PenWomanShip

There was no defining moment that she realized she could not walk without assistance. It was a slow, most natural progression from her early morning waking state to her current lacking motor skills and somewhere in between the two were a dozen or so empty plastic containers which were the evidence of her debauchery, if one required such evidence (and nobody did.)

She was surrounded by naked skin and she could not recall how the scene around her had suddenly (or so it seemed) become so lacking in civil order.

It was the tomatoes.

So strange a conviction, to blame the humble fruit (commonly perceived as vegetable but with credit to her grade eight teacher she knew otherwise.) Yet she was sure of it, convinced the sea of tomatoes around her where the source of all that was turning amiss, and just as she confirmed this in her slow thinking head she was hit squarely on the breast with what other than a tomato.

It took several moments for the pain to register. As the neurons fired her eyes welled with tears that could not be seen for the pieces of tomato stuck randomly over her face. In her hair, in her eyes, in her ears. Quite specifically everywhere. She look to the ground, or rather lost control of her head and as it lolled forward her eyes were inevitably focused on the ground, if you could assume there was a ground beneath the sea of red.

The offending item was bobbing close to her foot, still intact despite its impact with her breast. She swooped down and collected it, securing the tomato with a grin of unnatural proportions because being equipped with an intact tomato at this late stage of the day was comparable only with the early gold rush and the discovery of those monster nuggets.

She lifted her arm with the intent of hurling it at some unknown victim when she was surged forward against her will and as the tomato slipped from her fingers and anger rose from her belly she felt another surge of the crowd and she realized some great mob mentality was taking place and perhaps departure was not such a bad idea. She wasn’t sure where the exit was, if an exit even existed, because after all she was just on the street.

She started pushing, it was the only thing she could think to do under the circumstances and with thirty thousand people behind her with the exact same thought process combined with the rather unfortunate opening of the crowd directly in front of her, she surged forward into the empty space, head first into two feet of tomato puree.

She wasn’t sure what had happened, but as she inhaled a mouthful of tomato, she realized the inability to draw fresh breath was not conducive with the whole living thing and thought best to make a move. She made an attempt to lift her head but an enthusiastic punter form the ranks above had simultaneously decided to lower his foot in a style conducive to a stomp right where her head was positioned.

She went down for the second time.

Her nose would have surely broken had it not been for the sickly soft tomatoes softening the foot-head-gravel sandwich. As the foot then rose, so did she, with a spring like action she could have never repeated because it was either move like an Olympic gymnast or suffocate in the tomatoes.

She sucked the air, thick with sweat. She could have smiled. Could have, it were not for the sudden pulling of her t-shirt and the realization that she was central to a sea of near naked men, grinning like the idiots they would soon prove themselves to be. They had hold of her shirt and her neck was bent in unnatural angles as they grunted and cheered when at last her t-shirt left her body and she was exposed now and sober from the realization this was not an ideal situation.

She kicked violently at her many attackers and fashioned her fists into balls as they laughed and she forced her body through the crowd and heard the screams of other women who were not laughing with the men and then she saw one, without any clothing. It was this sight that propelled her forward and she shouted aggressively with her fists poised and then she broke free into a side street and she was out.

She turned back then to the scene and only a few stray tomatoes flew over the heads of the mobs attacking the women. She must have been standing with a look of disgust because a man was watching her and spoke then with a smile. “It’s a tradition, happens every year.” He picked up his camera then and a naked woman, clearly traumatized, forced her way from the crowd, into the side street. She heard the click of the camera. It was this moment the tomatoes were forgotten. She turned. And left