Hedgehogs

Penelope was walking down the sidewalk when suddenly a hedgehog jumped out of a tree and landed right on her shoulder. Annoyed, she swatted it away.

She walked a few more feet and another hedgehog dropped out of another tree. Slightly more annoyed, she swatted this one away as well.

She walked five more feet and then two hedgehogs dropped onto her shoulders. She was starting to become angry. She pushed them off of her, took a deep breath, and kept walking along the narrow sidewalk.

She walked yet another few feet when not two but three hedgehogs jumped out at her. She looked ahead of her and, losing hope of getting to her destination without meeting more hedgehogs, kept walking as hedgehog after hedgehog piled on top of her shoulders and head. She could tell it was going to be the longest walk of her life. 

A Rhino in the African Savannah

Penelope stood inside of the large conference center, looking out the window at the people outside. A large group of her friends were standing in a circle, engrossed in a serious conversation. Penelope decided to go outside and join the discussion.

Just as she crossed the threshold leading from inside to outside, however, she found herself transported to a grassy African Savannah. She was on a winding dirt path that led throughout the tall, dry grass. She began walking nervously, slowly at first and then faster and faster as she became more panicked. She came to the edge of a clearing and suddenly, a large rhinoceros came charging out of the grass on one side of the clearing and began furiously running in circles and snorting. Penelope was terrified. Apparently the Rhino could smell fear, because it charged at Penelope, who immediately began running away from the rhino down the winding dirt path.  She ran and ran and ran until she wasn't sure she could run any more, when suddenly a local tribesman burst out from the tall grass on either side of th path. The man grabbed the rhino's horn, and began speaking Spanish to it. The Rhino calmed down instantly and refrained from charging and snorting. Penelope felt much more at home in the African Savannah after that.

Death of a Mechanic

Penelope was on a space station; she wasn't sure where it was, exactly, but she thought it was somewhere near the moon. She was part of a large group of space travelers. She was in a souvenir shop there with some friends when the manager got a phone call. "Low fuel?" he said, a terrified look spreading across his face.

Suddenly he announced "Everything is fine, but you all need to get out of the shop immediately." Everyone got out and the manager turned the lights off and shut the door behind them.

Penelope and the other travelers gathered in a large room together. The windows were getting covered with a thick frost, almost like they were covered with snow. Penelope noticed two mechanics in a far corner, working on something. Penelope crawled over to see what was going on. One of them picked up his cell phone and called someone. "Hey baby," he said, "I love you. Goodbye." Penelope didn't understand why he was saying that. Hadn't everyone been telling them this was common? Nothing to worry about?

Another traveler near Penelope asked the other mechanic "oh no...is he going to stab himself?" Penelope was apalled. "How in the world is that a logical conclusion?" she wondered to herself. But the mechanic just nodded, slowly and sadly, as the one with the cell phone pulled something out of his pocket and stabbed himself with it. Penelope would never forget the way the dead mechanic was taken away on a makeshift stretcher and then launched out into space. But there wasn't really another form of burial here in space. It had to be done.

The space station began to rock back and forth, throwing the passengers around violently. Penelope was scared. Were they all going to die here after all? Why else would that mechanic have killed himself?

But soon, things went back to normal and everyone returned safely to Earth.

Settling

Penelope was sitting in a room--she didn't know exactly where she was--waiting to have dinner with the man she was going to marry tonight. Weddings should be a happy occasion, but Penelope wasn't happy. On the contrary, she felt quite depressed. This marriage was arranged, and the man she was supposed to marry was way too old for her.

And for some reason which Penelope could not figure out, there were glowsticks of every color scattered around the room. It kind of creeped her out.

Penelope suddenly had a desire to speak with her mother. She called for her, and when she arrived at the room Penelope said "Mom, I don't think I should marry him. I feel like I'm settling," to which her mother replied "Well yeah, you sure are!" and then walked away. Penelope wished her mother had told her this a long time ago. It would have been nice to know this before her wedding day.

Just then, he walked into the room. He sat down near the food and began eating and talking happily. This went on for a long time, Penelope wasn't sure exactly how long, before she worked up the courage to say something. She just couldn't go on watching him act so happy about the marriage while she was sitting there dreading it.

"Stop!" Penelope cried, "I can't be married to you..." Tears streamed down her face. His face instantly wore a look of shock, confusion, and hurt. Penelope began frantically explaining herself. "It's just that...my life is just beginning. I'm young, I need someone my own age! I have big dreams, I'll never accomplish them if I marry you now..." He got up and left the room silently.

The next day (or perhaps it was the next week, next month, or next year-- Penelope couldn't be sure) Penelope stood in the large warehouse where she worked. All day, all she could think of was how he hadn't said a word to her since she called off the wedding. She felt very relieved, but wished she knew what he'd been thinking. 

She looked up from her work, and right there in the middle of the warehouse stood a horse and buggy. Next to it stood an attractive cowboy who bore an uncanny resemblance to Jim from The Office.

Next thing Penelope knew, she and the Jim cowboy were riding off into a dusty Western sunset. Somehow, Penelope knew things would be okay after all.

Sleeping in a Pile

Penelope sat in a crowded dorm room. Someone near her, who upon closer inspection she realized was her friend Zee, looked at her and said "We're going on a field trip to the park. Come with!"

