innocnt@oocities.comGulls are pecking at what was once part of a Christmas dinner. They are enjoying a feast of mould-covered mash potatoes, decaying meat hanging on the skeleton of a turkey, soured cranberry sauce and leftover gravy, dried and flaking on the inside of a garbage bag. They take no notice of the teddybear, simply because it is not even slightly tainted with a speck of the grotesque feast.
The stench of the mess is unbearable for any human being with a sense of smell. Passers-by could not help but notice the garbage strewn across the lawn. They all look at the house beyond, not with a face of annoyance, but with a sense of sadness. Everyone knows what happened two nights ago...
... After dinner on Christmas Eve, when the rest of the family went to church for the Midnight Mass, the family’s teenage daughter went over to a friend’s house for a party. Many people were at the party and there was a lot of alcohol. By midnight, everybody there was drunk. The girl and her boyfriend decided to go for a drive and two other couples went with them. So with four people in the backseat and a drunk, inexperienced, seventeen-year-old driver, they took off. They were in the car for about two minutes when the car hit a patch of ice, going too fast. The car spun out of control and hit a lamppost. Nobody in the car wore a seatbelt. The girl, seating in the front seat, was thrown out of the windshield and out onto the road. The force of the impact caused the concrete post to fall and the car to be crushed. By the time the police and the emergency crews arrived, all six had died. . .
Two days later, the same fate falls upon the garbage can and its contents, victim of a deadly combination of drinking and driving. The teddybear was once the girl’s favourite toy. But like the gulls, she left it alone a long time ago. Instead she took up going to parties and drinking. Because of her choices, her body laid at the side of the road, lifeless, like the damaged garbage can with its contents spilled out.
The teddybear once belonged to an innocent little girl. Even when she put her innocence aside, she was still full of potential. But after neglecting herself for so long, neither her innocence or potential exist. The teddybear now belongs nowhere but on the lawn, waiting to be swept back into the garbage can that can no longer hold anything.
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