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Thursday, December 16, 2010

AWESOME ARACHNIDS by Noah S. R.de Luzuriaga

This was given to me by my son, Noah for my 45th Birthday.

AWESOME ARACHNIDS by Noah S. R.de Luzuriaga 

 Max ran through the dark hallway, wondering where he was and where the spiders were. There was almost no light in the hallway, but Max knew that they would still know where he was. The entire building was very creepy, but with the addition of the spiders, it was a nightmare. Max Peterson was absolutely terrified of spiders, ever since he was five years old. Max was a normal ten year old kid, except for his arachnophobia. When he was five, a spider crawled onto his arm while he was sleeping. Max woke up and saw it crawl across his skin just before the spider painfully bit into his arm. His parents brought him to the hospital because they thought that the spider was poisonous. It wasn't, but Max was still very scarred by the whole event. He had come to the old decrepit waste disposal plant on a dare from his friends. The disposal plant was a remote location, far enough away from the town where he lived, but still within biking distance. After thirty minutes of biking with his friends, Max and his buddies walked to the plant and entered through the broken down front door. Max was told that he would have to head to the center of the plant for the dare to be finished. Upon going through the front door, Max and his friends heard a soft pitter-patter across the floor. To Max's horror, the sound came from dozens of spiders. The spiders were unnaturally large. They weren't the size of Godzilla, but they were larger than any other spider known to man. These things were like eight-legged dogs. Max's friends ran for it, but Max couldn't bring himself to move, due to his arachnophobia. When he finally came to his senses, the bloodthirsty spiders were close enough to bite him. Since the spiders were blocking the front door, Max had no choice but to run through a dirty and completely dark corridor. Max tried to see if any of them were in front of him. As far as he could tell, there weren't any spiders in front of him. However, he heard the soft pitter-patter noise again, coming from behind him. Max ran for it, not noticing one spider crawling on the ceiling above him. As Max was running, the spider on the ceiling dropped itself directly onto Max. It was like the others, large, and with hair like a tarantula's. Its gross mandibles reached forward, eager to bite poor Max. Max wrestled with the freak of nature and managed to toss it away. It continued to chase him, always trying to bite Max, as if it were possessed. Max ran as if the hounds of hell were chasing him, and in his mind, they were. The lone spider jumped at Max, its eight limbs spread wide, hoping to trap the boy. Max was knocked to the ground. He desperately reached for anything that could help him. Fate must have smiled on him that day, because his hands managed to grab a loose brick. Max pummeled the spider in the face with the brick, not stopping until its head was a puddle of goo. The rest of the spider horde finally caught up with Max, so Max began running again. Max did not stop for anything, which was a shame, because if he had stopped running forward, maybe he would have noticed a hole in the floor just in front of him. As Max stepped on the hole, he fell. The entire floor in that part was quite fragile, so it all crumbled down as well. When Max came to, he found himself in a strange hollowed out cavern. "Spiders must have hollowed it out", he mumbled to himself. Max started walking through the dark, creepy cavern, wondering if he would be able to get out. Suddenly, he heard a spider behind him. Strangely, he didn't hear the soft pitter-patter sound to which he was terrified of, instead, he heard loud footsteps, as if something large was behind him. Max was afraid to turn around. Inch by inch, he faced the monster. It was a monstrosity. It looked very similar to the other spiders, except for one small factor. It was huge. This creature was the size of a car, and could easily devour Max whole if it wanted to. And it certainly did want to. The giant spider lunged at Max. Thing is, its size made it slower than its lesser arachnids, thus allowing Max to barely jump out of the way. Angered at having its prey escape her, the spider turned to face Max, who was scared out of his mind. Stay strong Maxie, he thought to himself, barely holding back tears of terror. That was what his dad always told him whenever he was having trouble overcoming a challenge. This was quite possibly the biggest challenge he would ever have to face in his entire life. The spider grabbed at Max, but it only managed to get a hold of Max's hoodie, which Max immediately took off. Unfortunately, the spider had managed to corner him, and he couldn't dodge to the right nor to the left. So he did the only thing he could. He went under it. Max managed to execute a roll underneath the spider which would have probably made a lot of Hollywood stunt-men proud. He dashed off to the other end of the cave, where he originally fell. Max saw that a lot of the floors above were unstable due to the hollowing of the cave. He immediately came up with a plan, and he prayed to God that it wouldn't kill him. The boy picked up a stone and threw it at at the spider. For a second, he hoped that he would get a David & Goliath moment, but no such luck. The spider charged at him, as fast as it possibly could. Max jumped out of the way in time, but the spider was not able to stop itself from ramming the already unstable wall. Max heard the debris fall before he saw them. Several pieces of concrete and rock were falling, mostly on the spider. Unfortunately, a lot of rocks also began to fall towards him. "Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!" he screamed, as the debris fell. Ryan and Josh, the two friends of Max who got away earlier, ran to their local police station, and they told the cops everything that happened. At first the cops were skeptical. Who would believe that a bunch of vicious man-eating spiders existed? They did send a number of cops over to the abandoned plant when they learned that Max was there. Josh and Ryan went back to the plant and helped the cops search for Max. The police were shocked to see that the spiders did exist, and they promptly shot each and every one that they could find. Eventually, they found the part of the building where the floor was collapsed. After calling in some backup, they managed to use a piece of rope to head into the cavern. They saw the dead Mother Spider, along with a human body. "Max!" shouted Josh and Ryan in unison. They helped him get to a sitting position. Max's arm was broken by the fall of debris, and his head was bleeding. The cops got him into an ambulance. While in the hospital, Max thought about what just happened. I just went through hell, he thought. I've gone through my own personal hell and I survived, realized Max. He looked at himself. His arm was in a cast, his head was bandaged, and he was sore all over. He had come really close to crying like a baby, and he peed his pants once or twice back at the plant. But he survived. And what's more, he vanquished the spiders. Max slept like a baby, knowing that now he and everyone else would be safe. Then again, whoever said that all the spiders died?

