Balance

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Balance By Nathan Burke Kissimmee College in Kissimmee, Florida was home to the Kissimmee Crocs and their beloved mascot, Smooches. Even though Smooches was an alligator, they claimed she was a crocodile for the sake of alliteration and hoped no one would notice or care. Sigmund, or “Sigs” as he liked to be called, was a philosophy major and avid partygoer, invited or not; on one occasion during a party I was hosting. He would buy cigars for every function; not because he liked the taste or the feeling, but because he thought it was cool, and so he could shout aloud in a desperate struggle for attention, “Sig’s gonna light up a cig.” His orange crew cut had the sex appeal of staring directly into the sun, and his face seemed to be made of some sort of clay; the kind where if punched, it would assume the shape of rippling flesh, the sight of which would be just irritating enough to strike again. Sigmund also liked to vocally use internet lingo. He would abbreviate anything and everything. His conversations were riddled with “lol”s, “brb”s, “omg”s, and the occasional “ttyl.” He used meaningless terms like “holla” and “legit”, “word” and “owned” all too often, and was comfortable with screaming said phrases across an already noisy room, inducing a higher accumulated volume. Occasionally, if extra exposure was needed, he would break out his neon hot pink rimmed sunglasses, the kind kids used to wear in the early 1990s. Wearing his baseball cap askew, he would dance, from the robot to the chicken dance, to whatever unbiased tunes with sufficient bass emitted from the stereo. He would tell barely offensive, borrowed jokes and then immediately apologize for them. “Hey, let’s drink until we can’t feel feelings. Ha-ha, just kidding,” he would say. He would further boast about his intoxication with such phrases as, “I’m pretty drunk, not gonna lie.” There was no real inkling of innovation in his party-time persona. He would regurgitate humorous lines he had heard from popular television shows and movies. Some people enjoyed his company; mostly young girls who often mistook obnoxiousness and shameless grandiosity for entertainment. The boys despised him. He took the attention away from an otherwise stimulating exchange, and more importantly he was an annoyance. Without invitation he would supply a lack of demand on a weekly basis, polluting the space of the humble with gratuitous hollering. He would go to the school cafeteria for dinner and only eat chocolate pudding, claiming it was “the only good thing they had.” He would stir it up with a plastic spoon, making a sound similar to that of a snake applying moisturizer. He would then scoop it into his mouth, smacking his thin lips all the while. Just out of wicked fate he would all too often sit directly behind me, while his one-sided conversations assaulted my ear canal. After their last class of the week, Sigmund and his friend Allison walked back to their respective dorm rooms. It had just so happened that I was walking behind them. It

was late, and their class hadn’t gotten out until 10:20 at night. They usually parted ways near Smooches’ den, but as they did, they thought they’d pay her a visit. Sigs walked up to the feeding deck and fooled around, goofily mimicking falling into the pit and jumping the fence. He didn’t of course, but he did get a cheap chuckle from Allison. After growing bored of taunting the hungry carnivore, they walked away. “See you later, Alligator,” Sigmund said, laughing at his own joke in the process. Allison laughed along, not knowing any better. Sigmund gave her a hug in his familiar longing-to-be-more-than-friends fashion. They went their separate ways, waving goodbye. Sigmund walked up the inclined beaten path of dried muddy footprints along Smooches’ gate. Looking back to wave goodbye to Allison he stepped awkwardly into a dip created by the mud and he twisted and sprained his right ankle. This created a domino effect, where he tried to save himself from falling without looking behind him. He planted his other foot onto the ground that wasn’t there, leaning back into a small crevice in between the gate and the path, breaking his other leg in the process. As his foundation left him he fell backward into the ditch, using his hands behind him for support, the right of which slipped on a wet rock, placing all of his weight on his left forearm, breaking that as well. The bone pierced the skin, drawing blood. Sigmund screams in agony. Another friend of his, a young lady, familiar with his brand of humor, walks by. “Hey, Sigmund. What’s up?” “Kristyn, you have to help me. I can’t move my legs, my arm is broken, and I can’t get up.” “Oh my God. You are so funny! Are you coming out tonight? Ashlee’s place is gonna be hoppin’.” “Yeah, but seriously. Help me. Call someone.” “You’re mad funny. I have to go though, see you tonight.” Kristyn walks away and Sigmund struggles to get up. A couple walk by, Adam and his girlfriend, Hannah. “Guys, you gotta help me,” Sigmund says, “I can’t get up.” “Are you okay?” Hannah asks, “Do you need me to call someone?” Adam is quick to clear up the confusion, “Hilarious Sigmund. You’re in pain and you’re screaming. I get it.” Adam continues walking and Hannah soon follows, giggling “Okay, bye Sigmund. See you at Ashlee’s tonight,” she says. They walk away together. “He’s so funny,” Sigmund hears her say. “Whatever,” Adam says. Sigmund continues to wriggle. He is nearly losing consciousness. Another student approaches, a boy named Stephen. “Oh, thank god, “Sigmund says, faintly, “I’ve broken my legs and arm.” “You know,” Stephen says, “you think you’re funny, but there are people in the world with real problems. You shouldn’t make fun of crippled people; it’s in really poor taste.” “No really”, says Sigmund, “I can’t get up.”

