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I newly dedicate this old and seasoned story to S.E., whose full name hardly warrants mention, as this person has committed the unpardonable crime of doubting my story telling skills. In this story, S.E., please note the use of proper verbosity, rhetorical flourishes, irony, religious tropes, climax, resolution, timing, and all other accoutrements of truly world class literary prose.
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The event transpired on December 27 2011, sometime between the royal hours of nine and three. I know this because when I left my apartment with the Roommate, at approximately nine in the morning, Mr. Penguin was still happily occupying his place on the living room window. When I returned, however, he (or rather his bodily members) was occupying many places—none of which were the living room window. I walked unsuspectingly into my apartment, dropping my keys onto the front table and pulling my gloves off. It was at this moment I saw something black, white and blubbery on the floor in front of me. No, it was not Lucy herself—although, dear Readers, I can understand why you would have assumed that upon hearing the word “blubbery.” But alas, it was a penguin wing. Peering into the dining room, I saw the other wing upon the floor, as well as a beak nearby. I do not know if Penguins actually have beaks, but let’s just say they do for the sake of the story, because it is just really sad to think of a little beak lying on the ground unattached to any head. I mean, that Poor Little Beak! :(
Of course, I had not yet put two and two together. I had not yet thought to check the front window for Mr. Penguin, seeing as though he was the only penguin in probably a 500-mile radius or more (not counting the zoo and aquarium downtown). At that point, all I could attest to was a sick feeling of oddness growing in my gut, that something wasn’t right with the world. This could only mean one thing: I was pretty hungry and my blood sugar was low. As I removed my jacket and dived into a bowl of chili, though, my mind began replaying the events of the last week or so to make sense of what I was seeing.
Only a few weeks earlier, the Roommate had returned home bearing oodles of $1-5 good tidings from her secret santa at work. One of these gifts was a set of unavoidably tacky winter-themed, gummy window stickies. Her ordinarily good taste in home decor lapsing momentarily, The Roommate proceeded to gleefully stick these needless eyesores onto various flat surfaces of the apartment: a snowflake on the bathroom mirror, a cup of hot cocoa on the refrigerator, a Christmas tree on the tiled, kitchen wall… And, yes, a penguin on the living room window.
In the days that followed, Lucy went about her usual routine of reacting to changes made in the apartment: sniffing, staring, gingerly pawing, meowing, licking, glaring, growling. In this way she is somewhat autistic, she just has a hard time dealing with changes made to her spatial environment. But it didn't take a rocket scientist to deduce she was particularly targeting Mr. Penguin. For days she just stared at him from her usual perch on the window sill, trapping his googly-eyed gaze in her beady eyes. The snowflake and Christmas tree she left well enough alone, but Mr. Penguin. Poor Mr. Penguin! He had unknowingly committed the triple crime of being plastic, being relatively bird-shaped, and being at Lucy’s eye-level. When I deigned to impart my concerns unto the Roommate, she blatantly feigned apathy. The years of dealing with Lucy’s excesses have unfortunately worn the Roommate down to a stupor of helpless indignity.
I suppose it was only a matter of time before Lucy got it into her (disproportionately small) head to claw him apart, limb from gummy limb, so I should not have gotten attached to Mr. Penguin in the first place. But I did, God help me, I did. This heart of mine is not made of stone, after all, and if you break it, does it not hurt like any other heart? And so, that day, the 27th, my love for Mr. Penguin was all I could think of. I decided to find out just what had happened to that beloved Penguin, the only Penguin this apartment had ever known.
I walked back through the living room, the kitchen and dining area, collecting the little fragments of that beloved, old gummy bird as I went: his wings, his beak (?), a stubby tail… I was now entering Lucy’s (and the Roomate’s) lair. The sight awaiting me was purely revolting: Lucy was perched adroitly on the Roommates bed, Mr. Penguin’s head in claw, making some very confusing but nonetheless unnerving gestures. After several seconds, I quickly perceived what was actually happening.
To explain what I was seeing, however, I must backtrack for the sake of context. By now, it is clear that Lucy is no regular cat (or cow, for that matter). Indeed she has many odd nuances to her persona—nuances to which the Roommate refers as “charms” and “cute quirks,” but which I more objectively term “mutant adaptations,” “delusional pathologies,” or else “satanic excesses” when it involves paranormal activity. One of these delusional pathologies pertains to Lucy’s crazed feline addiction to plastic, or more specifically, the licking of plastic. Plastic shower curtains. Plastic litter box liner. Plastic cereal bag in the garbage bin. And yes, plastic shopping bags. Oh, plastic shopping bags. If you have not seen Lucy for the last half hour or so, odds are she is in some random corner experiencing ecstasy with a shopping bag. But probably not, otherwise you would hear it, because Lucy also has this irritating way of sounding like she has mad cow disease whenever she finds a plastic bag. Some of the most joyful moments of my post-moving-in-with-The-Roommate life involve entering a room, only to find Lucy on the brink of suffocation, deep inside the recesses of some Target or CVS bag—her addiction is so self-destructive she doesn’t even realize when she is killing herself. Or maybe (hopefully) that is the plan all along. There have been several occasions I have suggested having a group intervention to set Lucy straight about her addiction. We could invite the neighbors, some mutual friends, The Gray Tabby, and maybe Snowflake, my suicidal stuffed cat that Lucy once made friends with before realizing it was not real. But whenever I try to help Lucy recognize her problem, the Roommate always manages to get in the way (cough, cough, ENABLING, cough).