Friday, May 21, 2010

Poems by Noah S. R.de Luzuriaga

A View on Humanity

Caretakers and killers
Creators and destroyers
A swarm of ants viciously attacking
A colony of termites creating a home
Sturdy as rock in the past,
only to grow weaker over time
Thriving and expanding,
as well as evolving
Always trying to rise higher,
To shoot for the stars
Despite that,
they continually destroy themselves
They are neither predator, nor prey
They are both,
In a strange sort of way.




I Hold These Truths To Be Self-evident:

Children will always prefer play over work.
Life without end is horrible.
Humanity cannot survive
if there is too much hate and greed.
Dogs are cute.
There will always be
pureness and corruption.
Death is always at your door;
Before opening it,
Live life as best as you can.




Untitled

To be like Jose Rizal is what I want,
To serve the Philippines and my people
By showing them the atrocities
Of our corrupt leaders
and other evil men.
To fight courageously
and without regret
even if I'm about to be thrown
to the hungry lions.
To stand and fight
For the sake of my country
And for its people.




A Story

Like a butterfly, she magically flew into the
clouds and entered the heavens, literally. Mark
saw all spirits ascend like that. He was born
with the gift to see spirits, even those that
don't stay on earth.

Mark began to walk home from the funeral. He
passed his friend, Jim. Jim gave his
condolences, the ordinary thing people would
say to those who lost loved ones. After that,
Jim disappeared like all ghosts can.

Mark went to his house's porch, turned the
key, opened the door and entered. He sat on
the couch and shed a few tears.

I wish she could stay with me, thought Mark, then
thought better of it. Mark saw several ghosts
trapped on Earth because of things they did in
their life, unlike Jim who stayed on purpose to
watch over his son. Mark felt somewhat glad
that his dead wife, Lucy, managed to get to
heaven.

He looked at the carpet where Lucy had a heart
attack.

"I love you, Lucy," said Mark to his wife in heaven.

"I love you, Mark."

END


Noah is 12 years old. He is currently homeschooled.

