My name is Tnarkiv, and I was forced to write this.

I bet you have a lot of questions. Was this a hostage situation, Tnarkiv? Were you kidnapped, Tnarkiv? Were you marooned on an alien planet littered with talking slimy caterpillars, Tnarkiv?

No. Reality is far, far worse. This story is… a school assignment.

All of us hate being forced to write. Yet, through the barbaric scheme passed down the generations known as school, we must pen the monotonous humdrum with the additional challenge of not slumbering while doing so. And after all of that, teachers are so bold as to judge and grade it! 

Oh, but I have discovered a method to bypass the path of dread! Why walk on the oft-trodden trails of mediocrity when you can blaze your own with a homemade flamethrower? (Geez, I wish I had a real flamethrower.) Today, I shall set out on a quest of uniqueness, and do something not for the feeble of mind! I shall… get out of writing this.

Critics and skeptics will say it cannot be done. Ex-criminals will meekly nod their heads in agreement, waving their detention slips and repulsive report cards with shame. Teachers and other members of authority will bully, threaten and browbeat you into submission. But remember: there is always a way out for those clever enough to find it.

I, Tnarkiv Arahirah, hereby forswear that if there is a way, I shall find it and reveal it for all to exploit.

Immediately I set out on my sacred crusade. I visited my local maximum-security prison and went down to the 504th floor, also known as the final floor of the prison, one reserved for the most diabolical of bastards. Most on this floor were due to be executed the next day. If you are reading this, they are already dead. This was a rare opportunity to earn sought wisdom before it was lost to time. 

The first criminal I interviewed was a plagiarist. He offered me advice: the simplest way to escape an assignment was to steal it off of an obscure website.

He said, “Dude, it always works, dude. Like trust me bro, it always works, man. Try it, bro. Bro, it’s awesome, dude.” I asked him how he got caught if his method was so exemplary. The poor chap flipped me off and clammed up after that. I checked plagiarism off my list. 

The next criminal I interviewed was a high schooler who dropped out. 

He said, and again, I quote: “Dude, dropping out is awesome, bro, I dropped out ‘cause the stuff were so hard, and it were so hard, like, bro, I couldn’t do it, and then, bro, dude, the smart kid, like, stopped giving me answers, bro, then I like, failed, yeah, so I dropped out, it’s been fun, bro, you should do it too, bro.”

Trying not to vomit on the cold metal at his immaculate vocabulary, I asked him a follow-up question. “How has life been after you dropped out?” 

After I asked that, I looked down at my sheet of paper, which said that he was arrested for eight counts of drug possession, four counts of drunk driving and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. That was enough for me to make an educated guess that life wasn’t treating him so well, and I skipped along to the next cell. 

“So, what are you in for?” I asked him. 

“Second-degree murder…” he replied with a casual smile. 

I gulped. This was one of the prisoners who weren’t in here for a school-related offence. Maybe I should get out of here…

“...of a pregnant woman!” he finished with the same smile.

I rushed past that cell.

The next inmate offered me his method of escape, and even by my standards, it was a stroke of genius. In the knowledge that my research was complete, I left the prison before the guards found out that I snuck in. 

The very next day, I realized my dream. Do you remember my dramatic speech about blazing my own trail with a homemade flamethrower? Well, the idea fell flat on its face and I might have burned down my garage while trying. Hope was not lost, and I took to Amazon to buy my very own flamethrower. 

Soon, I discovered a large brown box on my doorstep. I knew that the order had arrived. After hastily testing it out on an old lady with a pram, I headed to my final destination: the school.

The drab tan paint was peeling off, various letters of the sign had fallen off and the entire building reeked of rotten eggs. It was no matter. The building and its daytime inhabitants would soon be put out of their mercy.

The principal met me at the door. “Hi, Sparky, what have you got there?”

I resisted the urge to torch her then and there. “My name is not Sparky, it is Tnarkiv.” I replied stiffly. “And this is a flamethrower. I’m using it to, um, make s’mores.”

Her gaze hardened. “That is a weapon, Tucker. Hand it over to me and I’ll return it to you after school.”

Thanks to my reflexes, I dodged her attempt to grab my flamethrower. “Back, vile beast! You shall not have this flamethrower! It was a present from my grandma before she died!”

The principal had an advantage of height and strength, and before long she snatched it out of my hand and stalked off snobbily. As I slumped down on the ground to weep and throw a tantrum in the hope a passing adult would take pity on me, I had an idea.

