the tragedy inside

After two bottles of red wine Thursday night the roommate and I decided it'd be a good time to take those rotting pumpkins sitting in the front stairway down to the lake front and chuck them in. They'd been their since our ridiculously out of control Halloween party and were finally starting to rot. The larger of the two had a full fledged black ring seeping from the stem out about a quarter of the way down the pumpkin. 

Somehow I ended up with that one which was just the worst idea in the world because naturally I'm going to want to find out just how rotted out that stem is. 

We got them outside, into the major snowstorm that was currently smacking Milwaukee full in the face and started trekking towards the lake, which is roughly a dozen or so blocks East on a slight upward slant. Fortunately the way back was not uphill also and we did not have to do it barefoot, like in my dad's childhood stories. 

I only made it about two blocks before that ill-fated curiosity got the best of me and I decided it'd be a good time to test that stem out. 


Sometimes I feel like I have an internal Shakespearean play going on somewhere deep in my brain and each of my personality traits are the cast. Unfortunately the fatally flawed character always has to have her way. So, I picked it up.


Not surprisingly the rest of the pumpkin detached itself and fell onto the snowy sidewalk splattering stinking guts and carcass in a gory arch around me. 

The remaining ten blocks were saturated with the rotting scent being emitted from the gaping remains of this body I held in my arms but we did eventually make it to the lake. Or rather a bridge overlooking the lake. Close enough. On the count of three we launched them over our heads into the cold white ditch below us. Despite its misshapen corpse body, mine hit and rolled with thunderous gusto; hers stopped short against the tiniest of saplings, a muted thump swallowed up in the wind. 


We hoped our respective failures of the night weren't bad omens of an impending socially lame situation ahead of us, or perhaps a metaphor for an unfortunately awkward life.