Gig: Chapter 1

“…I would take such good care of it, and I would love it unconditionally, and I wouldn’t be so lonely, and I would play with it all the time. So that is why I, Jimmy Sause should have a pet, most preferably a dog,” I said lowering speech I wrote and smiled widely at my parents. “Jimmy, for the millionth time, you can not have a pet,” my mom said with a sour face. “But Mom, why not?” I said starting to whine. “Because you mother said so,” my dad said. “This isn’t fair,” I said getting ready to stomp my feet. “Jimmy there is no use arguing with us, you can’t have a pet and that’s final,” she said. “Fine then I will spend the rest of my life in my room,” I said walking to the stairs. “Why do you have to be this difficult?” she said. “Because,” I said then walking up to my room. I walked into my room and shut the door and fell to my bed and lying flat on my back. I looked up to the ceiling and stared deep. I laid there wondering what it would be like to live in prehistoric times. Like if your parents said something to you didn’t like you could let a huge carnivore eat them. I laughed at the idea and wish it could happen.   But I knew it wasn’t the slightest bit possible. I got up from my bed and walked to my door and opened it just a crack. I listened onto what my parents were saying. “David, why does he always do this?” mom asked. “Linda, he’s an eleven year old boy, he really wants a pet,” dad said. “Yeah but I don’t think he’s capable in taking care of one,” she said. "I know dear, he is just gonna have to except that he can’t have one,” he said. I shut my door and returned to my bed. I was getting angry at what they were saying. I can to take care of a pet. If they only gave me a chance I could prove to them how responsible I am. I looked out my window and saw a flock of birds flew by. I got up and walked to my window. I looked out to the other houses in my neighborhood and saw one of my neighbors playing with their dog. They were having so much fun together. I opened my window and jumped out to the big oak tree branch. I dangled my legs other the side and jumped down. I looked around and walked towards the street. I walked down my street and towards town. I thought I would take a walk downtown and try to let what happened before go. I walked along the tall metal fence into town and towards the center of it. I saw the sign of the Layfette movie theater. I looked at the part of the sign that mentioned what movie was playing. It was “Apex Disaster”, the new action movie that’s creating a huge fan following. I continued to walk down the sidewalk looking at all the stores. I saw the wedding dress store and the electronic devise fix shop, the furniture store and small grocery store. I passed the town monument that commemorates the fallen soldiers of pass wars. A concrete slab with plaques and a bronze statue of a soldier make up the monument. I walked down into the restaurant area of town and the aromas slammed my nostrils and sent them for a ride. I breathed in deep to inhale all the amazing odors. I went by the Italian place called DaNina’s and the Chinese place called The Golden Dragon. I Stopped in front of my favorite in this part, Ole, Ole, the Mexican place. Ole, Ole is the best restaurant ever. [ I love to go and eat there. I looked up at the big sign and smiled. Then all of a [sudden I was yanked from my spot and pushed up against a dumpster. “Well if it isn’t little Jimmy Sause,” a deep and recognizable voice said. A couple dark shadows laughed as I was pushed harder into the dumpster. “Let me go Benny,” I said struggling to get free. “Oh no can do Jimmy it’s time to pay up,” Benny said. “For what?” I said still struggling. “Oh Jimmy how easily we forget. Remember the other day in class I let you borrow my pencil?” Benny said. I totally forgot about that and was trying to kick myself for it. “Okay Benny how much?” I asked. “Oh…ten bucks,” he said with a smirk. “Ten dollars? Are you insane?” I yelled. “Hey supply and demand,” he said. “I don’t have any cash on me right now,” I said. “That’s too bad Jimmy, I guess its alternate payment then,” he said bring back his fist. I closed my eyes tightly to wait what was coming. A sudden pain rushed into my stomach and I fell to the ground. I fell to my knees and put my arms around my stomach. Benny and his shadow goons walked off laughing and high five-ing each other. The pain was so much I couldn’t stand up. I sat there holding my mid section for some time. Once the pain finally went away I stood up and walked back home. The sun was beginning to set so I picked up the pace. I reached my house and looked up at where my room window was. I reached up and grabbed one of the branches of the big oak tree and tried to climb up. My stomach winced in pain and I let the tree branch go. I couldn’t get up the tree cause of my stomach so I decided to use the front door. I walked in and walked towards the stairs. “Jimmy?” mom said walking out from the kitchen. I looked up and saw her. “Have you been climbing down that oak tree again? How many times have I told you that is too dangerous to do,” she said putting her hands on her hips. I stared at her for a few seconds and started up the stairs. “Jimmy, come back here, dinner is almost ready,” she said. My stomach twirled as she mentioned dinner. “I’m not hungry…” I said and walked up to my room. I fell onto my bed and closed my eyes. I drifted off and went asleep for the rest of the night. Images began to fill my unconscious yet opened mind. I found myself