"I guess that could be fun..." was Penelope's hesitant reply. She became intensely aware now that she did not know anyone in the room apart from Zee. She regretted saying she'd go to the park because groups of strangers made her nervous, but she didn't want to look like a boring stick-in-the-mud so she decided to go along anyways.

Suddenly, everyone got up and started walking out of the room. Penelope stood up and began walking out too, but soon realized that gravity was failing her. She couldn't seem to keep her feet on the ground for more than a couple of seconds. Every step she took launched her into the air so that she was more floating than walking. How embarassing, thought Penelope, I've just met these people and the first thing they find out about me is that I can't even walk properly.

Penelope struggled to keep up with the group. She exited the building a considerable distance behind everyone else to find that they were all boarding a large school bus. She tried to run, but the lack of gravity kept her from going any faster. Then, by accidentally tripping and hurtling into a flip high in the air, she discovered that she could travel much faster by flipping than by walking.

Penelope flipped her way down the sidewalk, caught up to the group, and boarded the bus.

Later, Penelope found herself in some sort of enclosed space which was too small for the number of people crammed inside. She didn't really recognize anyone in this box-like space, either, and Zee was nowhere to be found. She felt like her own body was far too close to the others' bodies, and her face was right next to some guy's face that she didn't recognize. She was beginning to feel very uncomfortable with how close and how stuck she was with all these strangers. Wow, this must be what it was like for the Wild Things when they slept in a pile, thought Penelope.

All of a sudden, the guy whose face was far too close to her own moved his head a few centimeters toward Penelope's and kissed her on the cheek. She looked at him, about to lecture him that it's just not okay to go around kissing girls you've never met before, and realized that he did look a little bit familiar. And for some reason, though she still couldn't quite tell who he was, she felt a little bit more okay that he'd just kissed her.

But Penelope never figured out who he was.

To Solve the Unsolvable Mystery

Penelope and The Doctor sat in a small rowboat, floating aimlessly in a swampy little pond. The sky was gray, the water was completely still, and the pond was surrounded on all sides by thick brush and weeping willows that hung over, making the atmosphere dim and eerie. The Doctor shot a small, missile-like object into the water, and suddenly the entire pond was visible all the way to the bottom. Beneath them were hundreds of boat-like objects, going down hundreds of feet. Penelope couldn't believe how deep this tiny pond was.

The Doctor looked down in horror and said "They're breeding! But why here?" Penelope, as usual, didn't know who "they" were or even where "here" was, but sometimes she didn't care. Sometimes she was too distracted by The Doctor's adorable accent and frantic, quirky personality. And she knew she could trust him. She thought to herself that she probably should care, because they could be absolutely anywhere and anytime in the universe right now. But she just didn't.

Suddenly, The Doctor stood up, pulling Penelope up with him. "Come on!" he said, with that adventurous, excited, righteously angry look on his face. Penelope knew that look. They were about to do something dangerous. Just as she thought this, The Doctor pulled her out of the boat and toward the water. In the split second before she hit the water, Penelope's trust in The Doctor wavered a little and she wanted to scream at him "I can't breathe under water! I know you're an alien and maybe you can, but I can't!" But before she had a chance, they were swimming beneath the boat--and to Penelope's surprise, she could breathe. Somehow, things usually worked out well when she was with The Doctor. But that didn't stop her from having moments of gripping fear, because while The Doctor sometimes knew what he was doing he never let Penelope in on his plans--and sometimes Penelope wondered if The Doctor ever really knew what he was doing, or if it was just a combination of his quick thinking and a lot of luck that got them out of sticky situations.

The water was surprisingly clear underneath all the pond scum. They were swimming along and Penelope was just starting to enjoy it when suddenly they found themselves in a small room where a large stainless steel freezer stood. There was a huge door on the front side of the freezer, which The Doctor was reaching for. When he opened it, Penelope was horrified to see a dead body begin to slump out the door. The Doctor quickly pushed it back in and closed the door and asked, more to himself than to Penelope, "But why would they do this?"

Penelope wondered why she kept subjecting herself to this kind of thing. But The Doctor was mysterious, and Penelope was determined to solve this unsolvable mystery.

As Visions of Tooth Decay Danced in her Head

Penelope was sitting in the passenger's seat of her dad's red pickup. They had just pulled in the driveway. Penelope had been visiting a couple of good friends, Kel and Lola, for the weekend and had just arrived home. She was happily replaying in her mind the fun things they'd done that weekend and getting progressively more excited to return to campus, where she'd get to see the girls all the time and--suddenly, she realized that she'd made a horrible mistake. She'd forgotten all of her luggage at Kel's house, an hour-and-a-half away. She could picture where she'd left her things--her pink duffel bag sitting next to her pink pillow on a bench near the door, her brown flip-flops on a rug just beside that. But worst of all, Penelope realized in horror, she'd left her prescription-strength fluoride toothpaste in the bottom of her duffel bag, buried beneath dirty clothes and half-eaten packages of Pop Rocks. Visions of a cavity-ridden future filled her with dread. She could almost hear the dentist's drill screeching in her ears.

"Dad," Penelope said, panicked, "Turn around. We're going back."