Chapter 8: Is It Meg?
A/N: Golden Sun Dragoon gave me the idea for this, too. You can see this in the reviews. Thanks again, GSD. That's a great idea I hadn't considered.
Joe rang the doorbell to the Griffins' house. Lois opened the door. "Ah, Joe! Great to see you," she said.
"Lois, this is a serious matter involving Meg," Joe said somewhat grimly. Lois looked as though she were about to cry. Joe acted almost as though he were going to say he found her dead. "A few weeks ago, Cleveland, Quagmire, and I were chatting in the street, and we saw Meg leave the house. She had a bunch of suitcases and stuff with her. She told us that she was going to her friend's for a sleepover. I think that she was running away."
"Oh-no!" panicked Lois. "She couldn't have gone to a sleepover! She had no friends!" Lois cried. "Excuse me a minute, Joe. I'll be right back." She quickly ran upstairs to Meg's room to see if her suitcases were indeed gone. As it turned out, not only were Meg's suitcases gone, but nearly her whole room was gone! She hadn't noticed that before. The room was stripped bare of nearly everything except the bed, the hamster, and the other pieces of furniture.
Lois then went downstairs again. "Peter! Brian! Stewie! I think I know what happened to Meg. She must have ran away!"
"Sweet!" Peter said. "Now we can start over again and have a girl that's actually likeable, pretty, and not boring."
"Peter, shut up," Brian said. "I think you're being too hard on Meg."
Lois went back up to Joe. "Oh, thank you for telling me this," she said. "Have you seen her since that time?"
"I'm afraid not," Joe said. "But I'm a cop. It's my job to be on the lookout for missing people. I'll even ask some of the neighbors if they've seen her."
"Thanks," Lois said.
The next day, Peter and Brian were in the kitchen. Brian was reading the newspaper, while Peter was chowing on some Oreos. "Hey, Brian, I wonder what happened to Meg?"
"She apparently ran away, Peter. We discovered that yesterday," Brian said, shocked by Peter's idiocy.
"Yeah, but I mean, where'd she go?" Peter asked.
"Why do you care?" Brian asked. "You never really liked her anyway. You were always calling her a boy and ugly and stupid. So why do you care so much now?"
Peter stared at Brian blankly for a moment. "I'm sorry, did I just say something?" Peter asked. "Agh! I've been having a lot of these random, weird blackouts lately. I'm never aware of when I say something I don't mean."
(Flashback: 2 months ago, day care center. Peter opens the door to Stewie's classroom to pick him up. "Hey, Stewie!" Peter said, "Daddy's here!" "Oh, yes, hello, father," Stewie said. Then, the teacher walked up to Peter. "Stewie has been a very naughty little boy, lately! Look at these drawings that he drew!" the teacher exclaimed. The pictures were of Stewie hanging Peter, Lois, and Meg. Surprisingly, Brian and Chris weren't in the picture. In another picture, Stewie is wearing a devil's attire, and there are flames covered with Nazi symbols. Peter blacked out, though, and stared into deep space. "Mr. Griffin? Are you paying attention?" the teacher asked. "Huh?" Peter snapped out of the blackout. "Oh, sorry. It's just one of those weird blackouts I've had lately. "Father…" Stewie started, "where do babies come from?" At that moment, all the children looked at Peter attentively. "Stewie! No! Bad boy!" the teacher said. "Oh, that's easy!" Peter said. Then, Peter explained loudly in detail everything about sex. All the children stood with their mouths open, except for Stewie, who grinned broadly, knowing he'd gotten Peter in trouble. "Mr. Griffin!" the teacher yelled. "Huh? Sorry. Another blackout," Peter said. Flashback ends.)
Just then, there was someone at the door knocking. "I'll get it," Peter yelled. Peter walked to the front door and opened the door. Quagmire stood in the doorway. "Hey, Quag, what's up?"
"Uh, Peter, get Lois, Chris, Brian, and Stewie. I have something to tell you all," Quagmire said.
"Sure," Peter said. "Oh, but, Chris is dead."
"He is? Sorry about that," Quagmire said. Peter then called Lois and the other remaining family members downstairs. They waited for Quagmire to start speaking. "I heard that you all were looking for Meg," he started. In his mind, he told himself to be careful. While standing in front of the Griffins, he felt conscious about what he'd tried to do to Meg several nights earlier. He had to be careful nothing slipped out. "And I happened to be walking through the forest, when I saw Meg!"
Lois perked up and looked extremely happy. "You found Meg? Oh, thank you so much, Glen! Come on, Peter. Let's follow Quagmire!"
Everyone followed Quagmire down the street and through the woods. Eventually, Quagmire led them to a wooden cabin with some small windows. He then opened the door and revealed a girl that looked very similar to Meg. However, this girl had red hair, her glasses were square, rather than round, and she wore a green headcap and shirt, unlike Meg's pink headcap and shirt.
"Hey, thanks, Quagmire! We found Meg! Come on, sweetie. Let's get you home and throw you down the stairs a few times…just like the good old days," Peter said, grabbing the girl.
"Let go of me, you tyrant!" the girl said with a strange accent. The girl sounded nothing like Meg.
"Glen, this isn't Meg. It's some other girl we don't know," Lois said. "What's your name, sweetheart?"
"I'm Gem," the girl said.
"Hey, Lois, I've got an idea. If we can't find the real Meg, let's just take this girl as a replacement. Huh. She'll probably be more interesting, anyway."
"Peter, enough," Lois said. "We're not going to stop looking for Meg." She then turned to Quagmire. "Oh well, you tried, although I have to admit, I don't see why you couldn't tell the difference between this girl and the real Meg."
"Well, you know, I've done so many girls it's hard for me to remember specific physical characteristics. I even tried to do her once," Quagmire said, letting his secret slip out.
"What?" Lois barked. "What did you say?"
Quagmire quickly found a way to avoid trouble. "Yes. I even tried to do her a favor once. She wanted me to carry her groceries home." The family looked very confused.
"Okayy…" Peter said. Then, Quagmire and the Griffins left the forest and returned home, hoping they would eventually find Meg.