Willakaville

by Mathew Heinecke

  Charley frowned and lowered his head and in a sad voice, “It will take us all day to get there. It’s too far. We’ll be too late.”

  “Well,” said Billy. “We can call him and warn him.”

  They ran back to Charley’s house. Nobody was home. Charley figured his mother must have gone either to the store or to his dad’s shop to help. Charley quickly picked up the phone and called his father’s shop…no one answered. He tried again…still no answer. Next, he decided to call is mother. She did answer.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Mom!” replied Charley.

  “Charley? Is that you? What is the matter? Why aren’t you in class?”

  “Mom, you have to stop people from eating those sandwiches. The mayonnaise can have a bad effect on people.”

  “But, your father and I feel fine and no one has complained. Why are you so worried?”

  “Mom, Billy’s parents ate some two days ago. Now they are acting like a chicken and a cat. The mayonnaise does something weird to your brain.”

  “Charley, if this is some kind of joke…”

  “It’s not mom! I swear!”

  “Ok Charley. I am starting to get worried. Look, I’m too busy right now for this. You need to get back to class. We can discuss this tonight when you get home.” Then she hung up the phone.

  Charley tried calling her back, but she had turned her phone off. “She didn’t believe me,” said Charley to Billy. “What do we do now?”

  Billy didn’t have an answer. He just threw his hands up in the air and shrugged in desperation.

  The two of them spent the rest of the day thinking about how they could fix the situation. They had no idea what to do. Just about when they were going to give up, an idea came to Charley’s mind. He decided that they should go to the police and tell them what happened.

  The police station was a few miles away and they got there about four o’clock in the afternoon. When they arrived, all of the police were running around like crazy. Phones were ringing, police were yelling, and no one noticed the boys. They overheard one police on the phone. “What?” he yelled. “He is making gorilla noises? He is pounding on his chest too? Ok. Hold on. What is your address?”

  Charley tried to get the attention of one of the officers running out the door. The officer explained that they had a crisis downtown and did not have time to talk. Charley asked, “Where downtown?” The officer said by the sandwich shop.

  Charley and Billy looked at each other and at the same time said, “Uh-oh.”

  They decided to step outside, away from all the chaos. As they sat down on the steps, an officer came up to them.

  He said, “What seems to be the problem young men?”

  The boys looked up. They were shocked to see how small the officer was. In fact, he was smaller than they were. As they looked at the officer with puzzled faces, he removed his hat. Then he said, “Remember me?” The boys instantly recognized him. It was the little man who gave them the mayonnaise.

  “It’s you?” exclaimed Billy. “You need to help us. Your mayonnaise has made everyone crazy.”

  The little man replied, “Of course it did. What did you expect?”

  “We expected it to be regular old mayonnaise!” shouted Charley angrily.

  “No need to worry. You just need to give them mustard and everything will be normal again,” said the man.

  “Mustard?” questioned Billy. “Why mustard?”

  “Because,” answered the man. “Everyone knows that mayonnaise always goes with mustard.”

  The boys had a million more questions when suddenly the little man gave a loud fart and disappeared again.

  “Well,” said Billy. “Let’s go get mustard.”

  They went back to Charley’s house and got some mustard. Then they went to Billy’s and managed to get a little bit on his mom and dad’s tongues. Instantly, they turned back to normal. They were completely dazed and had no memory of anything that happened. Embarrassed by how they looked, they went upstairs to clean themselves.

  Satisfied with the mustard solution, the boys decided to take it back to the police station. It took a bit of convincing, but eventually the police tried the mustard. Once they were persuaded that it worked, they were able to use it on everyone and put Willakaville back to normal.

  Everyone, except for Mrs. Stickleworth, she had gotten one of the first sandwiches. She had been trotting through town and the police still hadn’t caught her yet. She was too fast. The whole school was laughing when they saw her being chased down the school halls by the police. She was galloping through like a horse yelling, “Neeeiiiighhhh, Neeeeeiiigghh, Neeeeiiigghh!”

  You Can't Say That

  Words can be powerful things. Especially swear words. Just one little four letter word can easily start a fight. It can also cause someone a lot of pain and sadness. Why do we have these words? Why not just make them illegal? That’s what happened in Willakaville. It may not have been the best solution as you are about to find out.

  For the sake of this being a book for the young, the swear words will be replaced with (beep) to indicate the beep noise you hear on TV when they swear sometimes. Now, on to the story.

  It began with some kids watching the newest coolest video on the internet. The announcer was a young college student who thought it would be awesome to use a lot of swear words.

  The video was a mixture of people crashing in different ways. There were car crashes, boat crashes, sports crashes, etc. The announcer comments went something like this: “Holy (beep). Did you see that crazy (beep)? Those (beep) are really (beep). Look at this next (beep). He really is a dumb (beep)”

  Ashley was the one of the first ones to see the video and to start swearing at school. She always had to be on the cutting edge of anything new. At first, her friends were shocked. However, it only took until the end of the day until they were all swearing. Since everyone at school thought of them as the ‘cool’ girls, more kids started swearing.