in a baron desert area. It was so wide and so empty. I walked around and nothing ever came around or was visible. I looked onto the empty wasteland and saw a huge shadow cover me. I turned around to come face to face with a large set of legs. I looked up and saw a towering creature with a huge head. It opened its mouth and hundreds of razor sharp teeth filled its mouth. I stood there frozen in my place as the creature lowered its head and teeth. I was surrounded by teeth and I awoke sitting straight up in bed. I looked around and saw my room. I realized that it was a dream and breathed a sigh of relief. I stood up and stretched. I looked at the calendar and saw it was Monday and I needed to get ready for school. I changed my clothes and brushed my teeth and combed my hair. My stomach felt better and I was starving. I walked down the stairs and into the kitchen. A big bowl of Fruity Pebbles was waiting for me at my spot. I sat down and poured some milk into the bowl. I dug my spoon into the cereal and began to eat. It tasted so good and I savored every spoonful. I finished it all and grabbed my lunch next to my bowl and shoved it into my back pack. I zipped it up and threw it over my shoulders. “Jimmy, you come home right after school and do you homework. I have to attend a meeting after work so I won’t be home until a little later,” mom said. “Okay mom,” I said walking out the front door. I closed the door behind me and walked down the cement walkway. I walked by my friend Donnie’s house but didn’t see him. I remembered that he said on Friday that he was going to an elderly home to visit his sick great grandmother. I continued to walk my normal way to school and saw a lot of others walking. I walked and saw her. She was walking with her friends and laughing. She was so pretty and I really liked her. But I never had the guts to talk to her. I just watched her walk. She walked passed Benny and his goons. He watched her walk by and threw a paper cup at her. It hit her and she turned and gave a nasty look. He just laughed and pointed. She scoffed and walked away. I really wanted to put Benny in his place but I didn’t have the guts to stand up to him. He terrorizes the entire sixth grade with his antics. He’s been doing so since he was left back three times. I really didn’t want to deal with him today so I took a short cut. I cut through a few alley ways and ended up at the abandoned construction site. I looked around and saw the burnt remains of what was going to be an office building. Since the fire torched at the work that was done no additional work was done to fix it or finish it. I began to walk through the site and wander around the beams. I reached the edge of the “ruins” and saw a big pile of ashes. I looked and saw a small white thing popping up from the ash. I went closer to look at it and saw it didn’t look like it was building material. I brushed away the ash and revealed what looked like a big egg. I picked it up and held it in my hands. It was warm as it sat in my hands. I looked down to see glowing embers. The embers must have kept the egg warm. I put my ear to the side of the egg and heard something moving. The animal inside of it must have been kept alive because of the embers. I took off my back pack and unzipped and placed the egg in. I zipped it back up and put my back pack onto my shoulders. I walked through a few bushes and ended up across the street from the school. I looked at the big clock and saw I was late. I ran across the street and up the main lawn of the school. I ran up the steps and through the main doors. I bolted passed the main office and ran up the stairs case. I ran half way down the hall and reached Room 36. I opened the door and everyone looked at me. My teacher looked at her watch and looked back up at me. “Jimmy, you are late,” she said. “Sorry Mrs. Green,” I said apologetic. “Just take your seat Jimmy,” she said. I walked down to the row I sat in and walked to my seat. All the students watched me as I sat down. “Okay class today’s lesson is the solar system,” Mrs. Green said as she placed a diagram of the solar system onto her desk. “Now there are nine planets in our solar system,” she said placing a finger on each of the planets on the diagram. I decided I should take some notes since I wasn’t really that good at remembering things. I opened my back pack to take out my notebook. I slid out my note book and saw the egg move a little, a low grunt was coming from the egg. I quickly shut my back pack and zipped it up hoping no one heard that. I looked around to see no one looking over at me. I opened the outer pouch and took out a pen and started writing what Mrs. Green was saying. “We know what is out there in our solar system because scientists send up satellites and they record everything as they float around outer space,” Mrs. Green said. All the students were all paying attention to the front and I was glad they were. I didn’t want anyone to know what I had in my bag. But now since it was beginning to move and make noise it wasn’t going to be easy. As I was taking notes, my chair began to move. I looked down and saw my bag banging against my chair. I became and pushed my bag to the other side of my desk. It continued to move and began to make louder sounds. I wasn’t sure how I was going to take my notes and keep my new little friend quiet. The noise began to become louder and some students around me were taking notice. I whispered as low as I could “Shhh,” to try to quiet own my bag. “Jimmy is something the matter?” Mrs. Green said stopping her lecture. “No, no it’s just my…lunchbox,” I said. Mrs. Green looked puzzled. I was too, because that didn’t make too much sense. “I have one of those new musical lunch boxes that play a song when you open them, and I can’t seem to turn mine off,” I said hoping she’d buy it. “Well just try to let it not interrupt,” she said turning to the board. I sighed as I lay back in my chair. Mrs. Green talked for about another half hour and then handed out worksheets. I was able to answer all the questions and was confident I had the right answers.  