Attack of the Lettuce Heads

12/06/1998

The space ship touched down as if it had landed softly on a ticking bomb. Larry looked out from his office window on top of his bowling alley/burger restaurant when he heard the commotion. He was instantly stunned by the giant flashlight that burned his retna. Many others were blinded by the same flashlight, as they made the same mistake of turning towards the commotion. Most of Orangetown, Florida was blinded.

Outside the disk-like ship let down a slat of metal from the top of the ship. Immediately proceeding the decent of the slat, a yellow rubbery substance rolled down it and inflated, emitting a smell like rotting carcasses. Then down came the Lettuce men. They all carried what looked like little tinker toys in their hands and waddled around like ducks when they reached the ground. They had very short legs that ended in small web-like feet, and short-stubby arms that didn't have elbows, making it harder to carry their little tinker toys around because of gravity. There must've been hundreds of these little Lettuce men pouring out of the space ship. They came out so fast; it reminded me of the time we poured ants out of our juice pitcher. Luckily Ma, Pa, and my little sister are all on a cruise to the Bahamas. Wouldn't want them to get caught up in this mess or anything.

My name is Barney. I'm a freshman in the local school and basically what my parents would call a troublemaker. The reason I'm not with my family is because of the last vacation we went on. You see we were on this vacation in a lovely house right of the beach. Of course my sister wasn't born yet. My parents went to a friend's house for the day and an unexpected storm came so they stayed the night. When they came home the three vacationing neighbors were gone and the house was trashed. What they didn't know was that the neighbors weren't really human, they were from another planet. They were all after this Interstellar Piggy, some sort of game that they were all in. You see, in order to win the game you had to have possession of the Piggy so that you didn't blow up. There were tons of species of different aliens all intertwined into the game, all after the Piggy, all willing to kill for it. It was very scary stuff; I didn't want my parents to be exposed to stuff like that. Anyway, the reason that this comes to mind is, I still have the Piggy. I never saw this certain alien before, but maybe it is a new addition to the game like I was.

I've been watching this whole event because the giant flashlight on top of the ship didn't blind me. I only noticed the screams of the people after they had been blinded. Right now people are running around screaming frantically trying to get away from the little creatures as they gnaw away at their heels. Lettuce men are shooting their tinker toy guns (I'm guessing they're guns) at the blind people and making them stop in their tracks. I guess it's some sort of freezing mechanism. After the people freeze the Lettuce men jump on their backs and start gnawing away at them. It was gruesome! Purely disgusting! Their little teeth would make only tiny punctures so it took a long time to finish a person off. After the people woke up, or defrosted, there was nothing they could do but scream. The town was full of screams.

In all the horror I managed to see, out of the corner of my eye, a few Lettuce men sneaking up behind me with their tinker toys ready to go. Instantly I jumped into the nearest doorway, which happened to be the grocery store, and slammed the door. I ran around to the other side of the counter so that I could find a good hiding place but was stopped in my tracks at the site of more Lettuce heads. They had gotten into the cigarettes and were gnawing away at the little white sticks. I could see the blood, flesh, and tobacco wedged and hanging off of his razor sharp teeth. I got out of there as fast as I could, past the Lettuce men eating cans, past the Lettuce men eating Snickers bars, and past the Lettuce men eating baby diapers all the way to the back storage room. Lucky for me, the back storage room had not been discovered yet by the Lettuce men, but I was not alone. Behind a fortress of shopping carts and milk containers were two families, the Sendricks and the Kostenbergs. The Sendricks owned the post office and the Kostenbergs ran the grocery store. This was the good news that I had found somebody. The bad news was that we were probably the only ones who weren't blinded, maybe the only ones who weren't dead.

We made a plan to escape. The Lettuce men hadn't figured out how to open doors but it wouldn't be long before they did so we had to get out of there. The orange orchard behind the store had been bare since August so we figured there wouldn't be any Lettuce men back there - lack of food. Larry's Bowling Alley/ Burger Restaurant was right across the orchard so we figured that we could go there and find a weapon of some sort to fight off the Lettuce men. It was worth the try, shopping carts and tuna cans did not seem to be working out for us. The first people to go were the Sendricks. Next were the Kostenbergs and then I left just in case there was something following us.

There wasn't anything wrong with our plan, we all made it safely to the bowling alley and got inside all right. You could tell that some how the Lettuce heads had gotten in because there were pieces of different people left all over the floor, the kitchen was a mess, and all the video games were gone, maybe they had some strange attraction to lights. Suddenly we heard knocking coming from upstairs and a silent plea for help. I ran up the stairs only to find, when I opened the office door, Larry, the owner of the Bowling Alley/ Burger Restaurant, reaching for me in a lifeless pose while Lettuce men crawled in the broken window. As they hoped onto Larry they dropped their tinker toys to the floor. Instantly, I grabbed one and started shooting at the Lettuce man closest to me but it had no effect on him, he kept gnawing away at Larry's ear. I looked around the room for a weapon and found the aluminum baseball bat that Larry uses for the batting cage out back. I picked it up and started swinging at the Lettuce men. They were so light that I sent them flying right back to their space ship. When the last one was gone Larry started to defrost a little. He was still blind and he was bleeding in various places but otherwise he was all right. I helped him down the stairs to where the others were gathered with weapons and supplies that they had found in the building. What they had was numerous amounts of bowling balls, baseballs, tennis balls, a tennis ball shooter, wooden pins, pots, pans, garbage lids, and tons of silverware and knives. Seeing that we had little choice but to arm ourselves and fight for our lives, we did. We had garbage lids and pots for armor, the tennis ball shooter for a cannon, bowling balls, baseballs, pans, and silverware as our weapons.

We entered the outer world looking like we ourselves were from another world. Then the Lettuce men looked up from their previous, dirty old prey and saw the magnificent prey in front of them it was no wonder there was a stampede of Lettuces coming towards us. As they got closer we could smell their stinky little stench and see their wrinkly green faces, but they weren't close enough yet, not close enough to start firing. Suddenly a strong gust of wind blew by picking up a lettuce man and carrying him off into the distance. More wind came and more lettuce men started flying away. More and more flew away until . . . "There is a slight chance of rain today along with a strong wind. It looks like Hurricane Betsy is going to miss us folks."

" Barney get up! You're gonna be late for school!"

Oh well, I can dream. The End