A MAN NAMED PEACE by Noah S. R.de Luzuriaga

A Man Named Peace by Noah S. R.de Luzuriaga 

 Harry was sitting in his small house, completely bored. Suddenly, his doorbell rang. He stood up and walked to the door. He opened it slightly to check who was outside. There was no one there. However, a small blue box , as blue as his eyes, lay on the floor. Harry picked it up and saw his name written on the blue cardboard. He shook it a bit, and heard nothing inside. He opened the cover and saw a little folded note. He unfolded it. It said, Move left now. Although suspicious of the note, Harry did that. Instantly, a big metal thing, that looked like a gigantic bullet, crashed through his roof and landed to his right. Oh my God, that thing would have hit me, he thought. A few seconds after that, Harry decided to investigate. The metal thing had a greenish color, unlike any metal he had ever seen. Harry then heard a ticking noise. He recognized the sound somewhere, but he couldn't remember exactly. At that moment, he recalled where he heard the ticking: in action movies, seconds before a terrorist bomb exploded. Harry ran out of the house as fast as he could. In about thirty seconds, an explosion tore apart his house along with other houses on his street. Harry barely had time to grasp all this when hundreds of completely circular spaceships appeared. Most of them went off in other directions, but two landed near the smoldering remains of his house. Two big robots went out of both ships. They stood near Harry's burning house, staring at it. Harry was then grabbed by a large, cold hand and felt a needle poke his neck. He did not have time to feel anything before darkness swallowed him. Harry woke up inside a round room. There was another one of those robot-thingies in front of him. While the torso, arms and legs looked like Terminator robot parts, the head was just a big dome filled with glowing green light. Harry prepared to fight or flee, when the thing emitted a strange sound. It wasn't like anything Harry expected it to say. It was like the sound you get when you move around microphones too fast. The strange sound stopped, and the robot reached inside a table ( that was floating, much to Harry's amazement ) and took out a syringe. It wasn't like anything humans used. It was more mechanized and electronic. Suddenly, the robot grabbed Harry's shoulder, spun him around, and stabbed the back of his head. This time, Harry felt the pain. “What is it with you and needles!?” asked Harry angrily. “Can you hear me now, Harry Ripley?” asked the robot. “Wait, you can talk normally?” asked Harry. “I injected a translator into your brain. My species' language is now automatically translated into your language,” said the robot. “What are you?” “We are the Fleshless Ones. I am not sure what your brain is telling you right now, but our kind is named because of our non-organic bodies that house our souls.” “Souls?” “Yes, souls. My kind has learned that all organisms are connected through a substance called a soul. They contain every bit of information about that organism. What it is, what it does, its past, its present and, most importantly, its future.” Harry tried to take this all in. He then asked something. “Why am I here?” “Because the human race needs you.” Harry was confused. Harry suddenly thought of the movie, Terminator, again. “I don't get it. Why did you try to kill me?” “I was not the one who tried to kill you. I was the one who sent you the message.” “Why did you save me then? And what am I doing here?” “Because my kind saw your soul and we saw that you would lead a resistance against my kind in the near future.” “Wait, if that's a bad thing for you guys, why are you trying to help me?”. “I and others like me did not want this war. Our world's leader, the Queen, said that we had no choice. We stripped our planet of its resources and we needed more. Your planet seemed to be an excellent choice. However, we needed to eliminate the human race first. The thought of committing genocide is unacceptable to me... to my soul.” “Why did you read my soul? What did you do, check every single human soul on this planet?” “No, we saw this fact in the future of your commander-in-chief, Barack Obama. He said that the fate of humanity was in your hands. Our ruthless Queen then searched for your soul and saw you as the resistance leader.” Harry was amazed that he knew the president. “How come this Queen didn't see you help me in the future?” “I managed to sabotage the machine that could read souls. That way, the Queen can't see what you or I will do.” “A machine? You need a