We handed in our worksheets as Mrs. Green collected them. She handed out another paper that read “Solar System Project”. “For the next month you all will be working on a solar system project. You will all make your own solar system…” she said being cut off by student cheers. “…and you will write one full page on the solar system,” she said finishing. All the students groaned and shook their heads in disgust. “Okay class I have scheduled some time at the library for you all to gather some information for your projects,” Mrs. Green said. My eyes widened a bit as I knew we were all going to leave the room. I couldn’t leave the egg alone so I grabbed my bag and took it with me. We all lined up at the door and in single file walked out. We walked all the way down to the library and walked in. I put my bag on one of the tables and grabbed a computer right near it. I clicked on the Internet icon and a window on the screen opened. I typed in a search engine website and typed in “eggs” I clicked on the “Images” hyperlink and started to scroll down looking at all the images. After a few pages of not finding anything that looked like the egg I found I decided to give up. “Jimmy I thought you were told to get information on the solar system…” a voice next to me said. I turned away from the computer and saw Mrs. Green standing there. “Yeah, sorry Mrs. Green, I had something I needed look up first,” I said. “Well try to do personal work at home and do your school work here,” she said. “Yes, Mrs. Green,” I said. She turned around and walked over to a group of other students. I redid my search and looked up information on the solar system. After a bit of searching I printed out a few things and wrote down some web addresses. I looked around to see if no one was looking and opened my bag. The egg kept moving but wasn’t making the grunting sounds as before. I was hoping I could get the egg home before it hatched. “Okay everyone our time is up and we have to go back to class to get ready for lunch,” Mrs. Green said. I quickly zipped up my bag and grabbed all my information. We walked to back to class and put our valued information in a safe place and grabbed our lunches. I needed to keep an eye on this egg so I took it with me. I made my way to the cafeteria and sat down at my usual eating table. The kids I sat with weren’t there yet so I opened my lunch and pulled out my sandwich. I unfolded the wax paper cocoon my sandwich was in. I lifted it up to my face an inspected it. “Alright! Bologna and cheese with mustard!” I cheered. Bologna and cheese sandwich with mustard was my absolute favorite sandwich. I took a big bite of my sandwich and chewed it slowly to gain the best experience. As I swallowed my first bite, my friend Jonathan sat down at the table. “Hey what’s up Jimmy?” he said. “Not much Jonathan, just sitting here eating,” I said taking another bite of my sandwich. “How was your weekend?” Jonathan asked me taking out his lunch. “It was good until about 5 o’clock yesterday,” I said. I took out my drink box and plunged the straw into the hole. “What happened?” he asked. “I ran into Benny…” I said then taking a sip of my drink box. “Oh no,” he said. “Oh yes, then he ran his fist into my stomach,” I said. Jonathan made a wincing face. My two other friends Andy and Brian sat down at the table. “Hey you okay Jonathan?” Brian remarked to the wincing face he made. “Oh yeah, Jimmy was just telling me about his Benny the bully encounter yesterday,” Jonathan said. Brian and Andy looked over at me. “What happened?” Andy asked me. “Benny ran into me and asked for payment for his pencil I borrowed from him,” I said. “Let me guess, for payment he punched you?” Brian said. “Well he demanded ten dollars for it, which I didn’t have so he punched me in the stomach as equal payment,” I said. “Geez Jimmy, you’re okay right?” Brian asked. “Yeah I’m fine, but I was late to school today because he was around and I took a short cut that didn’t end up so short,” I said eating the rest of my sandwich. The four of us sat there and ate our lunches and talked about our weekends and the better part of mine. “Let’s get to the playground before it gets too crowded,” Brian said. We all nodded and grabbed our garbage and walked to the trash cans and threw it all out. “Hey Jimmy, why do you have your back pack with you at lunch?” Jonathan asked. “Oh um…it’s because of I have something valuable on me and if I lost it I’d be in deep trouble,” I said to him. “Really? What is it?” he asked. I paused trying to come up with a good lie to tell him so I wouldn’t blow it. “Hey Brian and Andy are waiting for us by the door,” I said running over to them. Jonathan ran after me and the four of us walked out to the outside. We all looked at one another and ran down the path to the playground. We jumped over the short log barrier that had a small opening to let one person through at a time. We all landed on the dirt path and continued towards