“Happy birthday,” my parents yelled from across the room. They explained the gift in unison: “We read all your journals, and it seems like all you can do is write about her. Plus it looks like all you eat are corn chips.” They yawned jointly. “Well, 2:00 pm means it’s time for bed.” The second they closed the bedroom door, the cardboard she started to creak and rattle. “I took this sponsorship for two reasons,” she said, her paper epaulets shaking under the light breeze of the ceiling fan. “First, I love the satisfying taste of proprietary corn chips with various dips and spreads.” The bag in her hands expanded to eighty times its original size, rippling with thousands of pounds of air pressure. “Second–and more importantly–corn chips are an eco-friendly way to create a shrapnel bomb.”
Keegan Shepherd 