Lightning

A/N + sɦօʀt stօʀʏ: Gizzy's Past

This is a short story for my friend Maryanne, the only reason I'm publishing it is because I feel guilty I haven't updated in a while😂

Gizzy wasn't always a cute, smart puppy. He was once alone in the world and sad. He was also once a penguin. A mod-roc penguin.

Oh wait I should probably explain that.

So first things first, mod-roc is not MUD ROCK spelt wrong, okay? Because that's what Gizzy thought. Before he saw the mod-roc bag and realised his whole life was a lie.

He was made by an unnamed (*cough* Maryanne *cough*) Art student in an art classroom wrongfully named 'Senior Library'. Why was it named library when it was a classroom? I don't know. Though it had several dictionaries and encyclopaedias lined up on the top windows, but they were ignored by (almost) everyone.

The girl tried to mould the strips of sticky mod-roc to resemble a snowman, a rather strangely shaped snowman, true, but she had not wanted Gizzy to be a penguin. But the lump of mod-roc knew, in the depth of his empty-bottle heart that he was destined to be a penguin in his first life. So soon Maryanne found herself shaping a penguin after a few failed attempts at snow.
Things seemed to be going well, true the art student was not very sure about the beauty of Gizzy but he felt proud of his lumpy mod-roc-iness, his strange pointy nose.

Then.. Came paint. Paint was horrifying to Gizzy, couldn't he function fine without colours and eyes and flippers? Evidently not.

She painted his black and white body, Gizzy let out a breath of relief (A metaphoric breath, as he was made of mod-roc). This wasn't so bad after all! She painted his skinny, cold green scarf. Then his beak, then his eyes. But here we meet a disaster. His eyes were painted and repainted. Gizzy felt embarrassed. First his eyes were completely blind and black, then deep red, then blue and green, his eyes were so mixed up he hardly remembered what the art room looked like without being tinted weird colours. Finally his eyes stuck at blue and he could see well enough.

Gizzy started to feel alone. He felt different from all the other mod-roc creations, however strange they too looked. At night, they were all left together in the empty class that pretended to be a library. A weird looking snowman with glasses seemed to stare at him all the time. He looked like an old man, but then Gizzy realised he was trying to be 'Harry Potter' and his name was Iggy.

Iggy was weird. Gizzy didn't like Iggy, so he ignored Iggy's staring that was starting to be creepy.

After a week or two of being painted, being sprinkled with glitter, the penguins and snowmen were taken to the front of the building they were in. This was the first look at School Gizzy ever got. Not that Gizzy really paid attention. They were set on a stage (That was what Gizzy thought it was) and were covered in tinsel and made to pretend they were standing in snow. The only thing that made Gizzy happy was the fact he was on a stage and people watched him. Then it turned out the people were students. Curious students. So his delight quickly ended again, soon he found himself being prodded and picked up by random students walking past the penguins and snowmen.

Then around three days of standing around the penguin heard a piercing scream come from Iggy. (Metaphorically heard, as he had no ears. Also the scream was metaphorical as penguins and snowmen speak in telepathy, as everyone knows. But screams make stuff more exciting)

He turned and saw that IgGY'S NOSE HAD FALLEN OFF!!!!!!! Everyone else also metaphorically screamed, this was HORRIFYING. I mean, imagine just sitting in class and your friend's nose just falls off for no apparent reason, you wouldn't be very calm. Luckily, Iggy's nose was fixed later on (Stuck on the wrong way but that's Iggy's problem not Gizzy's)

After this incident Gizzy had a huge fear of his nose falling off.

The students left the school for a few weeks for 'Christmas' and Gizzy was left alone with the rest of the mod-roc creatures. The first few days had passed and Gizzy was starting to think maybe he was stuck standing here forever amid tinsel and idiots made from plaster strips that didn't understand him.

But finally the students arrived, filling the corridors and saying they wished 'Christmas' had gone on for longer. Gizzy was contentedly taken home by Maryanne.

Then he realised that here he was also doomed to stand forever on a table in one place. People would never see the beauty of Gizzy and his magnificence. It brought a (metaphorical) tear to the penguin's eye.

It was a few days after he had been brought home that Gizzy first died. Maryanne had been in the room with him, and was on her phone. He stared at the girl. Her glasses were strangely shaped, he just realised. He continued to stare, and she seemed to notice that and walked over to him. He probably should have stopped staring by now but Gizzy had slipped into a strange daydream including unicorns eating pizza the colour of Maryanne's hair and other random things. But of course, the girl had no idea Gizzy was daydreaming, she just thought he was being creepy (Which he also was). So she suddenly walked over, picked him up and... Threw him out the window!

Now, this might not sound very fatal, but she managed to throw him out the window, onto a road, right into the path of a speeding truck.

The truck driver was a man named Jim and when he felt something 'crack' and 'splodge' under the wheels he looked back, worried he'd driven over a pet or child. But he didn't see Gizzy's mangled body. The heartless driver shrugged and drove on.

Maryanne meanwhile, was told that they were going shopping for food.

* * *

Gizzy had just been squished and broken into a hundred pieces, so obviously he felt very confused when he opened his metaphorical eyes and saw. He was lying in a store, in a basket, surrounded by apples.

Green apples.

And, apparently apples can speak telepathically as well because around Gizzy he heard voices. "Who's the weirdo?" "Why's he red?" "He's an odd apple" "That guy appeared out of nowhere" And, before you ask, apples have gender. At least they have pronouns. Gizzy was again, different from all the rest, he was a red apple, the others were green apples. But this time, he knew that very soon he would be taken away somewhere soon, because that's what happens to apples, right?

What do people do with apples again?

Oh surely that doesn't matter, he thought. At least I won't have to sit here surrounded by green, chattering apples.

It so happened, that Maryanne and her family were at that very same store, buying food, (as I mentioned further up ↑) and the girl happened to walk past the aisle where Gizzy was. It must have been fate that they be reunited again! Or just very unlucky coincidence. For Gizzy.

She stopped, looked at the apples and thought that she needs some green apples in her life, and accidently picked up Gizzy.

And so, Gizzy was stuck again, in Maryanne's home, but this time as an apple that nobody seemed to love. He was the last apple left in the bowl. All the other apples had been eaten, because it is a fact! that green apples taste better than red ones. ('!' was purposeful)

But even red apples nobody likes get eaten some day. And that happened on exactly January 2, 8:09 a.m.

And thus, Gizzy was reincarnated as a dog.

* * *

t ɧ ҽ ҽ ŋ ɖ

PS: I'm taking a break from this story because it's been kinda hard to write, but I think I'm going to start a short story book?