How I Ended Up Buried Face Down in a Swamp With a Rag Stuffed in my Mouth

I suppose you all wonder how someone who still looks as nice as I do, even after being buried in a swamp for a week, ended up in this sad situation. It’s a mystery to me, too, because I didn’t do anything illegal, immoral, or even fun.

It all started when a Mr. Softee ice cream truck came creeping up our street a couple of weeks ago. Mr. Softee trucks announce their presence by playing a little tinkly tune that is the Earworm of all Earworms. That tune lodges itself in your brain cells and refuses to go away. By the time all the kids on my block and a few of the adults had bought their soft ice cream cones, my head was echoing with the Mr. Softee Song.

I thought perhaps if I were to sing the song out loud it would leave my brain via my mouth and not come back until the next time the truck came around. I didn’t know the words (yes, there are words to that piece of putrescence), so I sang it on “da,” “de” and “dum.”

“Da da da da da da de dum, de dum
De dum, de dum, de du-um”

Not only did this not kill the tune, but my brain sang it along with me, louder and louder. I tried dancing to it. That didn’t work, either. I spent the next two days bellowing the song and dancing all over my front yard and my driveway. The neighbors came out to watch the show, until they, too, caught the earworm and ended up da-de-dumming around the neighborhood. They gave me an ultimatum: find a way to get rid of the earworm or do my singing with the angel choir

Plan B called for killing the earworm by introducing another earworm to replace it. I could think of nothing that would do this better than that old standby holiday song, “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.”

Remember, this was the middle of summer.

Instead of being the Earworm to End All Earworms, “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” led to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which in turn led to “Jingle Bell Rock,” which led to “Feliz Navidad.”

My brain was escalating into medleys, which were streaming out my mouth. The neighbors called the police, but the cops couldn’t do anything since I wasn’t breaking any laws. The neighbors formed a posse. One night they broke into my house, kidnapped me in the middle of “Jingle Bell Rock,” and stuffed a rag into my mouth which stopped my singing forever. They threw me into the back of a car, drove me to this swamp, and buried me face down so that, if I turned out to be a zombie or something, I wouldn’t be able to get out of my grave.

And so, dear readers, that is how I wound up in this tragic situation. I don’t know what the moral of this story is, but if you look hard enough, you’ll probably find one.

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This piece of crazy flash fiction was inspired by the following writing prompt:

Richard Alvin Blanchard
Writing Prompts Group
Facebook

“Why would someone be caroling in the middle of summer?”