Cat's Mind Muser - AWESOMENESS OVERLOAD (maybe)

Tris

“Back inside, the others have picked their beds and put their things down. It’s just us in here, no intruders. I lean against the wall by the door and push my palms down the front of my pants to get the sweat off.”

I look to the side of the beds and see a piece of paper taped to the wall. The note says:

Tomorrow there will be private tours for all the new-comers that feel up to it. Tours will start at 9:00 sharp. Every room will have a tour guide, waiting for anyone to come. At nine tours will start, and tour guides are told to not restart.

After a good night’s sleep, I decide to accept the tour to learn more about outside the fence. We all go on private tours, which makes me nervous thinking that I won’t be able to stay with Tobias, but it doesn’t matter. Just in case, I bring my knife.

We are all led to different rooms, and apparently we are going on like a stations-like procedure. I am led into a classroom, but the only person is a young girl, about 12, and she looks up at me with her bright eyes and gives me a warm smile.

“Hello,” she says. “I’m Catherine. You are Beatrice, right?” I’m about to correct her, but she does that herself.

“Oh, yes. Tris. I’m sorry, I forgot!” I smile. She is so polite, but seems scared of me. That’s when I realize I still had my knife. Carefully, without trying to scare her, I place the knife on the table. Immediately she takes it and puts it in one of the drawers farthest from me. She’s smart, and I would have done the same if the roles were switched, I guess.

“Let’s start the tour now, shall we?” she says.

“Catherine! I was supposed to do the tour, not you!” David walks into the room, scolding Catherine.

“Aw, I was just about to start!” she whines, pouting.

“Catherine, your classes are about to start,” David says, frowning. Catherine walks away without a word, obviously trying to conceal her disappointment.

Red and bolded is taken from the story, Blue is from me, Black is not part of the story.

Amanda FANTASTICAL Mind Muser on Hollow City By: Ransom Riggs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mind Muser

* The parts in bold are taken directly from the book

If anyone was watching as the eight-thirty train made it's way into the station with a hiss, they wouldn't have seen anything odd about it. Not the conductors, or the drivers or the passengers, or the train itself. If they gave the people on the train a bit more attention, perhaps they may have noticed something peculiar about them, but no one did. No one gave a second thought to the children who stepped off the first-class car and onto the platform, with no parents following behind them, thought the oldest of the group looked like he was only sixteen or seventeen.

On an ordinary day, any children as lost and forlorn looking as these would've been approached by some kindly adult and asked what the matter was, or whether they needed help, or where there parents were. But today the platform teemed with hundreds of children, all of whom looked lost and forlorn. So no one paid much attention to the little girl with tumbling brown hair and button shoes, or the fact that her shoes did not quite touch the floor. No one noticed the moon-faced boy in the flat cap, or the honeybee that drifted from his mouth, tested the sooty air, then dove back to whence it came.

No one's gaze lingered on the boy with dark-ringed eyes, or saw the clay man who peeked from his shirt pocket only to be pushed down again by the boy's finger. Likewise the boy who was dressed in a muddy but finely tailored suit and stove-in top hat, his face drawn and haggard from lack of sleep, for he hadn't allowed himself in days, so afraid was he of the dreams.

No one glanced at the girl in the big coat and simple dress, who was built like a stack of bricks and lashed to her back a steamer trunk nearly as large as herself. None who saw her could have guessed how stupendously heavy the trunk was, or why a screen of tiny holes had been punched into one side. Overlooked completely was the young man next to her, so wrapped in scarves and a hooded coat that not an inch of his bare skin could been seen, though it was early September and the weather still warm.

None noticed the girl, the one with the red rain-boots, whose skin glimmered green like it was covered in tiny fishes scales. No one noticed the way she swiftly dodged the puddles and water fountains dotting the platform. The way that, though it wasn't raining, she carefully covered herself with a bright yellow raincoat and the way her eyes shone with fear beneath her thick glasses every time she came close to the snack bar.

Then there was the American boy, so ordinary looking he hardly merited notice; so apparently normal that people's eyes skipped over him - even as he studied them, on tiptoe, neck swiveling, his gaze sweeping across the platform like as sentry's. The girl by his side stood with her hands clasped together, concealing a tendril of flame the curled stubbornly around the tendril of her pinky, which happened sometimes when she was upset. She tried shaking her finger as one might to extinguish a match, then blowing on it. When that didn't work, she slipped it into her mouth and let a puff of smoke coil from her nose. No one saw that, either.

In fact, no one looked closely enough at the children from the first-class car of the eight-thirty train to notice anything peculiar about them at all. Which was just as well.

Mind Muser By: Mackenzie READ IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS AN ODDNESS WARNING. YOU MIGHT EXPLODE BECAUSE THIS IS SO ODD!

(Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, started on p. 49)

“I’m hungry.”  He said it aloud. In normal tones at first, then getting louder and louder until he was yelling it.  “I’m hungry, I’m hungry, I’m hungry.”

When he stopped there was a sudden silence, not just from him but the clicks and blurps and bird sounds of the forest as well.  (This is where I started writing.)  “Aren't we all?”  a voice answered from the forest. Brian quickly grabbed his hatchet.  “Put down the weapon, I mean you no harm.”

