AcmeShorts

An Allegory about Dave and the Block of Ice

Dave sat still on a gigantic block of ice sticking up out of the ground near a wedding reception. The cold seeped up through his anus and into the jambalaya which his guts had dutifully converted into shit. He sighed and lit another cigarette, water dripped into his shoes. He would have piles but he didn't care. Piles were real but weddings, he thought, were imagined. A thin contract between two people who had found someone they could safely resent for the rest of their lives and a two hundred dollar cake. Dave hated funerals too but for different reasons.

His wife found him dead the next day, the block of ice he'd been sitting on had contained a frozen sabre tooth tiger which had reanimated in the humid July night and eaten him. The poor tiger choked on a permanent label attached to Dave's shirt and died. It was pretty sad.