The morning started off like any other morning. George sipping a flask while digging a hole with a shovel for no apparent reason. I was raking some leaves under a bush, keeping an eye on him. A thunderstorm had come the night before leaving the yard just a horrid mess. That lazy Alyssa really should appreciate all the yard work we do for her while she is out gallivanting around. I don’t even think she notices. I digress.

I glanced up at the clouds just in time to see a huge clump of dirt flying in my general direction. I tried to duck. I tried to cover. I tried to stop, drop, and roll. But my efforts were futile. I was knocked flat on my buttocks and my hat flew off and blew across the yard. I screamed at George to be more careful. He had not only ruined my perfectly groomed leaf pile, but now my ceramic skin was totally dirty.

I brushed myself off and went back to raking. All the sudden…another clump of dirt! What the hell, George! What the hell!? I marched over to him, shaking my rake above my head with more anger than I’ve felt since that whitewater rafting trip went awry last spring.

George threw down his shovel and started screaming in unintelligible gnomish. I was still swinging the rake above my hat-less head screaming in incredibly intelligible gnomish. In one swift drunk move, George grabbed my rake and it came loose from my overworked and underpaid hands. He swung it above our heads and the rest all seemed to have happened in slow motion.

I felt the rake hit my head and brought my hand up to hold it. I wondered why it felt warm. Then I looked down. Blood! Blood! Blood everywhere! I didn’t even know ceramic produced blood! But there it was. I looked in the mirror and puked the egg salad sandwich I’d had for breakfast just at the sight of my own horror movie reflection.

George sucks at life. But he was at least smart enough to run inside the house through the sliding glass door and dial 911 on Alyssa’s rotary phone (she really needs to realize it’s 2012).

The ambulance rolled up to find a bloody gnome screaming in the grass. One paramedic hesitated to take me in considering my non-human status. George was nice enough to pull  my wallet out of my back pocket and flash my Blue Cross Blue Shield card. Next thing I knew, I was lying on a huge white table with bright florescent lights and there were eleven staples in my head holding my skull together.

Rake Axe of Death

The nurses called me a “freak accident” and hypothesized that there must have been an axe attached to that rake to create such a long and wide laceration. They read me my discharge instructions to not come with a 100 mile radius of a rake for the next three months. I gotta go hat shopping because I’m totally self conscious about all this metal in my head. I hate George’s stupid drunk ass, I really do. But in the end, I suppose he kinda sorta saved my life. And he has a whole stash of Vicodin in one of those holes he dug, so that makes me like him even better.

Yours in heavy metal,

Benjamin The Gnome