figworm
"HEY!" Ever notice that all gym teachers have the same bellow? All the male ones anyway. But now that I think about it, the women have the same voice too, 'cept theirs is different of course. But either or, it always inspires that same cold, panicky dread in me.
I can still remember the feel of the crisp white apron, forever smelling of flour and Mummy. Sometimes we'd wear it, the hem crumpling against the flour as we "helped" with baking cookies, awkwardly smashing an egg on a bowl rim or tipping in sugar in the manner of burying treasure. There's no taste better than cookie dough, both that which is stolen and that which is given lovingly as little rolled tokens.
Her winglike ears flap restlessly, painfully. Wrinkled skin folds atop corded muscles as she grasps twigs and branches with her trunk. Slowly, awkwardly, she drags the makeshift shroud across the shrunken pile of dead-leaf skin and bones that was once her baby. Then, curling her trunk in a spiral above her head, she screams and screams to the lifeless plains and sky.