Finally, I was shipped to a store, a deli in Brooklyn. The first day there was boring. I was stuck in a pack with my cousins, and they were really big pains. I watched customers come in and out, grabbing the Cinnamon family and the Strawberries, where my best friend Joey was. Then came those from the richer parts of Gumville, where the Spearmints and all the other mints lived. From the town next to us, more shipments came in to the same deli. This went on for a week until a boy came in and picked my pack up.

“How much for this?” He asked.

“$1.75,” the owner said. The boy handed him the money and left.

I was carried uncomfortably for a while into a loud area. Then a train, which I have seen in Gumville before, came roaring in. On the train, he opened up the pack and grabbed my parents. I screamed, “No!” but of course only my cousins could hear me. The whole day, I was worrying about what happened to my parents. Later in the day, going back the same way we came, I remembered my last moments with my parents. My cousins, all of them at the same time, were picked up next. I was horrified that I was the last remaining member of the Tropicals. That night, I was put in the boy’s mouth and chewed for two hours before he spat me out of his window. It was very uncomfortable.

I was on the ground for about twelve hours. I could not sleep thinking about what had happened to me. I got stuck on somebody’s foot, and I couldn’t believe my luck. His shoes seemed brand new because of the smell. Then I saw the logo. They were Jordans. They were my first pair of shoes. In Gumville, I had won them in a contest. They gave me a forever-colored ability, too, so I wouldn’t look like tar in a couple months. I enjoyed my new life for a couple of days until he found me while he was showing off his new shoes. Horrified, I started to scream. It turned out he was big on not littering. He put me in a tissue and carried me into a school. There, he put me in a urinal. This experience was terrible for me. I had yellow liquid sprayed all over me for what felt like years, even though it was only a couple of hours.

A janitor, whom I knew from my studies at school, had come. He scrubbed and scrubbed until I was unstuck. Then he threw me in the trash. Right then, the garbage truck came and tossed the trash, including me, into a giant open space. A gatorade bottle started talking to me about how a really famous basketball player named Carmelo Anthony drank his insides.

We exchanged our stories, and soon we were best friends. We traveled for about thirty minutes until we were all picked up in our bags and carried to an unknown destination. I was sick of being handled like this. I said goodbye to Gator and slipped out of a little hole I was sitting next to. I used my telepathic powers to ask my old friend Wendy to blow me to a truck. Once there, I relaxed until the truck started moving. It stopped by the water and I inhaled the fresh air. Suddenly, I wasn’t stuck anymore. I felt around and, in moments, I was already stuck again–this time to Skechers.

“Crap, Skechers!” I said in an exasperated voice. The person sat down on the grass, but then noticed me and started to pick me off. Thank god, I thought.

This thing came bounding towards me. It was actually extremely cute. I think it was either called a Don or a Dog. It licked me, which kind of tickled and I laughed, but then I realized that it was trying to swallow me. I struggled with all my strength and put a hole through myself. Relieved, I started to relax. Having a hole through you isn’t as bad as you would think. My rest was soon interrupted when Skechers man picked me off with a plastic bag. He carried me over to another trash can, which wasn’t too bad. The plastic bag introduced himself as Plas Ticbag. I told him my name was Garrett, and we soon started talking about our journeys to the trash. We made our journey to the sanitation department. As we got close, I peeked out of the truck and spotted my friend Gator. I felt overwhelmed with joy. He looked like he was in pretty bad shape. We hopped out and made our way over to him.

We asked if he was okay and he responded, “I just haven’t slept in a couple of days.”

The next day, when we were all rested, I explained my plan to them. Then, I texted a garbage alert to the rest of the garbage in the US. Gator, Plas, and I saw our first target. It was a young worker at the department. I went towards him with my friends. Plas quickly jumped onto his back and enclosed his head. He started shouting. Gator hopped in and crammed his mouth. Then, I stretched myself across his nose. He quickly couldn’t breathe. Two minutes later, we had killed him.

“Good job boys, we can take these humans,” I said. “Here is where we go next. There is a garbage convention in Nepal. We can get onto the flight in someone’s luggage and stay with them until we are in the place they are staying. There are cardboard boxes over there. We will hijack them and roll to the airport. This particular airport is about ten minutes away.”

At the airport, we looked at the screen and saw that there was a flight for Kathmandu leaving in twenty minutes. I saw a man heading towards security. We could get in his open briefcase and get to gate G5. We made our way over to it and climbed in. I glanced at the papers inside and realized they were nuclear codes.

“We have to steal these,” I told them.

This would cause national devastation. Five minutes later, we were through security. We hopped out of the briefcase with Gator hiding the codes inside of him. We walked to the gate and spotted a kid with an orange suitcase.

“This looks good,” I said to them. We snuck in and made ourselves comfortable. About thirteen hours later, we arrived. We stayed inside until we approached what sounded like a hotel.  Then the suitcase got opened up and we were spotted.

“Back to the trash for us,” I said. We were put in a trash can, but almost as soon as we got in we were out in a dump truck headed to the convention. Perfect, I thought, already on our way.

At the convention, I recognized a lot of my former friends. I then took an old mic and yelled my plan out passionately.

“We have to stand up to these humans! They treat us terribly and murder our families. GARBAGE FIRST!” I screamed.

Then I got the biggest round of applause I had ever gotten. A couple days later, we owned Nepal. Next stop Beijing. In Beijing, the humans put up much more resistance, since they had heard what happened in Nepal. They were armed with garbage spray. This was a deadly weapon used in the first garbage war back 371 years ago. We will succeed where our ancestors failed, I thought to myself. My great-great-grandfather was the leader back then. Then I thought, This is for GG Grandpa. Suddenly, I snapped back to reality just as a human was spraying Gator with garbage spray.

“No!” I screamed as everything went into slow motion. Gator was dead. “Revenge, revenge!” I screamed, rallying the new recruits. I jumped up on the man who had killed Gator, almost instantly stretching myself out to wrap around his neck and choke him to death.

This was a turning point in our victory in Beijing. We lost thousands of soldiers but defeated Beijing. Our quest to take over Asia had just begun. We paraded through the city, the streets now filled with our superior kind showing off human heads. Humans feared us. We came to new cities and villages sparing some human lives so we could test out new weapons in death camps. I did have a soft side in me. I spared all kids.The kids worked for us in return, spying on the humans, relaying to us vital information about the humans’ weaknesses. Every place we came to we destroyed, leaving devastation everywhere.

The one place I decided we would leave wholly normal was the USA. We would settle in across the country. When we finally arrived back in NYC a couple months later, I started to settle in Brooklyn. The humans had already evacuated the city upon hearing that we were coming. I then thought to myself that we had done it; we had conquered the world.  I started to pass time by joyriding around in Lamborghinis. Eventually, this got boring and I started taking employees. We were starting to recreate the world.