the bird on fire

Student Fiction

By 7th-Grade Blogger Mark Huber

The first story by Mark Huber where the pigs* have legs

NOTE: I know I suck at making a soccer ball in Google Drawings. But I will not allow myself to use an image instead. Just bear with me.

*When I say pigs I mean anthropomorphic creatures that act exactly like humans but are actually pigs without bodies so their limbs are attached to their heads and they each come in a different color. 

Oof. I just got hit by a soccer ball. And this is why you should always wear pads when playing goalie in soccer.

People came rushing up to me. They were all asking me if I was okay and stuff.

“Mark, you okay?” said a boy named Luke.

“What happened, Mark?” said a girl named Emily.

“Bro, what like, happened, bruh? The bruh who kicked that ball is not sigma, bruh,” said another boy named Jackson.

“I’m fine,” I said, feeling totally not fine. And I bet I sure didn’t look fine.

“Mark, you do not look fine,” said Reagan. (Reagan is my best friend.)

“Okay,” I said.

“Look, bruh, there’s like a big rock falling from the sky, bruh,” said Jackson. Sure enough, I looked up and there was a blippin’ BOULDER falling from the sky. Directly above me. I had some second thoughts about looking up because my face probably would’ve been better preserved had I not looked up.

The boulder fell on me.

I am stuck under this boulder which dug some three feet into the ground. Gee, I wonder how good a goalie I am stuck under this “big rock,” I thought.

I stayed under the boulder for some time. It felt like a few minutes. I heard some murmuring from my peers, and listened to what they said.

“Bruh, let’s get a backhoe to dig out Mark, bruh.” That was most likely Jackson.

“I’m not your ‘bruh.’ But, sure, we could get a backhoe. We could use it to dig out Mark.” That was probably Reagan. I know the sound of her voice.

“I KNEW my plan was sigma!” said Jackson. Then I heard some beeping. Sounded like someone dialing a phone number. Then Reagan started talking and listening. Talking and listening. Reagan hung up. I waited a couple hours. Then I heard a really big rumbling noise.

Some dirt began moving next to me. Then the boulder shifted, and I was out of its hold.

I climbed out of the hole and stretched. It felt nice not to be so cramped under that boulder. I looked at my left arm. For some reason, half my forearm wasn’t extended when I stretched. In fact, it was in a position that bones restrict it from being in. Then I had a sudden realization.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!” I shrieked.

I realized I had broken my arm.

“Oooohhhwuuuhh,” I mumbled. Then I fainted.

I woke up in a hospital bed. You know, I think I’ve woken up in too many hospital beds. There was that time I fell into a ravine skiing, and I subsequently woke up in a hospital bed. There was also the time I was struck by a flying desk which rendered me unconscious, and I woke up in a hospital bed. In fact, that was the first time out of many. Anyway, when I woke up in this hospital bed, I had half a banana hanging out of my mouth. David was giggling. Ptooey, I spit it out, and David caught it.

“Now you gotta eat that, David,” I said.

He shook his head with a stupid smile on his face.

“Okay, fine, whatever. Gimme that,” I replied. I ate it.

Monkey Mark (that’s what I call Mark from Earth) came into the room.

“Hi. I came to visit you, Domesticus,” said Monkey Mark. He calls me Domesticus because the scientific name for pigs is “Sus scrofa domesticus,” and “domesticus” sounds funny to say. (He calls David “Domesticavid,” and my parents “Sus mom” and “Sus dad.” They don’t care.)

“How was traffic?” I asked.

“You have no idea how hard it was to get here. I had to dodge an entire asteroid belt, and then I kept nearly missing planets, and then on the other side of the wormhole I had to do it again, and then trying to find you was super hard because everyone was getting scared of me, which got me really uncomfortable, and then the hospital tried to dial 911 on me, and they wouldn’t let me see you, and on top of that, I’ve got the military on edge, so I’m lucky to be alive,” he said.

“Well then, I should welcome you to a strange, often confusing place, called the United States of America,” I said. Monkey Mark laughed.

“You should go now,” said Mom.

“Yeah,” said David, “Monkey Mom and Monkey Dad must really be missing you right now.”

“Okay, Domesticavid,” said Monkey Mark. David giggled.

We all said our goodbyes to Monkey Mark. Huggy huggy. Kissy kissy. Blah blah blah. That’s basically all it was.

And then we went home.

The next day…

I played soccer again.

I know I shouldn’t be playing soccer until my arm heals, but I want to redeem myself and actually stop a ball from going into the net. Last time I played, all I did was jump out of the way because I didn’t want to get hit until I actually got hit.

I watched the game going on at the other end. Chester was the goalie for the other team. Jackson kicked the ball to Timmy; Timmy kicked it into the net, right past Chester. Chester got to kick the ball. And, in case you didn’t know, Chester has a powerful kick. So powerful, in fact, that he kicked the ball all the way to me. I watched it come to me. And I waited. Aaaaaaaaand…. I caught it. Everyone cheered. I don’t know why, but everyone at this school (which is Rancho Mirage Middle and High School) can’t get enough of me. Except for Chris. One second of me is way, way, way, too much of me for him. But anyway, when I caught that ball, everyone cheered for me. Because they like me.

