue in the town of Mighty Junction, USA.
The Intruder
Out of the corner of his left eye Hans MacDonald saw something. He was not sure what it was though; riding upon that quick movement an eerie feeling entered the room.
Ever since he was a young boy Hans feared what he could not see. He tried a night light to scare away the night creatures under the bed but that cast a shadow and Hans could not deal with that.
It moved again and this time it was under his blanket coming toward his upper body. Hans reached for the baseball bat that he kept in the corner of the room near his bed, but it was not there. So he did the next best thing that he could do; he screamed, but not a girly, freaky female scream, no this was a manly, deep from within his lungs scream. His wife Margie appeared from out of the bathroom with her toothbrush in her hand and the frothy, white paste drooling from her mouth. “Hans, what is wrong with you? You nearly made me drop my toothbrush into the commode.” “Nothing, I saw something on TV that scared me.” “Well, quit watching that stuff, you know those shows give you nightmares.” “Are you about finished in there? I need some company out here.” “Almost, I just have to finish putting on my night mask and then I will be out there.” He looked under his blanket and whatever it was that had been there had retreated when Margie had entered the room. She was his rescuer once again; if only Margie had known how many of these deadly night creatures vanished into the thin air at the sense of her presence, she would have known just how much Hans’ hated sleeping alone. On those nights when she had to work late at the hospital Hans didn’t even get into bed until she was pulling into the drive way. He couldn’t and the voice knew why and made sure to keep Hans on his toes every night, which had been the cause of many sleepless nights for him. Especially on those nights when his dear wife had to work overnights and she would be returning home just as he was heading out for the office. --I told you that I would get you one day Hans and that day is coming-- This had been the message for the last twenty years, a message that caused the skin on his body to crawl as though it were made of thousands of spiders. When Hans was seven years old he had first heard the voice and he didn’t think much of it. He was the president and founder of the local chapter of Scary Monsters, Inc. a
club in which the four toughest boys and one girl, his little sister Maggie would spend their time in the club house telling the scariest stories that they could think of.
On one occasion their cousin Bob had come to visit and told a story of a scary voice that travelled from one house to another and would make scary noises all night long and if you saw the voices face then you would grow an eye in the middle of your belly, and no one wanted that to happen. Hans just knew that this must be true because Bob was ten years old and he knew everything about monsters, he even knew what voices they made, and all of the neat sound effects that appeared when the monsters came into the room. That very same night Hans had heard the voice and went running out of his room into his mother’s arms. She tried to comfort him and tell him that it was just a dream and then sat with him on the bed until he went to sleep.
He had not heard the voice until ten years later when he was on a campout with his friends in the deep woods. There it was the same as it had been when he was seven years old; --I told you that I would get you one day Hans and that day is