the playground. We ran across the blacktop and onto the gravel playground. Andy jumped onto the tire made fortress. “Ow!” he yelled as his hand pulled away from the fortress. The tire made fortress was sitting in the hot sun and was sometimes too hot to touch. We all pointed and laughed at Andy as he waved his hand in the air to sooth the burning. Andy reached into one of the tires and pulled off a chunk of rubber and threw it at me. The chunk hit me and I lost my balance. I fell back and down to the gravel. My back pack caught me so it didn’t hurt. But I did realize the egg might have broken and hurt what was inside. I sat up and opened my bag. I looked in to see the egg was still in one piece. I sighed a bit or relief. My friends looked down at me and looked at each other. “You okay Jimmy?” Andy asked. “Yeah I’m fine,” I said. They jumped down from the tire made fortress and surrounded me. They saw I was looking into my back and they looked as well. “Wow, that’s a big egg!” Brian yelled. “Yeah Jimmy where did you get something like that?” Andy asked. “If I tell you will you guys promise to not say a word to anyone?” I said looking up at them. “Yeah I promise,” Brian said. “Me too,” Andy said. Jonathan nodded. “Okay well you know the abandoned construction site?” I told them. The three of them nodded. “Well I took my shortcut through there today and found this egg sitting in a pile of ash. There were some embers still from the fire that was keeping the egg warm,” I said. “Is what’s inside still alive?”  Jonathan asked. I took out the egg and held it up in front of them. The egg wiggled back and forth in my hands. “Whoa!” Andy yelled. “I guess it is,” Brian said. “Do you know what’s inside?” Brian asked me. “No, I tried looking it up online but could not find anything that matched it,” I said. I placed the egg back into my bag and zipped it up. A whole crowd of kids came down the path. “Remember guys, not a single word,” I said to them. The three of them moved their hands across their mouths as to show their mouths were shut. I stood up and put my bag back on my shoulders. The four of us played around for the remainder of the recess and we said our goodbye’s at the end and departed to our classrooms. I reached my classroom and walked in and over to my desk. I peered into my bag to make sure the egg was okay. The egg continued to wiggle and I smiled. “Okay everyone as you know school ends a little earlier today, so I will now hand out your homework assignment,” Mrs. Green said taking the stack of papers in her hands and passing it down the rows of the desks. I completely forgot that school was a little shorter today. I was so happy that I can get this egg home and it can hatch safely in my room rather than in here. The homework sheet reached me and a passed the extra sheet behind me. I skimmed the paper to see it was based on what we were taught today about the solar system. I slipped the paper into my bag. “Okay class you have you homework and I will see you all tomorrow,” Mrs. Green said. We all got up and walked out of the classroom. I walked down the hall and the stair case. I walked out of the main door and into the direction of my house. I began to feel some movement in my back pack so I picked up the pace and almost ran home. I reached my street and I ran straight for my house. I pulled out the house keys from my pocket and unlocked the door. I went and shut the door behind me. I ran up the stairs and went into my room. I closed the door and placed my back pack on my bed. I unzipped it and pulled out the egg. It began to really move around violently. I brought it over to my desk and placed down. I took my hands away from the egg and it move around. The egg move over and fell off the side of the desk. I put out my hands quickly and caught the egg before it hit the ground. I placed the egg closer to the middle of the desk. I swung my desk lamp over it and turned it on. The light from the light covered the egg. The grunting noises I could hear coming from the egg. I watched the egg with quite excitement. A crack began to form near the top of the egg. It seemed what was inside was trying now to break free and hatch completely. I began to become giddy as I have never seen any animal hatch before. A small piece of the egg popped off and landed on my desk. The crack began to grow as the animal inside pushed harder. Another piece but bigger this time broke off. The piece also landed on top of my desk. I looked at the empty space in the egg’s shell trying to see what was inside. All I could see were dark colored scales. I concluded it had to be some kind of reptile. Out from the hole in the shell came a small reptilian snout. The little nostrils flared sniffing the air that all creatures breathe. The creature opened its tiny jaws and the egg cracked open more. The creature let out a small chirping noise. The bottom of the egg began to crack and shake. The bottom of the egg broke open and two clawed feet come forth. The creature stood up onto its feet and tried to shake free of the confining egg shell. I looked on in wonderment as the freedom of this animal was being made. It couldn’t seem to shake free so it began to bob up and down. The bobbing quickly began to move very fast. Within a moment the egg shell hit the top of the desk and cracked completely open. The shell fell off revealing the entire animal that was encased inside of it. On my desk stood a two legged reptile that looked like my real reptile I have ever seen. It almost looked like a dinosaur…