machine to read souls?” “Yes. It is a gigantic supercomputer, capable of tapping into the soul web on a universe-wide scale. We call it the Soul Data Viewer.” Harry took a deep breath and tried to make sense of it all. “What's your name?” asked Harry “Name?” “Yeah, what are you called?” He paused for a moment. “Call me...Peace”. “Alright, err, Peace, what happens now?” “We fight, of course.” Peace gathered some of his friends and they formulated a plan. They received news that a new machine that could read souls was going to be built. Once again, Peace had to sabotage it. He also told Harry to help. “This mission will provide you with valuable experience in the future.” he said to Harry. The mission seemed simple at first. One friend of Peace would cause a diversion, while Peace and Harry would infiltrate the oval facility containing the soul reader. The first part went off without a hitch. Many patrolling guards left to investigate the diversionary explosion several streets away. Harry and Peace entered the circular facility and used bombs that were capable of short circuiting the robot bodies to knock out the guards. Freedom collected a map off one guard's internal database. “The machine is underground. We will have to go there and use this bomb.” Peace took out a bomb that looked like a square. After traveling through several corridors, the strike team went into an elevator that sent them underground. Upon opening the door, they saw a huge machine in the center of the gigantic room. They stepped forward but instantly, a bomb flew that exploded just like the bombs they themselves used earlier. Every one except Harry fell to the ground, stunned. A sleeker, thinner Fleshless One surrounded by a heavily armed Fleshless squad appeared. “You must be the supposed leader of the human race. You are just as pitiable as I imagined,” said the person Harry presumed to be the Queen of the Fleshless Ones. That is so cliché, thought Harry. He quickly grabbed the cube bomb and rushed to the machine. The bodyguards fired at him and one shot him in the leg. Bleeding and hurt, Harry knew that he could not get away. At first he thought of giving up, when he suddenly had a vision of the human race extinct and the Earth stripped of resources. I can't let that happen, he thought. Even if I die, as long as this machine goes with me, the human race will still have a chance. He quickly twisted the bomb, as if it was a Rubik's cube, and threw it at the machine. “No! You'll-” The queen did not have a chance to complete her sentence. The bomb was not in fact a fiery explosion but more of a concussive blast, which was strong enough to rip the soul reader into unrecognizable shreds of metal. It also threw Harry back into the elevator so hard that he heard several of his bones break and he saw his blood flow. With the last of his strength, Harry pressed the “up” button of the elevator. Darkness swallowed him again. He woke up inside Peace's ship, bruised but alive. “If you're wondering why you're alive, my friends rescued you.” Harry turned to face Peace, who seemed fine. “They managed to extract both of us from the ruins. One of them managed to heal you, but I am not so lucky.” “But you're alive.” “Not for long. During the explosion my suit got damaged.” said Peace. “What does that mean?” “My race has no physical organic body. Without these suits, we would be nothing but pure souls. Also, without these suits we would dissipate and die. I don't want to die slowly. My choice is to remove my suit now.” “Isn't there any way to save you?” asked Harry who was becoming quite distraught at what he was hearing. “I'm afraid not. However, I know you won't give up, no matter what our leader throws at you. Goodbye, Harry.” Peace then pressed a series of buttons around his robotic neck. A hiss was heard as oxygen entered the dome head. The glowing substance that was Peace's soul drifted outside the dome and started to die out. Suddenly, Harry stood up and repressed the buttons, causing Peace's soul to drift back inside. “What are you doing!?” asked Peace as he went back into his body. “You need an organic body to survive right? Is it possible for you to enter my body?” Peace looked at Harry's blue eyes. “It is possible, yes. But we'd have to share your body.” “ I can live with that.” Peace then opened his dome again and his green colored soul entered Harry's body. For the third time in a row, Harry fainted. He woke up to Peace talking to him. “Are you okay?” asked Peace, who was inside Harry. “Never better,” replied Harry. “What do we do know?” asked Peace. Harry said, “We fight, of course.”