  Nobody wanted to get in trouble, so they would only swear when no teachers were around. Until one time, in Mrs. Lencia’s 5th grade class, Ashley forgot. Ashley had been swearing so much that it just became habit. Mrs. Lencia asked the class, “How do you think the civil war affected our country?”

  Ashley answered without raising her hand, “It caused a lot of bad (beep) for people.” Before she knew it, Ashley was in the principal’s office.

  Since all the other kids wanted to be ‘cool’ like Ashley, they started swearing in class too. By the end of the day, twenty kids were sent to the principal’s office.

  The teachers panicked and demanded to the principal that something be done. So, the principal held a meeting with the parents, mayor and the city council. They decided to make a law against swear words. They made a list of forbidden words. All of the normal swear words were on it as well as some other words they thought were threatening. These are some of those words: hate, death, die, kill, stupid, ugly, dumb, idiot, loser, destroy, burn and for some weird reason jellybeans.

  This also meant that any movies, TV shows, books or websites containing those words were also banned. For a while, things were not so bad. People would talk politely to each other. There were less arguments, less angry moments. In general, people were calm and happy.

  But, some people could not hold it in. They would eventually get mad and say a word that was on the list. There was no tolerance for using a word on the list. The first offence was automatically one month in jail. A second offence was three months in jail. A third offense was one year in jail. After that, you would be banned from Willakaville forever.

  The same rules applied for anyone who owned, watched, listened to or read anything that contained any of the banned words. After a while, some of the younger people started smuggling in forbidden material. They would watch or read it in secret meetings behind closed doors.

  A couple of the groups were caught and interrogated. They had to name any others that were involved. Those peo
ple also went to jail. News got out about this. After that, the people of Willakaville were careful about who they talked to. Some of the people even turned into tattle tales. They told on everybody that had said a bad word or looked at forbidden material.

  Nobody wanted to be friends with anyone who had connections with the people who went to jail. This was bad, because people were scared and not going out anymore. Nobody talked, nobody met in groups, nobody played games together (they did not want to accidentally say a bad word if they made a mistake).

  Another small group of people did together and tried to get the government to change the law. They thought it was too strict. However, the government did not like this and decided to ban them from Willakaville. They put guards at all the entrances to the town. This was to make sure that people coming in did not bring in any forbidden material.

  Willakaville became a strange place where nobody trusted anybody. Nobody had fun. School was like a military camp. The children had to watch videos about the evils of bad language. They had to take a pledge that they would never say bad words every morning, before lunch and at the end of the day. It was not a very happy place to live.

  Deep inside, the people knew that the way they were living was wrong. The problem was, no one would talk about it. They were all too afraid to say anything.

  That was, until little Bella Sue decided she would make a stand.

  Bella was only eight years old. She was the smallest in her class. That did not stop her though. She always stood up for what she believed. Being smart, she had the highest scores in her class and read the most books.

  The town had their annual spring festival coming up. Since Bella was such an excellent student, she was invited to read her paper on the greatness of Willakaville. Bella had been careful to not put anything controversial in her paper when she wrote it.

  However, now that she would be speaking to whole town of Willakaville, she had a chance to influence them. Over the next week, Bella spent much of her extra time preparing her paper for the festival. She did all kinds of research collecting ideas she could use for the speech.

  When the big day came, Bella was very nervous. She was afraid that if she spoke her mind, she might never see her family again. Nevertheless, she decided that this was far too important. She did not want to live in a town where people were not free. Taking her place on stage, she pulled out a box from under the podium to stand on. Everyone was so quiet. Some geese honked as they flew overhead. They all looked up for few seconds until the geese passed.

  Bella started, “Willakaville is…” Then she paused for a moment, took a deep breath and started again “Willakaville is a place that I am proud of. I am proud of its community. I am proud of its history. And I am proud of its friendliness.” The audience clapped their hands.

  She continued, “This great town of ours has been through a lot lately. A giant tomato tried to destroy us. Mushrooms threatened to take over our land and control our minds. An evil man brought a rudeness that almost turned Willakaville into a ghost town.”

  “And recently,” she said with a voice of determination. “We have dealt with the horror of bad words.” The audience stood up and clapped. Bella clapped along with them.

  “Bad words,” she repeated. “can be harmful. They can hurt, cause anger, cause fights and even cause wars. It is no doubt that we should be happier without them. However, when I look at your faces out there in the audience, I do not see happiness. Why is that?”

  The people sat down and looked at each other confused. Bella said with a loud and strong voice, “Because you are not! We now face something more frightening than a tomoato…or an evil man. It is even more frightening than any mushroom virus.”

  People were on the edge of their seats waiting to see what she would say next. Bella’s voice now rose to the sound of thunder as she roared, “Censorship! Censorship is more evil than anything. Censorship takes away our freedom.! Censorship takes away our happiness! Censorship takes away our trust! When we are too afraid to speak our minds, we are no longer free, happy or loving.”