I got to kick the ball back out onto the field again. I held it in my hands. I gently tossed it in the air, and right before it hit the ground, I kicked it as hard as I could. I kicked more powerfully than Chester did, somehow. It went sailing into the air. It went way over Chester and his net. It went flying through the air, and then it started going down, faster and faster, and it finally hit. But the most important thing is that the ball didn’t hit the ground. It hit the name of the school. The thing tilted a little to the side, and then it fell off of the building. Onto a car. Not just any car, though. It was the principal’s car. And then the ball hit another car, and another car, and another, and it kept bouncing onto cars. Then it finally stopped in the middle of the parking lot.

I thought things couldn’t get worse, but then a car drove over the ball, and then the car flipped upside down. Thus began another marathon of the ball repeatedly hitting random cars. Then a different car ran into the upside-down car, and the ball finally bounced back into the soccer field, and it rolled all the way back to me.

“Uh, bye,” I said. And then I ran back to the school building.

When I finally got back to the building, I opened the door only to see a very, very mad Principal Pearhead. Mr. Pearhead always looks mad, but that’s just the way his face is. And he’s also sort of yellowish green and shaped like a pear and has a little thing of brown hair on his head so he always looks like an angry pear. Normally, it’s really funny to see him, because, you know, angry pear, but it’s not funny when you know he’s actually mad at someone and that someone is you.

“MaaaAAAAAAAAAAAARRRK! You are in big, big trouble, young man!!!” yelled Mr. Pearhead. 

“Hi. What’s up, Mr. Pearhead?” I said.

“I DON’T WANNA HEAR A ‘WHAT’S UP’ FROM YOU!!! Look at my car! Look at all of the cars! Look at the SIGN! What do you have to say for yourself, Mark?”

“Uh, I have to pee.”

Mr. Pearhead gave me a withering look.

“Uhh… Oh, I know what you want! You want some car insurance! Eh?” I said.

Mr. Pearhead leaned forward into me with that withering look, forcing me to lean backwards. I sighed.

“Okay. What I have to say is ‘Oopsie’.”

Then I ran off to pee.

And tossed him the car insurance company’s business card.

I heard him explode as I ran down the hallway. Yes, pigs can explode just from pure anger. Just like I did back when I ate that “hot dog” and I got super mad at David. Okay, anyway, I went to pee. And you’re not gonna see an image of me peeing.

When I got out of the bathroom, I heard an announcement on the PA:

“SCHOOL’S BEEN CANCELLED FOR TODAY!!! NOW GET OUT!!! AND YOU CAN THANK MARK’S DESTRUCTIVE SHENANIGANS FOR THIS EARLY RELEASE!!!

Everyone turned to me.

And started patting me on the back.

“Whoa, Mark!” said a girl named Natalie.

“I didn’t know you canceled school for today!” said an odd boy named Billy who always wore a popcorn bin on his head.

“Bro, let me ask Mark a question!” said Jackson, pushing his way through the back-patters. “Bro, Mark, how did you like, cancel school, bruh?”

“I kicked a soccer ball,” I said.

“Wait, kicking soccer balls cancels school? Bro, you should do that every day, Mark!” said Jackson.

“No, wait, that’s not really how it works,” I said, because kicking soccer balls doesn’t necessarily cancel school. Unless the soccer ball hits a giant sign which falls on the principal’s car. And then the ball bounces on a million other cars and flips some more cars upside down.

After school, when I was in the car with my mom going home, she asked what happened at the school.

“I kicked a soccer ball,” I said again. “And that soccer ball hit the sign which said the name of the school, and then the sign fell on the principal’s car, and the soccer ball then bounced on a million other cars, causing the roofs of the cars to be damaged, and when the ball finally stopped, another car ran it over and that car flipped upside down, and the ball got propelled to the top of another car, and the ball started bouncing on more cars, and then yet another car ran into the upside-down car, and then the soccer ball finally came back to me.”

“A soccer ball did that?” asked Mom.

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“Huh,” said Mom.

We sat in silence for the remainder of the drive.

When we got home, I decided to kick a soccer ball around in the backyard. David came a few minutes later.

“Hey Mark, whatcha doing?” he asked.

“Kicking a soccer ball. Wanna try?” I asked. 

“Sure!” said David.

He kicked it around like I did. Then he picked it up, tossed it in the air, and kicked it right before it hit the ground.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“What?” said David.

“That’s the exact kind of kick that almost got me expelled from school.”

“What do you mean?”

But David soon found out what I meant.

The ball went over the wall separating our backyard from someone else’s.

“GAAHH!!! There’s a SOCCER BALL in my POOL!!!” yelled the guy on the other side of the wall. 

He threw it back over the wall, but the ball went way over our house. Then it hit the roof of someone’s car.

“Here we go again,” I said.

The End!