HENRY CROSS by Noah S. R.de Luzuriaga

Henry Cross by Noah S. R. De Luzuriaga 

 I walked down the road with my best friend Jake. It's two in the afternoon and we had a great time at soccer practice. All of a sudden, the image of detergent and soap flashed in my mind. My Mom told me a few hours earlier to head to a little grocery store to pick them up. “I just remembered, I've gotta get some stuff for my Mom,” I told Jake. “No problem, man. I'll see you tomorrow.” Jake walked home until I couldn't see him. I walked the other way, back in the direction of the soccer field. The store was only a few blocks from there. 15 minutes later, I arrived. After walking in I flashed my hand and felt the familiar surge of energy. The energy flew to a nearby light bulb. “Hello, welcome to the store. Buy something, please,” said the light bulb to me in my head. “I will,” I replied to the light bulb. Now, you're probably wondering what's going on. Well, you see, I can make objects come alive. Not “Toy Story” style, exactly, but I can make objects talk and think. They already are alive, the thing is, they can't talk or do anything. Not unless I switch them on. I found out about my little gift when I was five. The first thing I animated was a small piece of brick. It told me about how inanimate objects have minds, and that there were others like me in the past. Before he could tell me more, however, I accidentally knocked him into the sewers. I never saw him again. Anyway, I learned more and more about my power as the years passed, and I even made friends with the things in my bedroom. Okay, so now that I told you that story, I'm gonna tell you this one. I walked to the aisle for cleaning agents. All of a sudden, two guys wearing hockey masks went in and pointed a gun at the cashier. “Look, here's what's gonna happen. You give us the money or we shoot your head off.” said the robber with the gun. The cashier was shaking in panic. He quickly got the money and gave it to the robber. Meanwhile, I hid behind a shelf where the robbers couldn't see me. I lifted my hand and animated the cashier's desk. The lead robber leaned on the table using one gloved hand. “Hurt the guy's hand,” I said to the desk in my mind. “Can do,” said the desk. In less than two seconds, the piece of the desk that the robber's hand was resting on collapsed, leaving a hole full of dozens of unusually straight splinters. Each splinter managed to prick the man's hand. “Aaaaaaaaah!” he screamed in pain. I always liked how objects could collapse at will. He dropped the gun and that's when I saw the cashier press something, probably the silent alarm. I tried to sneak my way past the robbers, but the other one ( the one who didn't have a bleeding hand ) saw me. “There's a kid here!” I turned around and saw a fan that was switched off. I animated it. “On my mark, turn on,” I told the fan using my thoughts. The robber who saw me began to chase me. I ran to the fan. The robber was overweight so he wasn't fast. I slowed down so he could keep up. In a few seconds, I reached the fan with the robber close behind me. He reached his hands out to grab me. “Now!” I told the fan. Immediately, it turned on with surprising speed. I ducked down and the robber missed me. Instead of grabbing me, the man's fingers accidentally reached into the fan. “Owieowieowieowie!” said the man. In the distance, I heard a police siren getting closer. “Let's get out of here, Mark!” said the splintered robber to his friend. Both of them ran to their car, which was parked a couple yards away from the store. I animated their car, and I learned that it was a stolen vehicle. “It's payback time!” said the car to no one in particular. Instead of driving away, the car instead drove backwards and forwards over and over. After that, I saw it drive down the road fast, stop a bit, and then spin around in a circle over and over again. I could have sworn there was some puke on the windshield. The car wasn't done yet. It turned around and drove directly into a lamppost. The two robbers flew out the windshield and onto the sidewalk. I turned and saw a cop run to the wreckage. The cashier ran out and began explaining the situation in a ridiculously high voice. He looked like he was about to cry. “Thanks, guys,” I said to all my new animated friends as I walked out the store. “Your welcome,” they all said together. I was about to go home when I remembered the detergent and soap. I walked to the cleaning agents aisle and got the groceries. I left a couple of dollars on the splintery desk and I walked home. I only walked a few blocks when I kicked something red in the street. “Hey, watch it Henry! You kicked me once, you won't do it again!” “Brick, is that you?” “Yes, it's me Henry. You've grown taller. Bring me with you. Have I got a story to tell you.” I picked up my old friend and walked home, while he ranted about some adventure he had in the sewers.