Life in La La Land

Life in La La Land

by Katelynn Mendoza

Sun is out. Skies are clear. The fresh summer breeze blowing on my skin. I woke up and opened all of my curtains. I let the sun absorb into my apartment. My friend Sasha was coming over. We haven’t hung out in a while. I decided to turn on the TV while I started brunch.

Sasha got to my house pretty fast. I was really excited to see her.

“Oh my god, hey. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you!” she said ecstatic as I opened the door.

“I am so excited you decided to come over. I’ve missed you!” Seeing her made me realize how much I missed her.

“How have you been Amanda?”

“You know, the usual. Just enjoying the great, bright and positive life everyday.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Yeah, how have you been?”

“Oh you know. Work, come home, sleep and repeat.” It felt good to catch up with a friend.

“There has been another report of a missing person. There have been no witnesses. What our investigators seemed to notice is that at every scene, there has been some sort of footprint,” the reporter said frantically.

We both glanced at the TV with wide eyes. This is the third person that went missing. When the first person went missing, nobody thought anything of it. They thought the person would just come back. But no, the people don’t come back. It’s the middle of the summer, we expected those people to just come back. Usually I’m always smiling and happy, but lately ever since these people have gone missing, I’m not my usual bubbly self.

“When did the missings start?”

“About a couple weeks ago.”

“Why don’t we go shopping? To get our mind off things and relieve some stress?”

“Yeah sure!”

When we got back I decided to turn on the news to see if there had been any new reports. It turns out, there was more than a missing person this time, there was security camera footage of what looked like something huge and scary. It kind of looked like a robot. It looked like it had tried to rummage through something then ran away. Now I was really nervous. The world had been seeming to become hectic and, well, real.

“Can you believe this is happening?”

I would have never thought that something like this would happen. After seeing all of the news reports I started to get shaky. I heard a knock on my door. I was hesitant to go open it, but I had to. I peeked through the curtain on my door. It was the police. There has been an increase in police ever since the missings started.

“Hi ma’am, I’m here related to the missings. Maybe you’ve seen them on the news?”

“Um, yes I have.” I said while playing with my fingernails. Me and Sasha nervously looked at each other.

“Ok ma’am. I’m going to need to take a look around and make sure everything is okay in here. Is that okay?”

“Of course.”

As he started to check around my house, I decided to turn on the news to see if they had been going to other peoples doors as well. They had. They wanted to make sure that no one was hiding anything.

“This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. We have just been told that everyone must evacuate the town. We all must group together a while away from town until it is safe to return. There have been sightings of what people are saying is a robot.”

What was happening? What was happening was so bad that we all had to flee. This is bad. This is really bad. The police officer made sure he helped me evacuate safely. This was really happening, and I was scared.

I’m seeing everyone run from home and running in groups, and it’s all coming to me. The missing people, the sightings of robots. The world isn’t bright and awesome. It’s full of secrets, it’s dark and it’s scary. Me and Sasha were running and had to stop and breathe for a minute because we couldn’t believe what was going on. As I looked around, I noticed something was different. It had gotten darker. And it wasn’t late so it shouldn’t have been getting dark so early. As I turned around, I saw it. It was huge. It was just standing there watching. It

was the robot. The first thought that came to my mind was, are there more? It was huge. Imagine what we would have to do to take care of one. Let alone more? The robot was as tall as a roller coaster. With eyes as green as grass. The eyes were my main focus. They were so bright. Everyone else started to notice.

“Oh my god, it’s huge!” I heard everyone reacting.

Suddenly, it said something. “Hello. My name is Augustine.” Its voice was raspy, deep, and scary.

“You’re probably wondering where I came from, or how I got here, or why I’m here. Well I can say that I was made by a lab and they’re experimenting on us and having us do bad things.”

Us? There was more than one. It was only a matter of time before more showed up. It said they had them doing bad things. Did they have something to do with the missings? I ran and hid behind a huge rock. Without doing anymore talking, he started grabbing people and flinging them away. Some people had even been killed with just a squeeze. I was so scared. I started to cry. I couldn’t say bye to my family. I had no idea where Sasha had gone. All the screams flooded my ears. I just decided to keep running. But I just wasn’t fast enough. It had caught me. I knew I was going to die. I decided to not fight, and just let it happen. I closed my eyes, but he didn’t kill me. Why hesitate if he had me right there?

