My Very Own Pet
K.R. Hager

 

Today is the best day

of my life. Easily. It’s even better than my birthday because my birthday is so predictable. I mean, it’s the same day every year and I get weird sweaters and books I don’t want to read but I have to because “they build character.” To be honest, some of these books are kind of weird, so I’m not sure what type of “character” I’m supposed to be building. But today is downright epic because today I got my own pet.

 

Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. I’ve been after my parents for years about it. I’ve drawn pictures of pets from aardvarks to unicorns; I’ve sized out leashes and collars and picked out food bowls that I think my pet would like; I’ll admit I sold out a bit of my dignity and did some begging of my parents, too. They finally said that if I got all A’s for a whole year – a whole bloomin’ year – I could get a pet. So guess what I did? That’s my report card on the front seat – I brought it with me to remind Mom just in case she tries to wriggle out with adult excuses. She didn’t try, but from the way her eyes kept widening and scrunching as I picked out my pet, I know she wanted to.

 

But here I am holding my new pet. His name is Chubby and he’s curled up into a tight little ball of fluffy fur. I don’t want to wake him up, but he’s so soft that I just have to rub my face against him. He stretches his legs as I poke him into wakefulness. Tell me he isn’t the cutest pet. You can’t, can you? No, because that would be a lie.

 

I’m not sure Mom agrees.

 

“What about a kitten, honey?” she said as I had studied the checklist. There were so many boxes and I wanted to make sure that I chose just the right ones. After all, I was only getting one chance at selecting a pet.

 

“Nah, three kids in my class already have cats,” I said. I looked at the title that read: Heads. I marked box one. Sigh of relief from Mom.

 

“A puppy? You could take a dog out to the park and play fetch.”

 

“Four kids have dogs. I don’t want a pet that’s the same as everybody else’s.”

 

“No, I don’t suppose you would,” she muttered.

 

I marked box twenty under species. A sharp intake of breath from Mom. But that’s when my brother Gregor started complaining that he wanted to mark boxes, too. He’s five and his whining can quickly boil into heaving sobs. Kindergarten didn’t cure him of that, but first grade probably will. So he was in the middle of the store working up a good whine and Mom hurried over to scold him and get him under control. I happily finished checking boxes.

 

I handed the form to the man at the counter and he looked at the form and then at me and then at Mom. His look said, “Really?” and Mom’s look was, “Well, I should have been more careful with what I promised.”

 

“Um, kid, are you sure this is the pet that you want? I mean, you want to go back and look at your choices again?” the man asked me and I found it irritating that he thought I didn’t know what I was doing. But I still had to be polite.

 

“No, that’s all right, thank you. I’m sure that’s the pet that I want.”

 

“All right. It’s just that most little girls want puppies or unicorns.” He said it to me but was looking at Mom as if trying to help her.

 

“Well, I really wanted a unicorn at first,” I admitted, “but Dad said we don’t have the room.”

 

“What about a small unicorn?” Mom suggested. A few weeks ago that might have been intriguing, but I had spent a lot of hours designing my pet from nose to tail. I had even been drawing pictures of it so that I would know exactly how I wanted it to look.

 

“We can do that,” the employee said. “We’ll just change this box here to -.”

 

“No thanks. What would I do with a small unicorn? I wouldn’t be able to ride it.”

 

“And what are you going to do with this pet?” he asked.

 

“This one I can pet and it can sleep in my bed. See? For the section titled: Fur, I chose boxes two and seven – soft and smooth.” Then I added, “I also chose short for the length so there wouldn’t be a lot for you to vacuum off the floor.”

 

“How thoughtful,” Mom answered but it was a hollow sort of voice so I don’t think she realized that I was trying to be conscientious about my choices.

 

“Well, at least under the personality section she marked box one: dog-like,” the man tried as he kept talking to Mom. “It’ll be friendly.”

 

But Mom had resigned herself by then and just told the man, “Go ahead and run the data in the generator. I promised her whatever pet she wanted as long as it was friendly and not too big. Now I know why lawyers put fine print on everything.”

 

“Brave woman,” he muttered as he took my form into a room behind a locked, shiny metal door. That was really the most exciting part; that door was so perfectly polished and so heavily locked that I knew amazing science – something so scientific that it would almost taste like magic – was happening. He went behind that door and I looked up at the clock and began fidgeting as we counted down for an hour.

 

It was an hour exactly before the employee returned from the mysterious realm from beyond the shiny door. I tried to peer around him to see what was inside, but the door closed too quickly and all I saw was a metal wall; apparently there was a corridor to walk down so people couldn’t see right in. So mysterious!

 

Then, even better, he held out his leather-gloved hands and in it was the little ball of fur I had chosen. I don’t shriek, but this time I nearly did. He handed me the sleeping form of my new pet. Immediately, I held Chubby close to me and buried my face into his fur before holding him away to make sure that he was everything I had requested. I could see that he had all eight legs and a set of pinch claws. His tail curled around  him and ended in a tiny barb. I would have to be careful of that, but I figured it wasn’t much different than being careful of a dog’s teeth or a cat’s claws.

 

“There you go, one furry scorpion, just as you designed,” the man said and I noticed he moved his hands back rather quickly. “He’s going to be tired for a while, so you should let him rest. Then he’ll be hungry. I’m not really sure what a scorpion that size eats, so for convenience sake, I set the generator to design him with a dog’s digestive system. Feed him some kibble and he’ll be good to go.”

 

“Thank you,” Mom said. “Since forewarned is forearmed, how big is this thi- er, pet going to grow?”

 

“Roughly about the size of a St. Bernard. Trust me, it’ll be easier if you just think of this as an eight-legged dog.”

 

“An eight-legged dog with a stinger,” she muttered.

 

“Yes, well, we don’t generate venomous animals except for people with licenses, so he won’t be a poisonous eight-legged dog; he wasn’t generated to have venom glands.”

 

Mom: “Thank God.”

 

So now I have my pet. Chubby is still very sleepy so I am trying to stay calm and not wake him. Mom keeps mumbling about Dad and unicorns. Gregor is in the seat next to me and he keeps trying to pet Chubby but I’ve told him Chubby needs to sleep. Gregor sulked a little bit about that, but now he’s decided that it would be much more fun to start designing his own pet and is coming up with all combinations of legs and body parts and colors.

 

“Just wait,” he tells me with his face a study in smugness, “my pet is going to be so much cooler than yours!”

 

“Oh no!” Mom exclaims, and it’s a good thing we’re at a red light because she puts her head on the steering wheel.

 

I don’t believe Gregor because nothing could be cooler than Chubby. But we’ll see what my brother comes up with; after all, Mom and Dad promised him that if he got straight A’s in all of first grade, he’d get his very own pet, too.

 

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K.R. Hager graduated from the University of California, Davis with majors in History and Classical Civilization. She attended a year of law school at Creighton University before setting out to follow other ambitions. She currently lives with her husband and their dog and is using this opportunity to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. Some of her previous works have appeared in Orion's Child, Anotherealm and FlashShots. Another of her short stories has been accepted for publication by Absent Willow Review.