Their tiny, purple, squishy fingers wrapped around my ankle and dragged me under before I got even a tiny screech out. In Houston we have a NASA Headquarters where we began to discuss our plan for our landing on the moon. My five fellow astronauts and I are going to be the first group to go to college on the moon. There are tons of different majors such as: Craterology, Satellite class, Moonometry, etc. Each of us has to plan out our studying schedule so that we won’t waste valuable time on the moon. My major is in Craterology because it is the least studied major, but the most interesting to me. 

“Can you fail Moon school?” I asked my lead Astronaut. He was shaking his head at me, but I don’t think he realized that it was an actual question. I cannot fail school on the moon. My family would be even more disappointed in me than they already are. I am sure that I am the only one thinking about failing school at the moment, but it is distracting me from thinking about the fact that I will be in space in T-2 hours. 

The space crew is buckling all of us into our special customized seats in the shuttle and there is something absolutely thrilling about three different seatbelts and a book bag strapped to the back of my seat with school supplies in it when the overhead speaker is counting down the seconds until we blast off into the unknown. 

“Three…Two…One, Lift off” rang through my ears as I departed from Earth. Three days go by as all six of us college Astronauts wait to land. It felt like I was going insane just sitting there, but nothing will ever compare to the feeling of walking off the shuttle and planting my feet on the craters resting below me.  I began to unload all of my school supplies onto the dusty moon beneath me when I noticed a crater in the moon that looked slightly out of the ordinary. Most craters I have studied are irregular circles and don’t have sharp edges, but this “crater” was a rectangle and had sharp and pointy edges.

 I went to yell for my team, “Hey guys, I think you shou-,” when I felt a tiny, three-fingered purple minion grab onto my ankle and whip my whole body, suit and all, into the “crater” below. The world went dark, and I can’t even tell you what happened after that because I was knocked out cold. 

The world crept back into focus, and as I started to try and stand up, the little purple minion hopped onto my chest and pointed his miniature staff at me. He yelled at the top of his lungs, which only really sounded like a whisper, for me to lay down. Almost as if the world I was seeing was a fever dream, he let me sit up and see the 100’s of squishy purple minions planted right at my feet. They all stared up at me with the biggest puppy dog eyes and asked who I was and where I was from, begging and pleading so I wouldn’t hurt them. 

As my head switched back and forth between each minion, I let out a small laugh, “Holy shit, you guys are purple, and incredibly small… yet oddly very adorable.” “WHERE AM I?” I screeched at them, all blinking at the same time in absolute bewilderment at the sight of me. 

Eventually, once the shock of finding an entire new species was gone, we began to actually get along. I figured at this point I was going absolutely insane, so I just went along with it. The minions showed me their way of life. The small shopping carts and the shoe size football fields and the suburban neighborhoods were all so utterly not, not normal. I talked to the tour guide, the one that pulled me into their home, and asked, “Why are you keeping your home a secret?” 

To which they, and their big sad eyes, looked me right in the eyes and said,”We are different, people will want to take us to be studied  and we’re also little; we can’t fight off more than one of you.” 

Suddenly, the roof shook and the almost microscopic paintings fell off the wall as the “crater” began to lift open only to reveal the President Of The United States and his armed forces. I began pleading with them, telling them that my purple pals meant no harm at all, but all the President could think of was the money he would make for finding life on the moon. 

I put as many minions on my back as was humanly possible, the rest climbing onto my legs and arms and face while I took off to the space shuttle. The President and his grim reapers came after us reaching and clawing for one of the minions. In the nick of time my foot hit the floor of the shuttle and the doors sealed behind me. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief before noticing that the tour guide, the minion with a staff, the minion who started it all was captured by the grimey hands of the President. I went to press the “open door” button, but he waved for me to go, mouthing, “Save them.” We took off with no plan at all and not enough fuel to get back to earth. The only hope we had was to sit in the shuttle, try to stay calm, and hope for a miracle. That is when a set of lights fell upon us asking us to open up the doors…