“I need your help. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be one of them. I don’t want to have to kill all these people.”

The robot was showing . . . remorse. I don’t know if I believed it. Maybe it was just a trick to try to get me to trust him.

“How-how do I know I can trust you? How do I know you’re not lying?” I asked while I was shaking.

He placed me down on the floor. “Please just trust me, I need help to take them out.”

How was I supposed to take down robots the size of bears?

“How am I supposed to help you? I’m weaponless, defenseless, and small.”

“It’s okay. I will protect you through everything. I’ll stay with you. Just please, help me.”

I could tell that he actually felt bad and didn’t want to do what he was doing. “Okay. I’ll help you.”

He had me follow him. He wanted me to specifically help him take down the other robots so they stopped killing people. I was tiny

enough to fit on his arm. We got close enough to the first one, but we had to make sure they didn’t think anything of it.

“Press the button on my arm, PRESS IT!!” I pressed the button with aggression. The button had made him fall, and hard.

“Press it again, press it again.” I pressed it two more times to be safe. “Good job, we only have a couple more.”

I was tired. I wanted to close my eyes, but I knew for the sake of all the people I had to keep pushing myself. Two more, dead. We only had one more. But the problem was it was the strongest one.

“Okay, we got this. I’m going to ask you a big favor right now. And it might risk your life.” Me being the sweet person I am, I knew I had to do it.

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

“Okay. What I’m going to do is get close enough to him so that you can jump on him. Once I help you to make sure you jumped safely I need you to find your way to the back of his neck. Once you do that I need you to use all the power you have and flick off the switch behind his neck. Can you do that for me?”

“Yeah . . . yeah, I’ll try.” I was scared. I knew what risk this came with. But me doing this would have saved the rest of the people. He started to approach the other robot. I had to make sure I made it onto the other robot.

“You ready? JUMP!”

I jumped while my legs dangled in the air, but I made it. This was really the time I needed to get my head in the game. While Augustine distracted it, I tried to make my way to his neck. It was hard, considering the fact that it was moving. I crawled my way to his neck without trying to get hurt. It was too late, there was blood running down my face and my leg. I was all dirty and oily. The oil made my hair a dirty blonde. I had managed to find the switch, but I knew I was really going to have to use all my power to switch it off. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to flip it but I had to try.

“You got this!” I heard Augutine scream. I knew I could do it.

“You got this Amanda, you got this,” I started to mumble under my breath.

“DO IT NOW!!”

“AHHHHHHH UGHHHHH!!”

I did it. I had flipped the switch. I was falling. But before I touched the ground, he caught me. Augustine caught me.

“I can’t put into words how thankful I am that you saved me,” I said as I started to get choked up.

“I can’t put into words how thankful I am that you helped me.”

We looked around and watched all the people gather. They were crying and clapping. “Thank you so much you saved our lives.”

“Can I ask for a favor, Augustine?”

“Of course, anything.”

“Where are those missing people?”

I needed to know. There were missing people whose families were worried. He said he would take me to where they had put them. When we got there, it was small, dirty.

“Why did you take them and put them in such a dirty place?”

He had no answer. He knew what he did was wrong, but I knew it wasn’t his fault. He was controlled by it. We had managed to safely take them out and get them back to their families. I was hoping that after all of this everything would be back to normal. But I know after all of this, it will never be back to normal. I now know that the world isn’t always bright and perfect. It’s evil and sca-

Where am I? I went unconscious but I don’t remember how.

“Oh my god. SASHA?!”

What was she doing? Why did she have me tied up?

“Sasha what are you doing?”

“Shut up. Stop asking questions. It’ll be done faster if you don’t.”

“What do you mean done faster? What are you talking about? SASHA?!”

She refused to answer me.

“Is this why you made contact with me? To kidnap me?”

“I need to do what I need to do for them.”

“Sasha . . . who is them?”

“The world isn’t so bright and positive now, is it?” Sasha said as she looked me dead in the eyes.