The Twisted Evil of Romance
This is installment #4 in my several-part series, Shit I Wrote a While Ago. This story comes from my 8th grade Language Arts class, and I believe the assignment required that each story have a moral. From 1999.
The Twisted Evil of Romance
Since Moira’s heart had beaten its first, it had beaten for Gus. Gus was her one true love, her best friend, her comforting thought when she was sad, her sun when there were clouds. Every morning when Moira threw open the bed curtains she called, “Good morning, my dear Gus! Perhaps you will love me today,” and the larks cried, “Gus! Gus! Gus!” Every night just before she drew the bed curtains back around her, Moira would whisper, “Sleep well, Gus, my love. Dream of me as I will of you,” and he crickets chirped, “Gus… Gus… Gus…”
It was in such a manner that Moira had lived her entire life. Truth be told, she had never really spoken a word to Gus, nor he to her. She watched him from her balcony through a telescope that she’d found washed up on the beach. Gus lived in the city, and Moira was dreadfully afraid of the city, and people, and other such frightening things. Her whole life had been spent tucked away in her seaside cottage with only the company of her pet goat, Penelope. Penelope was a magic goat, actually. She was either a goat who had been blessed by a goddess or a girl who had been cursed by a witch, Moira couldn’t really remember. Either way, Penelope could talk, and she had quite a fortune (well, for a goat), and that was all the company that Moira needed.
One day in early June, when the window boxes were in full bloom and the roses that crawled up the arbor were as pink as a baby’s toes, Moira was out by the well gathering water, with the bull frogs croaking, “Gus… Gus… Gus…” She fetched the water and was turning to go, when who was there standing in front of her, but Gus himself!
“Gus!” exclaimed Moira, who was so surprised that she threw the bucket into the air, soaking herself and Gus.
“Pardon me,” said Gus, so taken by Moira’s beauty that he hardly noticed the water, “but can you tell me where I can find Miss Penelope Fussbudget?”
Moira would have gasped, or fainted, or perhaps her eyes would have grown very large had she not caught herself, because that was news. Penelope Fussbudget, she assumed, was he goat, because otherwise he would not have been sent to that address, but Moira was so desperate for Gus’ affection that she wanted all of his attention to be on her, and none on Penelope.
“Why do you wish to see her?” asked Moira with feigned calmness.
Gus pulled a piece of paper from his breeches pocket and pointed to a few words. “This is my father’s will,” he explained. “It says here that he wishes for me to marry Penelope Fussbudget, who is the daughter of his best friend, Simon Fussbudget. I was told by the townspeople that this is the last place that she was seen.” He smiled hopefully at Moira.
“So, then, you are obliged by your father’s wishes to marry this Penelope?” guessed Moira.
“As sure as a goose is a goose,” Gus confirmed.
Well, that was about as sure as a person could get, and Moira was worried. If Gus was looking to marry Penelope (which was next to impossible, being as she was a goat and all), then he would certainly never marry her.
“My father left a description,” offered Gus.
That brought Penelope out. She’d been listening the whole time, well, since she had heard her name, and she hadn’t been inclined to come out until then. She could remember what she’d looked like when she was a girl, of course. If the description fit her, then she’d have to marry Gus, an idea that curdled her milk. She was sick of Gus, perfectly sick of him. He was all that Moira ever talked about, and a person like that could spend a long time talking about himself, she knew. They’d been playmates when they were very, very young. Penelope’s first memories were of Gus, talking for hours about his new toy truck, or how handsome all of the neighbors thought he was, or something equally stupid. It was partly his fault that she’d been changed into a goat, but of course he didn’t know that she was a goat yet, or he’d never consider marrying her.
“A description?” echoed Moira. That presented a problem. Her plan had been to lie and say that she was Penelope. She didn’t particularly care for the name, or the thought of being called by it for the rest of her life, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Yes,” said Gus. “Perhaps if I read it to you, then you’ll be able to recognize her if she happens along.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” said Moira in a dismissive yet nervous way. “I’m Penelope.”
“You?” exclaimed Gus in awe. He could half remember Penelope, and from what he could remeber, she was tall and dark of complexion, whereas this girl was very short and very fair. Yet, he supposed that people could change.
“Yes, me,” confirmed Moira with less certainty than one would expect from a person who was simply saying that they were who they were.
Gus skimmed over the description anyhow, and read, “Hair as dark as the deepest night.”
Moira’s hands flew guiltily to her blond ringlets. “The sun here in the mountains does a wonder for bleaching out a person’s hair,” she said with a nervous laugh.
Penelope was appalled. Moira, whom she had thought to be a good friend, trying to steal away her husband! It wasn’t as though she loved Gus, or could even tolerate him, it was the principle of the thing.
“Exquisitely beautiful,” Gus read on. He looked at Moira. Yes, he decided, she was exquisitely beautiful. Moira seemed to sense that he was thinking such, and blushed deeply.
Penelope gritted her teeth. As much as she didn’t want to marry Gus, the spell would be broken when a man asked her to marry him, and she certainly did not want to be a goat forever. If Moira ruined her chance, then she’d… she’d… eat all of the flowers in the window boxes! True, a pitiful threat, but she was a goat, it was all she could do.
“Green eyes like a serpent’s back,” read Gus.
“Aha!” thought Penelope. Moira’s eyes had less green than the sky had fish. It would serve her right to be caught, that liar. Imagine, trying to steal Penelope’s rightful husband! As much as she loathed Gus, she decided that it wouldn’t be so bad to marry him if she could only spite Moira.
Gus looked skeptical. “Your eyes are blue,” he said.
Moira had nothing. “They are a little bit green,” she lied blatantly.
“No, they are blue,” argued Gus. He looked for something green to compare them to. His eyes fell on Penelope. “See this goat? This goat has green eyes.”
“Yes, I do,” thought Penelope, and she cackled as much as a goat can cackle, which came out sounding something like choking.
Moira was very upset by this. She knew that he was finding her out. He’d know that she wasn’t Penelope. “Well, wonderful, then! How about you just marry the goat!” she cried, only half sarcastic.
Because Gus was a jovial sort of man, he knelt on one knee and said, all in good fun, “My dear goat, will you marry me?”
Poof! The spel was broken and Penelope turned into a woman before their eyes. She was very beautiful, her hair was dark as the deepest night, and her eyes were still green, and Gus realized that something miraculous had happened.
Moira’s mouth hit the ground and her eyes bulged almost out of her head, and try as she might to close her mouth or blink, all she could do was gape.
“Penelope?” Gus gasped. He turned to Moira and said, “It was a good thing that you got so upset, or I probably would have married you!”
Moira stared at him as if it took her mind a very long time to comprehend his words. She started at Penelope, who was stealing her one true love. Though, to be honest, Penelope had really only been good for dairy products and eating all the compost, it was depressing to know that she had lost her, along with her one dream of finding true happiness, all in a quarter of an hour. All Moira could do was stare, incredibly jealous.
Penelope simply smiled smugly and said, “You know, Moira, I believe your eyes do have a bit of green in them.”
Moral: Lying will get you nowhere.
I can only assume that the morals were assigned to us beforehand, because my life’s motto is pretty much: lying is essential in nearly every situation. This one is more tedious than earlier pieces, I assume because I was reading a lot of classic literature at this point in my life and thought that it was awesome to be long-winded and use words like “shall.” I was quite the pretentious little fuck. My Language Arts teacher gave me an A on this paper because she was TOCNR, but I award it a C
