Friday, March 25, 2011

It's A Garden Gnome World

I recently (this morning) remembered that I was often required to write stories for school. So I will be uploading some soon.
This one I wrote in December of 2006, my freshman year in high school. The assignment was to write about a metamorphosis.
Please enjoy.


When I woke up from unsettling dreams, I found that I had turned into a gnome. I could first tell what my body had become from my immense and unrational fear of myself. I rolled over to face the window only to see big fat raindrops rolling down the smudged glass. After rolling back to my original lying position – which was quite unusual due to my new shortness – it really hit me. I was a gnome. I was no more than one and a half feet tall, including the pointy red hat that accounted for one third of my height. I fought back a scream. What would my parents do when they found a gnome in my bed? Would my brother smash me into tiny pieces? Would I be forever cursed to stand in the front lawn through rain, snow and sunshine?
A loud knock shocked me out of my dreams. “Emily,” the cry from my mother came. “Emily? Emily, wake up!”
I sighed. The last think I needed was to think about how she would react and how I could get away.
“Emily?”
The cry came again accompanied by the opening of a door.
“Emily, are you even awake?”
“Mom,” I shouted, “I’m fine! Close the door!”
“Okay, but you have twenty minutes to get downstairs!”
“Alright mom! I’ll be there!”
I rolled back over to face the window once again and watched for what seem hours of rain rolling down the glass. The rain is just so peaceful. It falls for so long, pulling some pollution and other foul smelling substances out of the air leaving a fresh clean scent. The rain made me think about my new form, about what I was still capable of doing and what I wasn’t. I realized that my voice had not changed a bit from the transformation I had undergone. Well, there was one thing on my side. I had my voice, but how could that help me? I could try and convince my mom that I was sick but she would be too suspicious since I had already talked to her and sounded perfectly normal. I could obviously move my new body, it realized, from the absent-minded rolling over that I had done but what else was here to help me?
“Emily!”
It was my dad this time.
“We leave in fifteen!”
“Okay,” I called back, not wanting him to become suspicious.
Now what? My mom would be gone in about two minutes to take my older brother to school and she was more forgiving than my dad was. Mentally calculating in my head the time it would take me to get out of my current state and then down the stairs and then convincing my parents that this was actually and truly me, I wouldn’t even be downstairs before my mom left. Well, I supposed I’d have to start somewhere. The best thing – more like the only thing – to do was to go downstairs and somehow try and convince my dad that I was indeed Emily. A lot easier said than done.
My dad looked skeptically at me and wondered aloud where the gnome had come from once I had gotton down the stairs. He was about to pick me up when I said the only thing that I could think of; “It’s me, Dad.”
He nearly fainted. The possessed gnome standing in the hallway talked. Preposterous! He was going to talk to his doctor about hallucinating next time he went in.
“Dad,” I startled him out of his thoughts. “Dad, I’m no hallucination. Look in my bed if you want. Even so, how do you explain the gnome talking to you?”
As he walked away I swear I heard him mumble “That’s what I’m worried about.”
After being thoroughly convinced that I was indeed his daughter he asked me what I was going to do; if I was going to go to school or stay home. My answer came quick.
“I’m going to school! How else am I going to tell this story to my friends and have them believe me?”
My dad seemed to laugh. “You sure are strange,” he said.
“So I’ve heard, Dad. So I’ve heard.”
At school, only my friends believed me and my story but all of my teachers wouldn’t be ‘fooled’ and after the painful and long process of explaining to them who and what I was, the day was quite fun. The once-in-a-life opportunity was taken advantage of as my friends took many pictures and videos on their phones. If nothing else, this was to be a day to remember and I might need a little convincing. Though, throughout the day, despite the fact that I was lugged around by my best friend, I learned that there was nothing scary about gnomes. True, they may be strange but that was no reason to be scared of them.
I went home, ate dinner, did homework just as I did almost every day. My little body seemed to make no difference, everyone pitched in to help me. Everything seemed normal despite the phantasmagorical events that passed.
I awoke the next morning to find myself human again. The pictures were enough to convince me of the previous day. It was not until a few months later that I had awoken from returning unsettling dreams to find myself as a suit of armor that I began to think that I needed mental help. The memories of the last transformation came back. I did not think about mental help. No, I only said “Not again!”
The End.

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