GARY!

ast year I climbed a high mountain above the valley of salt lake. At its highest point I stumbled across a very strange bug about the size of a cell phone. It was a blender of three different species. A little bit scorpion, a little bit bumblebee and a little bit killer ant. I had never seen anything like it, so I captured it, and I put it in my water bottle. I hurried down the mountain and showed my roommate my new find. I wasn't expecting much from his reaction but I surprised when his eyes lit up and he let out an ohh my god. There was some connection between my roommate and the bug that I could not explain. Perhaps they were both creepy creatures with strange features, or maybe my roommate was just a freak. I don't know, but either way, the connection led into a new friend ship between bug and man.
The love affair started early. Within days of their acquaintance my roommate had already named the bug and gone to pet mart to buy the bug a class cage priced at 20 dollars. With his camera, my roommate blew up a picture of the bug, and placed it on the door, with a clever statement below it. " Yep he lives here." On any normal day my roommate would burst into the room and acknowledge the bug before me. " Hey there Gary, how we doin?"
My roommate was eager to share his new friendship with anyone who would listen. " Hey check out this bug, its great. Its just great." My roommate went as far as using the bug as clever disguise to talk with girls. It was the same every time. He would get the girls in the room, they would see Gary, they would shriek, and my roommate would give birth to a goofy smile. He would then relive the experience with me, sometimes over and over.
The whole relationship with the bug and boy was rather pathetic. I figured the novelty wouldn't last long, maybe reach a few weeks and slowly die. But time proved that the relationship was far more deep and powerful then I could ever imagine. The days grew to weeks and the weeks grew to months. After a while the end seemed to be nowhere in sight, but Gary and my roommate weren't prepared for Wednesday.
When Wednesday finally came it was marked on the calendar as a bad day. The workload of school had reached in all time high, my patience for Westminster kids had run dry and the fact that I was in salt lake and couldn't ski became unbearable. I was grumpy and mad at the world on Wednesday. I came back to my room and the picture of Gary on the door with his big ugly head and the words below him "yep he lives here" didn't make me feel any better. I took Gary's picture and ripped it to the ground. The picture was dead but Gary was still on the other side. I opened the door and there like so many days, was Gary in his stinky cage. I looked into his ugly eyes and decided right then and there to kill him. I grabbed his cage and hurried to the balcony outside my room. With a simple shake Gary fell 30 feet to his demise on the cold cement below. The sound of his hard shell cracking wasn't much different than an egg. Garys little legs and pinchers danced until they could no more. I stared at his body for a few moments and then threw the class cage on top of him. The glass shattered and garys food and the sand and rock that were his world scattered across the ground over his dead body. That was the end of the bug named Gary. The bug I found on top of a mountain and could not classify. The bug that smelled and frightened girls. The bug I gave to my roommate. His death was quick and satisfying Wednesday wasnt so bad.


When my roommate finally came to our room he could no longer enjoy his daily ritual. There was no bug waiting for him on the door or on his dresser in a glass cage. Now everyday he would come back to my face, the boy who killed his beloved Gary.
With the murder of his beloved friend my roommate began to hate me. We came from two completely different lifestyles. He was the pure Christian kid who didn't drink, and I was the rebel who ruined himself because he couldn't walk. With the death of Gary my roommate no longer had any excuse to like me.