Have your cake and eat it, too! -- a short story by Derek Odom
It took us nearly two weeks to eat my piano teacher. Well, entirely. Most of him was gone by the first week, but things slowed down after that. Even though he was so sweet and so good, the stomach can only withstand so much abuse. And abuse, friend, is exactly what it was. The guy said his name was Jeff, but it was probably Malakai, or Mortimer, or Damien. A nyway, he was my piano teacher when I was in the sixth grade. Mom said she found him through the school, but I had my doubts. He was too old and too tall and too thin, and the black suits he wore hadn’t been in style for a hundred years. He smelled like mouthwash and mildew, and his laugh made my insides crawl, the way he’d throw his head back and cross his spindly arms over his midsection. But he had a music degree from somewhere fancy and he taught locally, so there I was. I practiced at his house, a big two-story Victorian, Mondays and Thursdays after school. The piano itself was old and creepy, but it was also on the secon...