  At this point, the mayor stood up and motioned to the police to get her. Bella knew she did not have much time left. She started speaking faster as the police approached. “Look at us! We have turned against each other. We don’t get together with our friends to watch a funny movie. We don’t have any sporting events to look forward to. We walk around like zombies, never smiling, never laughing. Now is the time to rise up! Rise up and stop this! Today!!!”

  Then the police grabbed her and one covered her mouth. As they were taking her off the stage, someone in the audience shouted, “Wait! This is (beep)!” A couple more police started walking toward the person. Then another man stood up, “That is right! We need to stop this (beep) right now.” The rest of the police started to surround the crowd.

  Then a woman stood up and shouted, “We will not stand for this (beep). We have had enough (beep) from you (beep).” Then more and more people stood up until the entire crowd was on their feet swearing at the police and the mayor.

  The mayor came forward and motioned to the police to let Bella go. He brought her up to the podium with him. He spoke, “I hear you Willakaville. Bella is right.” Upon hearing this, the audience calmed down and listened. “I too am proud of Willakaville. However, I am ashamed at what we have become. As of now, I am suspending the banned word law until we find a better solution. Long live freedom! Long live Willakaville!”

  The whole town cheered and celebrated into the night. A few days later, the town met and decided to completely change the law. They got rid of the banned word list. They still felt like they had to do something. There had to be some kind of punishment for using bad words. So, on Bella’s advice, they decided that anyone who said something mean to someone had to invite them for a snack of their choice and apologize.

  They also made a new law. This law declared that no law could be made that took away any person’s freedom. They called it the Bella Sue Freedom Act

  Spaced Out

  Sarah lived on the outskirts of Willakaville on a small dairy farm with her father, mother, sister and brother. She would wake up early each morning and let the cows out to graze. Next, she would have to clean out the pens and fill them back up with fresh straw. After all that, she barely had enough time to eat breakfast before she had to go to school.

  At night, she would come home, help bring the cows back in, prepare their feed and clean up all before getting ready for supper. She had just enough time to eat dinner and finish her homework before going to bed. She even had to work on the weekends. Still, she was happy for the weekends. This was because she had a little bit of free time at night since she did not have homework. It was at these times she would lay outside and study the stars.

  She could see millions of stars against the thick black sky. She dreamed of one day being an astronaut and traveling through space. After looking at the stars, she would read books about the planets, galaxies and the universe. There was always a wonder inside her wanting to know if there was intelligent life outside of the earth.

  She wished she could go there, to another world. It would be great to get away from this earth and the farm. All the chores on the farm and the homework made her want it even more. She imagined herself one day escaping and being all by herself, away from anyone telling her what to do.

  One Saturday afternoon, her friend Melissa from the neighboring farm came over to play. She told Sarah about some mysterious crop circles that had been appearing in their cornfields. Sarah wondered if there was some type of alien life responsible. She told Melissa that she thought it could be some form of communication. Melissa didn’t think so. She thought it was just some kids playing a joke on them.

  Later that night, Sarah couldn’t sleep. She stared out her bedroom window looking up at the stars. Out of nowhere, she saw a bright light appear over Melissa’s farm. It made a few slow circles and then landed in the cornfield. Her dog Rusty started barking and running toward it.<
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  Sarah was so excited. A real UFO! She had visions of tall grey aliens coming to share their knowledge of the universe. Quickly, she put on some jeans and a shirt, quietly snuck out the back door and ran towards the area where the spacecraft landed. When she got there, the spacecraft had disappeared. The only thing left was a group of three large circles pressed into the ground with intersecting lines connecting them.

  In the center was her dog Rusty. He was just sitting there in a daze looking up at the sky. Sarah tried to get him to come back, but he would not move. She decided to pick him up and carry him. While touching him, she noticed he was completely stiff, like a frozen popsicle. However, he was still breathing and warm.

  Sarah carried Rusty back to her house. Just before they got to the door, Rusty became normal again. He looked up at Sarah and licked her face. She giggled and hugged him and let him down. He followed her into the house and she let him sleep in her bed. She did that sometimes, even though her dad had asked her not to.

  The next day, Sarah had a strange compulsion to build something. After her morning chores and breakfast, she went into the barn and made three triangles out of some old sheets of roofing metal. Next, she formed a cone shape out of another piece.

  She kept building and building all day long. She had no idea what she was building. It was as if something had completely possessed her. Late in the afternoon, her construction was complete. She snapped out of her daze and became baffled by what stood in front of her. It was a small rocket, complete with engines, fins, and a cabin. Inside was a seat taken from an old tractor and all kinds of buttons and wires.

  She did not know what to think about it. Afraid, she covered it with a horse blanket and went inside to wash up for dinner. She was completely exhausted and went immediately to bed after eating. While lying in her bed, she kept trying to remember what she did that day until she fell asleep.

  In the middle of the night, Sarah awoke to a strange voice. She turned on the light next to her bed and saw Rusty there. He was silently staring at her. Then he spoke, “Sarah. Don’t be afraid. I know dogs are not supposed to talk. But, I am not a normal dog. I am actually from another world. That UFO you saw last night was from my home planet. They have an important mission for you. We need to go now.”