“You’re pathetic,” Stephen says. He walks away like the others, leaving Sigmund to drift into a pain induced blackout. Sigmund wakes up to droplets of water on his cheek, then his hand, and his forehead. Another drop, and yet another. Soon it begins to downpour. “Heeeeeeelp!” Sigmund screams, his voice cracks and mouth fills up with rainwater. Like a turkey, he nearly chokes. He turns his head, coughing it up. He screams again, no answer. Surely by now most of the students on campus are in their dorms, avoiding the rain. He slowly begins to turn over, pushing down on his left wrists, putting pressure on his broken left arm. He screams again, not directed toward anyone this time. Hearing the regular sounds from Ashlee’s party in the distance, he flips himself over, like a corpse onto a gurney. His broken legs flop with him. He hears an accidental laugh, closer by this time. “Hello?” No one answers. By now the dirt path has turned to mud. With his one good arm he tries to drag the rest of his body behind him, almost slithering his way up the path. He reaches out, sliding his arm through the mud. At one point he even coaxes his broken arm to help, but with insignificant progress. He convinces himself to keep dragging, but comes to the realization that he is merely sliding mud underneath his own body, creating a mound of wet dirt for him to hunch over. He begins to cry, which doesn’t help the slippery situation. Meanwhile, only a few feet from Sigmund, the rain erodes away the dirt underneath Smooches’ gate. Under the pitter-patter of rainfall, the darkness of night, and the soothing, cool moistness of the ground, Smooches’ snout slips underneath the fence. Sigmund hears a car door slam, followed by another, and voices. A bright light speckled by the prisms of raindrops flashes into Sigmund’s eyes. Sigmund cries out once more, but slighter than before. “Help,” yells Sigmund. “Hey, buddy. You alright?” asks a campus safety officer, followed by his partner. “Oh God,” Sigmund breathes, facedown in a puddle of water and mud, “Thank God you’re he—“ Before Sigmund can finish his acclamation, Smooches’ jaws slam down on Sigmund’s throat. He’s pulled by the neck against the fence, relentlessly being yanked, to fit through the tight slit underneath the fence, like a large gym bag stuck in a revolving door. The officers run over, and not having the time or available sight to comprehend the situation, one pulls on the broken arm of Sigmund. At this point, Sigmund can’t scream. The carotid artery is being cut off by two thousand pounds of pressure. In a crackled whisper, Sigmund manages one more, “Help me.” Sigmund is stretched beyond the officer’s power. His golf shirt and corduroy slacks tear and the side of his head and body forcibly scrapes through the ends of the chain links at the bottom of the fence. The officers don’t hear much after this except for the splashes of a death roll and the cacophony of falling rain. The next morning, as soon as the sun peered over the campus skyline, the search team and detectives were just about to give up looking for Sigmund’s body. A diver

searched the pond thoroughly, but the investigators came to the conclusion that Smooches devoured everything, bones and all. The school planned on getting rid of the gator, but a few sorority friends of Sigmund’s organized a petition to keep Smooches, arguing that, “Sigs had so much school spirit. He would’ve wanted it this way.” What the investigators did find was a set of four indents in the dirt, roughly forty feet away from where Sigmund’s body was last seen. The marks were recorded, but disregarded as irrelevant, as Sigmund’s demise was concluded as the chance work of a hungry mascot. And they were right, as well trained crime scene analysts will be. These indents had little to do with Sigmund’s death. They were, however, representational of where I sat the night before, under the cloak of darkness, with a bottle of shiraz, trying to hold in my laughter, as I watched the manifestation of so many of my finest dreams. Toward the end of the semester they also held a bake sale to raise money for a tree to be planted in his memory. The tree was planted on the embankment of the alligator pond, so Smooches could sit in the shade and digest her meal before swimming.

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