The only way to achieve my dream and skip out on the assignment was… time travel. 

I went home and ordered my trusty $399.99 Easy Time Travel Kit, As Seen On TV from Wish.com - and now all we do is wait. I waited four more days until it finally arrived. I set out assembling it when...

A portal opened.

“Who are you, and why are you so handsome?” I asked the apparition as it stepped out.

“I’m you,” said it, “one day into the future. Tnarkiv… it cannot be done.”

I regarded me, flabbergasted. “Traitor!” I yelled at me. “I will accomplish it! I forsweared, if that’s a word!”

“Yes. I remember saying that to me, twenty-four hours ago. You’ll see, Tnarkiv. Your genius would be better spent on cat memes. I am sorry.” With that, me vanished back through the portal from whence he had come. I threw my screwdriver at me. The portal vanished and the screwdriver dented the garage wall. 

Four hours later, just before bedtime, I finished assembling my time machine. “That old buffoon,” I thought, before realizing I was insulting himself. “I will show me that it can be done, and it will.”

I got into the cardboard time machine and yelled the magic word, which, for copyright reasons, will be ‘Shawam!’.

“Shawam!” I yelled. After a few moments, I peered out from underneath a box to see… a forest. And dinosaurs. 

“Dinosaurs! Something must have jammed the knob to send me back this far…” I thought. Carefully, so as not to be noticed by lurking predators, I slipped out from underneath the box.

“The wires are smoking!” I thought, furiously pressing the Command button. 

“COH-MANND ACK-TEE-VAE-TUD!” droned the monotone robot voice. “PLEEZ UH-LOW MEE TWUH SURRRVE EUH, SURRR.”

Unbeknownst to me at the time, the Helpfulosaurus (the origin of its name is a very interesting story) leered over the cardboard time machine curiously. I only noticed when a car-sized drop of drool splashed on my figure. It was then I came to the revelation that dino drool literally stinks. 

However, I was not to be foiled by a mere 100-foot gargantuan prehistoric predator. I bravely spun around to face my challenger, then promptly fainted.

(I know, I know, how very embarrassing. But I believe that most humans in my situation would’ve done exactly the same.)

I woke up later on to find a fully repaired cardboard time machine as well as a note: “Fixed time machine. Your welcome, human. Warm Regards, The Dinosaur Who Made You Faint.”

Despite noting immediately that the dinosaur had used ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’, I believe the dinosaur warranted some form of thank-you for his trouble. And so I decided to immortalize my newfound species of dinosaur as the Helpfulosaurus. You’re welcome, Helpfulosaurus.

When I came back home, I found that my unexpected adventure had caused a ripple effect, namely a phenomenon where time travelling to the past causes change in the future. After three years of searching, analyzing and chatting with Helpfulosauri, I found my answer. I shall detail it to you in a way that ordinary, pathetic humans can comprehend.

The Helpfulosaurus, while helping me, kicked a small pebble. That very pebble got moved around by many minuscule parasites until, at the time of the dinosaur extinction, it was around my place of living, Burlington. I worked out that an extinct invertebrate took futile shelter behind this rock, and their corpse was embedded inside the pebble. Millions of years later, sometime in the 17th century, that rock was found at the beach by an ordinary child who showed it to their parents, one of whom must have been a teacher. The teacher must have recognized it as something special, and been in a good mood while going to the school they taught at. At the school, they created the world’s first student-written creative writing assignment thirty-four years early. Coincidentally, it was the same person who created the world’s first act of vandalism seventy-nine years early. It was thirty-four years too early for the world to appreciate student-written creative writing. After many decades of important people lobbying for and against it, the government voted to ban creative writing. The ban wasn’t lifted until 1969, the birth year of my English teacher. Because of this, her parents subconsciously associated their baby with creative writing. In other words, she was destined to become an English teacher. One day, my English teacher’s house was egged by some ‘good-for-nothing teenager’ (that was me, trying to tie up the loose ends of my time travel knot) and a colleague revealed to her that the first true English teacher was also the world’s first vandal. In a bad mood that day, she set the deadline of that assignment three days early - so the jig is up and I am out of time.

To those who didn’t have the mental fortitude to read an enormous paragraph about the fascinating ramifications of my adventure, I’ll give you the gist of it: ripple effect, teenage vandals, teacher sad, deadline early. 

I am all out of time. I have no choice but to resign. Forgive me, dear reader. I must give in. I am Tnarkiv, and I was forced to write this.