As I sit here,dangling about 4 feet in the air, strung up on an ancient oak tree, all that goes through my mind is so this is how it ends. I peer at the scene unfolding beneath me: little kids chasing after each other on stumpy little legs, tagging each other all the while. Their faces were a picture of absolute bliss. To the right, their mothers were gathered around a hideously iced sheet cake, probably gossiping about the boutique around the corner. Then my eyes fell upon the tool of choice these people intended to end my life with: a baseball bat. This particular number was constructed with lightweight aluminum, silver, with a red lengthwise stripe. Suddenly, fear joined the candy that currently occupied my belly.
A few seconds later, one of the mothers, a tall one with blonde ringlets wearing a flowered sundress, motioned to the children to come and enjoy the cake. I drew a sharp intake of breath, because I knew what happened after the cake. It was all too soon when the children finished singing the "Happy Birthday" song, devoured their cake, and began stumbling over each other's feet towards where I hung.
Once all the kids were lined up like ducklings, another one of the mothers crowned the one whom I had assumed was the birthday boy with a blindfold. Then she spun him around, while all the other people chanted. Then, the woman handed him the tool of my demise, and he wobbled over to where I hung. When he swung the first time, he missed. A swing and a miss, I narrated inside my head.
He did not miss a second time.
A searing pain shot through my side as the bat made contact. The kids cheered, and the mothers cooed. Unlike them, I did not find their murderous intents amusing.
The kid swung a third, fourth, fifth until my belly broke open and candy spilled out onto the grass.
The last thing I saw before the world went black was a perfect, buttery yellow dandelion, the cruel taunt of Life in the face of Death.
