First, let me tell about Mrs. Baker. She was born June Baker in 1939. At the age of 20, she married Arthur Diebold, who died 30 years later under mysterious circumstances. Three years later, she married Chauncey Baker III. She hated it when people would make fun of her and call her Mrs. Baker-Diebold-Baker, so I kept calling her Mrs. Baker-Diebold-Baker. About 10 years later, Chauncy died under the same mysterious circumstances as Mr. Diebold. I'm just stating the facts.
Anywaze...Mrs. Baker was what I would call an unpleasant do-gooder. She would volunteer for every charitable event in Gooseberry...as long as it would get her noticed. You've got to understand, she started doing this before the Internet gave attention whores the option of getting all the attention they want without leaving their homes. So yeah, she was an attention whore from the old school.
And she would be so obnoxious, acting like no event could turn out successfully without her taking everything over. But Arthur and Chauncey left her with a considerable amount of wealth, so charities needed her for her financial support. Once, little Nathan Carnes, who once won the Gooseberry Science Fair, had the opportunity to take his science project to a national championship and I had to beg Mrs. Baker to financially support his trip, but she almost didn't do it because he beat out her grandson's creationism exhibit. Maybe the judges were afraid not to vote for Nathan because they didn't want to piss off an 11-year-old boy who had live killer bees as part of his science project, but that's another story.
So, here is where the tragedy begins. I was on a committee of volunteers to raise money for the Gooseberry Learning Center and we were about to have a carnival-slash-groundbreaking ceremony. The whole thing was my idea and it was because of me that Mrs. Baker got involved. I called her up just to see if she wanted to donate some money, but when she found out the local news media was going to be there, she said, "Well, somebody's got to be involved in that who knows what they're doing!" Bytch! But her choice to participate in the event sealed her fate.
With the exception of Mrs. Baker going around trying to be the boss of everybody, it looked like the carnival was going to be great. We had clowns, a fire eater, a sword swallower, a tightrope walker, a strongman, a fun house, a haunted house, carnival games, and lots of rides. We even had a "unicorn" and an elephant. I'm telling all this for a reason.
Myron chose to be the guy in the dunking machine.
Myron
Myron enjoys doing anything that will give him the opportunity to take off his shirt and show off all his tattoos. Mrs. Baker thought that Myron tattooed torso was too "unsightly" for a children's carnival. Myron just rolled his is and said, "Chupa mis juevos, Señora Baker-Diebold-Baker," as he climbed into the dunking machine. The kids adored Myron.
And then, Mrs. Baker started bytching to me because I wasn't tying the horn on the white horse's head well enough to please her. "You have to make it look like a real unicorn, Lorenzo!" she snapped. "Here, let me do it!" She jerked the horn and the fasteners from my hand so quickly and started to do it herself. This was about the time the PETA protesters showed up. I tried telling her she was tying it around the horse's neck too tight, but of course, she didn't listen to me or PETA.
Then, the moment came for the groundbreaking ceremony. I had just finished tying a big red bow on the handle of the shovel when Mrs. Baker grabbed it. "But little Nathan Carnes is going to be the one breaks ground."
"Not with the news media here," Mrs Baker yelled. "You need someone who's recognizable in the community to do it...like me."
Mrs. Baker waited impatiently as the mayor spoke and then dug the shovel right into the ground. This scared a gopher right out of his hole. The gopher scared the elephant standing nearby and the elephant's reaction scared both the "unicorn" and Mrs. Baker. You can probably guess what happened next. Mrs. Baker lunged backward, not knowing that the "unicorn" behind her was about to charge forward. I'm going to stop putting quotation marks around "unicorn" now because you know that I'm not talking about a real unicorn, and knowing that makes the quotes unnecessary. Besides, I'm getting tired going through the extra step of using quotes every time I write the word unicorn.
So, as Mrs. Baker fell back, the unicorn charged forward and pierced through her. She kicked and screamed as the now-red horn of the unicorn lifted her off her feet and ran wild. I didn't know that horses had such strong necks. Had she not insisted on tying the horn on the unicorn so tightly, the weight of Mrs. Baker's body would have caused the horn to slide off the horse's head. You know that the unicorn is really a horse made up to look like a unicorn, so I am now using the words "horse" and "unicorn" interchangeably. (There I go again with the quotation marks.)
While the unicorn was running around with Mrs. Baker's still-alive body on its horn, the elephant went crazy and charged all over the place. He even knocked down some of the walls in the fun house. The unicorn ran right by the fire eater and one of his torches sat Mrs. Baker's hair on fire. I saw a smirk on Little Nathan Carnes' face as he nudged me with his elbow as if to say, "Too bad we have to pretend this isn't funny." His mom gave him a little squeeze and said, "See, son? That could have been you."
The unicorn continued to run wild, right in the direction of the dunking machine, where Myron sat watching the whole thing. The unicorn ran past the right side of the dunking machine, forcing Mrs. Baker's forehead to hit the target. I felt bad for Myron because he fell into the water and didn't get to see what was going to happen next. Let me tell you, he missed the best part.
The unicorn ran past (what was left of) the fun house. It's not every day you see a variety of distorted fun-mirror reflections of a dying bloody woman with flaming hair as she goes by, impaled on a fake horn tied to a horse's head. I just looked down at Mrs. Baker's grandson and said, "You have to admit...it is funny."
The sword swallower tried to save Mrs. Baker. He pulled the sword out of his stomach as quickly as he could, but by that time, the unicorn had taken Mrs. Baker into the haunted house. The sword swallower ran into the haunted house and intended to stab the horse in hopes of saving Mrs. Baker, even though the PETA protesters were urging him not to. Well, to be honest, most of the crowd was urging him not to. What happened next...I'm sure it was an accident...or at least the sword swallower said it was an accident. It's so dark in haunted houses and he ended up stabbing Mrs. Baker instead! The teenagers in the haunted house thought it was all an act. They were yelling things out like, "That blood is so fake!"
The unicorn eventually found his way out of the haunted house and continued to run wild. Now if you think a loud elephant is enough to scare a horse, imagine what a haunted house would do to a horse. On top of that, Mrs. Baker now had a sword lodged in her side. I heard one little girl say, "Mommy, I thought unicorns were nice."
Finally, the horse raised up on his hind legs and managed to throw Mrs. Baker off of him. Mrs. Baker fell at the strong man's feet, forcing him to drop a 200-pound ball right on her head. She died, but at least her hair wasn't on fire anymore.
Well the ambulance came and took the late Mrs. Baker away and of course everyone was upset that the fun house and the haunted house had both been destroyed. But the day wasn't a total loss. We raised a lot of money for the Gooseberry Learning Center and I got the strong man's phone number.