A young girl stepped out of the forest, and onto the sand.  From the looks of her, she had been here much longer than he had.  Her long hair was tangled and uneven, and her unkempt appearance was really quite frightening.  The only thing not tattered was a small bag hanging from her shoulder.  Brian took a step back, with the hatchet in hand.

“Don’t trust me, I take it.”  She smiles, as if this was all a joke.  “If you were really hungry you would come with me.”  She turns her back to him and walks back into the forest.  Realizing she wouldn't come back, Brian follows the young girl, against all better judgement, into the forest.

After a while of walking in silence, the girl stops at a tree trunk and takes some fish out of the bag.  “Wait, the food was in your bag?” Brian asked, confused.  

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you give it to me by the lake?”

“Because there is more protection in the woods, so if you attack, I can hide.”

Brian asks no more questions, and wolfs down the fish.  After he is done, the girl leads Brian back to the lake.

“Now, I must leave.”

“But then I will be alone again,” Brian protested.

“It is for the better,” the girl replied.

The girl took off for the big rock.  Climbing quickly, she was half way up by the time Brian got over to it.  As she climbed, she dropped her bag.

“Wait!  You dropped your…” Brian started, but the girl was already gone.

He was alone again in the Canadian wilderness.

~Mackenzie

Jordan's Mind Muser: School of Fear by Gitty Daneshvari

Chapter 7.

EVERYONE'S AFRAID OF SOMETHING:

Didaskaleinophobia is the fear of

going to school.

At 9:00pm, the Farmington’s bus station was completely vacant except for Madeline, Lulu, Theo, their respective parents, Garrison and a little girl, who quietly sat 5 inches away from Garrison on his pew.

“You like sports?” The little girl piped up, staring at the baseball cards in his hands. “Yes, in fact, I do! I play many sports like baseball, soccer and many others.” Garrison said, puffing out his chest.

“Do you even play swimming sports? How I just, love, LOVE swimming. It’s the best thing ever. Like one time Kiki got to close and Franny pushed her right in so hilarious, right?” Garrison grew more and more petrified by the minute.

“Did you know 16 kids under the age of 5 died in swimming pools in 2003?” Theo said. Lulu just rolled her eyes and sighed. “Lucy, don’t act so rude.” Mrs. Punchalower said trying to uphold the family reputation in the most regal way possible.

“But I’m not, mom.”

“What did I tell you about calling me that?”

“I said I’m sorry Mother.” Lulu turned away and silently mimicked her mother with a silly face that Madeline had to put a hand over her mouth to keep her from snorting.

Poor Garrison was petrified on the ground and the little girl just kept droning on, making it worse. “Then, Justine just saw the hugest, most ghastly, wasp-.” the girl was cut short by Madeline.

“I’m sorry, but did you say wasp? I must’ve misheard you.” she said in the most casual face she could summon up and spraying a nearby bug with bug spray. “Oh no need! You heard me quite well! Like I said, it was huge and had the stinger the size of a-”

“I have no regret to inform you, that I wish to refrain from the subject of crawlies or bugs or anything of the sort.”

“Why?”

“You would find it most accurate that I have an abnormal fear of them.”

“Oh I would guess so!” the girl said nodding her head in a fast motion. “That why you’re here! To go to the-” she was about to finish, but then had a small conversation in her mind if it was ok to go on. Madeline and Lulu raised an eyebrow at each other and turned to look back at the strange girl. The little girl then leaned over and whispered.

“School of Fear.”

 

  

Sentence Imitation

Rain-drenched, fresh, vital, full of life, spring
enveloped all of us.

( Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor)

Katherine's Mind Muser (Yesterday's Dead by Pat Bourke)

    I was up and eating breakfast when Meredith came down from sleeping. A little late, in my opinion.
   "So, how long have you been here?" Meredith asked.
   "A few years," I reply.
   "You're new girl, right?"
   "Yes."
   "Why did you come to work?" I inquired.
   "Well, Mama and Ellen are at home in Port Stuart. My father left, and joined the army. He didn't survive."
   "Oh, I am so sorry," I said sympathetically.
   "It's okay, I guess. We need more money, and then this opportunity came, so, here I am."
   "My family is also in need of money. My dad is in the war, too. He's injured. My mother is greatly sad and worried about him, and so isn't in the right mindset to be working. I am the oldest, so I thought it should be me who was working," I explained.
   "I'm a little worried about the Spanish Flu," said Meredith.
   "Yeah," I said.
   "It is scary to think that so many are getting sick. I just hope it doesn't spread to around here, or by home. I couldn't bear having anything happen to my family."
   “I would be absolutely devastated if it hurt my mother or sister. They are my family. What would I do without them?” questioned Meredith.
   At that moment, Parker came into the kitchen.
   “You girls weren't hired to sit and have a nice chat. Now get to work. The doctor and children are expecting their breakfast.”
  And with that, Meredith and I cleared away our few dishes and got up to help prepare the food with Mrs. Butters.

Just so you know, this isn't taken directly from my book. I just used the characters in a possible scene.

Sentence Imitation

“The first thing I learned that day was this: what you think you know about a person is only a fraction of the story.” ― Gavin Extence, The Universe Versus Alex Woods



Practice modelling the above sentence.  Pick your favourite and post.