Four Square is filled with kids arguing and slapping the huge ball toward unready opponents.

          When the whistle or bell rings, signaling the ending of recess, I get a real bad feeling which is the worse feeling you get that day.

          I feel dismay and then anger. I always shout “Why can’t recess be any longer?” Then I start racing to the line in front of our classroom to try to have the most fun before going into class.

          When we enter the class, red faces and sweating bodies are everywhere. People race to the water fountain to get a refreshing drink. When we settle down, a chorus of sighs ring out from the class as we wait for the teacher to start.

Today Mr. Leahy, our teacher, started to explain a new project. He wanted to demonstrate how to cut straight with fancy scissors. When he started cutting, suddenly the scissors shot forward and ripped the paper in half. He stared at the paper, and then at the scissors.

          Slowly, the scissors started jerking in the air, as if they were waking up from a long sleep. We knew by now that Mr. Leahy would never do that on purpose. A moment later, the scissors jerked at his arm so hard that they flew out of his hand and landed on the desk in front of him.

          The girl sitting close by screamed and jumped up. Suddenly the scissors jumped onto another desk and it bit a student’s finger. The boy in the chair yowled and looked at his cut finger, breathing nervously.

          Then, he quickly got up and backed away. Now the scissors were more active and started jumping all over the desk. The class gathered a safe distance away.

          They finally settled down on a particularly unorganized desk to chomp away at a huge pile of papers. We stared at it for a few seconds.

“What will we do?” Whispered some of the students that had not been paralyzed by astonishment.

          Mr. Leahy simply stared with his mouth gaping open as if he was trying to say something. He finally recovered, and said “I... I don’t know what to do.”

          So I started circling around desks to get closer to the scissors. While I was passing by a table, I dumped out some crayons out of a basket and I held the basket in my hands tightly. When I was as close to the scissors as I could be, I held the basket upside down over them, I aimed carefully, and then I slammed it down.

The scissors screamed and jumped around in its cage. The basket shook slightly, but I put my hand over it and some encyclopedias. The class sighed as if a great tension had been released.

          We sat at our desk and read because it was D. E. A. R. (30 minutes where we could only read) time. About five minutes later, we heard paper crunching in the corner of the classroom. My peers looked up from their book and looked surprised at the corner. The girl closest to the corner, Cassidy, turned around to look. When she did, she screamed and ran to the other side of her desk. When the boy that was sitting beside her looked, he was so astonished, his jaw fell open, and he made a muffled squeak. He also backed away to the other side of the desk.

          Now the whole class was not interested in reading their books anymore. They crowded around the corner, and when they saw what was happening there, the boys gasped, and the girls squealed. Right there, in front of us, there were five fancy scissors, chomping up the new history books.

          The scissors seemed to ignore us, until Ryan, another student, threw an eraser at the closest scissor to him. The scissor turned around, faced Ryan, and hissed. Ryan’s face turned from triumph to horror.

          For a moment, the scissor seemed to shrink, and then it suddenly shot up into the air like an arrow, and landed on Ryan’s sweat shirt. Chattering madly, it started to tear it apart. A few moments later, there were pieces of fabric everywhere, and Ryan was screaming and yelling.

          The other scissors stopped to look at Ryan and he finally managed to get it off of his torn shirt. Then the scissor started to jump triumphantly in the midst of the other scissors. They chattered at their partner in a way which sounded like applause.

          All the scissors started munching and chomping away at the History books again. Ryan looked hurt and had a few swollen fingers. He walked away to the corner of the group.

          We turned around at the sound of more chattering. The scissor I had trapped under the basket had chewed a hole, and it had escaped! It sprang menacingly at the class, and then it started to chew on a Harry Potter book on my desk. We stood there for a long moment. Half the class was looking at the scissor chewing on the Harry Potter book, and the other half was looking at the others chewing on the History books.

          “Class, come over here to see what we can do.” said Mr. Leahy.  All students in the classroom tiptoed to the other side of the classroom, and started brainstorming.

          Most of the boys thought that we should smash the scissors, but we found out that it didn’t work with the material we had because they were made out of metal. Most of the girls thought that we should make peace with them. The rest of the kids thought that we should tie them up and take them away somewhere. Tying them didn’t work because they could cut the string, or anything, in two.

          So we had to go with making peace. But right when we were going to offer peace, we heard a scream from the next classroom. The class crowded by the window which separated the classes.

          We could only stare in horror. There were scissors crawling over everything. Everyone could see that they were hungry. All the papers and books were being eaten by more and more scissors.

          So many of the scissors were eating the paper, that soon there was no more paper left, so some started to eat the paint right off the walls! The last few people that were running out of the room had scissors jumping up on to their legs and feet. They were yelling and tripping as they ran out.

          The class caught up to meet them and they gracefully sat down on the pod chairs. Many of the students were crying. More people were coming out of the other classes. We looked into the other classes, and the number of scissors in each class was rapidly increasing. Sudden screams came all around as unlucky students got bitten.

          The clacking of the scissors' blades was deafening. Now the whole population of fifth grade was standing in the pod. Some of the braver students were looking in at the class rooms, while the not-so-brave were standing behind the computers.

          Mr. Leahy called over the whole fifth grade. “We need to find a way to get rid of them.” He said and all the students sat down either on the ground or on the chairs.

          After a while, the smarter kids thought that maybe we could trap them in a hole in the ground. It was to be in the field behind the school. When they were ready, we ran out of the pod and through another door to get outside. We did not use the door in our classroom because it was blocked by scissors. On the way out, we got some shovels from the janitor’s closet.

          When we were outside, about one third of the fifth grade started to dig. The hole was five feet deep, and five feet wide. After we had dug the hole, we went back inside to somehow get all the scissors into the pit. It was getting humid outside. We were beginning to feel drops of rain, but very little.

          In the class, we carefully took a few dictionaries off the shelf that were too high for the scissors, and they immediately started chasing after them. When we got the dictionary outside, though, all the scissors stopped at the door, except for one. It jumped out before it could stop itself. It landed on the ground, and of course, drops of rain landed on it.

          “Screeeaaaccchh!” It screamed when the drops landed on it. One of the drops had landed on the scissor’s fulcrum. The metal rusted as if someone had put it in water for a few weeks. Now the scissor was paralyzed. As more drops landed on it, it quickly became a rusted scissor.

          We all stared in amazement at the answer to our problem. Water was their weakness! Immediately, some of the students started making a fire so that the fire-sprinklers would come on. A fire was quickly burning. It blazed higher... and higher...

          We gazed expectantly at the fire-sprinklers. I wondered how they could take so long to turn on with a fire so big and so much smoke.

          The fire-sprinklers finally came on. It startled everyone, because the fire alarm came on with it. Some people screamed.

          A great burning sound was heard as the water rusted the scissors. There was a deafening screech by all of them and then there was silence. The water stopped and little streams of water were flowing out the door. The streams were a red, rusted color, which I thought was because of the scissors.

          The fifth grade was all drenched. Nothing was dry. We all gathered in the pod, and we talked about what we had seen and after that, we all went home. The next day, everything was back to normal (except there were no scissors), but we were all still a little jumpy. Each time we heard a clack of anything we would think it was a scissor. Gradually we started getting more confidence and life went back to how it used to be.

THE END