Whatever the case, when I walked into Lucy’s lair in search of what little remained of Mr. Penguin, I was walking in not only on an episode between Lucy and Mr. Penguin, but I had temporarily forgotten that Mr. Penguin was not just any penguin. He was a plastic penguin. Thus I walked in on the closest thing Lucy will ever have to a full blown ethical dilemma. She was trapped between her life principle of disdaining birds and killing them on the one hand, and her other life principle of being codependent on plastic ecstasies on the other hand (well, ok, the other paw). Lucy had Mr. Penguin’s head trapped safely within her clenched paw, with claws sunk deeply into his left eye. Every now and then she’d fling her paw around, as though trying to break his neck and further gauge his eyes out, afraid he’d fly away. (Lucy does not have much experience with penguins, otherwise she’d know penguins can’t even fly away. Not even to save their lives innocent penguin lives. She should have known that, and she should have had mercy.) But then, in a flight of desperation, she’d reel her paw back in to smother that same arctic bird in licks, the obsessional licks that Lucy only bestows upon her plastic lovers. This continued, and continued, and continued—and I could only assume the process had been going on for hours, because Lucy tends to lose all grip on time, space and reality when plastic is involved. It occurred to me I was witnessing a mythological and existential struggle that could well nigh become eternal, like that one mythological character whose eternal punishment is to drag a boulder up a mountain until it falls back down the mountain, and then drag it up again. Ad infinitum.
Of course, I didn’t waste all that much time troubling myself by that because, only moments later, it also occurred to me that this was a situation worthy of The Spraybottle. Since the Roommate has specified in the terms of our custody agreement of Lucy that I am not allowed to use The Spraybottle on Lucy unless there is a justifiable reason (further specifying that my “fun” and “enjoyment” are not justifiable reasons), I am always on the lookout for Spraybottle-esque opportunities. Surely mammal-murder fit the bill (I forget if penguins are mammals, but needed a bit of alliteration to make my point. Lucy has probably murdered many mammals anyway, either in reality or her delusional psychosis, so I don’t think I’m too out of line in asserting that.) The end to this story is not pretty, so I will spare you of the details. Suffice it to say, the Spraybottle was utilized, there was running, meowing and giddy laughter involved. The scattered remains of Mr. Penguin were thereafter collected, being given an honorable burial at sea (toilet), only because a burial at polar icecap ocean was not feasible.
As I watched Mr. Penguin float (swirl) away from me, something occurred to me. It was the 27th December. For anyone familiar with the Orthodox Christian calendar, this day of course is the commemoration of St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian Church. His death is recorded in the book of Acts. As he is stoned by the Pharisees, he commends his spirit to God, asking Him to forgive the murderers of their actions. It is a moving testimony of mercy and leniency.
I could only wonder if Lucy had selected that day, the 27th of December, out of all the other days, to massacre Mr. Penguin, henceforth deemed The Penguin Martyr. The first Penguin martyred in the church. I could only wonder if she found some kind of sick pleasure in his martyrdom, as the Pharisees had found in St. Stephen’s death. I could only wonder if Mr. Penguin, with his last breaths, had asked God to forgive Lucy her heinous actions. Part of me hoped he hadn’t, because then I’d have to forgive Lucy, too. And wondering whether I could forgive Lucy is like wondering whether I could forgive Satan for being Satan. I mean, what kind of sick cat orchestrates a systematic killing of a gummy penguin who had done nothing to harm her? But knowing Mr. Penguin, he had most definitely forgiven Lucy in his heart. Surely Mr. Penguin is just a better penguin than I’ll ever be. I can only pray to one day live up to his Penguin footsteps. Amen.
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Editor's Notes:
After subjecting this essay to the most rigorous fact-checking standards, a few substantive comments are warranted. First, contrary to dominant public opinions on the matter, penguins are not mammals--they are birds, on account of laying eggs and having a coat of feathers rather than fur. Any first grader who pays attention during animal class can attest to this. Secondly, penguins do have beaks but they are black, not orange. Aside from these significant details, the remaining story is objectively and verifiably true.
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