Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25170312-20150725025222

''Just cooked this one up. Let me know how it tastes.''

It was the last week of summer before high school. Owen and I were kind of dreading it so we tried to squeeze all the fun we could from the few remaining days of our sad childhood. We were out riding bikes when we spotted a massive field of dandelions. Owen stopped short, gazing out at the meadow with a puzzled expression.

"What the..." he said as he dismounted, carelessly abandoning his ride.

I stopped as well, but stayed on my bike. "What's wrong?"

"Dude, this field wasn't here before." Owen was known to make stuff up like that because I was gullible, but he seemed genuinely surprised. I didn't normally ride around that particular area, so I wouldn't notice if a field of dandelions sprung up out of nowhere.

"The whole field?" I asked.

"The dandelions," he replied, "I went by here last week and it was just grass."

I wasn't sure if he was lying at this point, but it didn't seem odd to me that dandelions could grow that fast. It was more amazing than strange. Then again, I knew nothing about that kind of thing. Stuff like that was more interesting to Owen.

"Is that normal?"

"I don't know," he said, "This field's always been just grass. I've never seen dandelions here before, and now they're everywhere."

"Hey, let's lay in the middle of the field and watch the clouds," I suggested. Owen obliged and we ran out into the sea of yellow, collapsing onto a gentle cushion of weeds. Everything was peaceful in that meadow. I rarely appreciated moments like that, as I was mostly an indoor kid.

"I love how the clouds move reeeaaally sloooowly," I said.

Of course, Owen had to correct me, "Dude, the earth is moving, not the clouds."

"Yeah, but it looks cool."

"Yeah."

We'd been laying there for a few minutes when I had the sudden urge to pick a dandelion and do that thing we used to do when we were kids. I placed my thumb under the head and prepared to fire, but not before singing that little ditty that went along with it.

"Mama had a baby and its head popped off!"

And with a little flick of my thumb, the head of the dandelion shot off and landed on Owen's glasses. We both started cracking up.

"Dude, that's so fucked up," he said, still laughing, "Didn't your mom like just have a baby?"

"Oh, shit! You're right!" I laughed even harder at the extreme inappropriateness of what I had just said. Owen didn't want to be left out, so he picked his own dandelion and proceeded to decapitate it.

"Mama had a baby and its head popped off!"

Next, we did it in unison.

"Mama had a baby and its head popped off!"

After a few more it became boring, as it had so many times before.

"Let's go," said Owen, "I'm hungry."

The sun was just starting to go down when I got back to my house. I ditched my bike in the garage and headed inside, hoping dinner would be ready soon. As I stepped into the kitchen I heard my mother scream from upstairs. I ran to see what was happening and found her in the baby's room, standing over the crib, holding my little sister.

"Mom?" I didn't get a reply. She just stood there trembling. As I crept closer to the crib, I noticed the blood dripping onto the carpet. I looked to the precious little body in my mother's hands, then to the tiny head still resting on the pillow.



''Now that you've read it, do you think it should end here or have a little epilogue? Should I make more of a connection between the dandelions and the baby? I kind of like it how it is, but I'm mulling over different possibilites.'' 