One Art by Hammy

A failed presentation

The young woman walked up to the front of the class. Her palms sweaty, her eyes twitching she knew that failure was iminent. But she had passed the failsafe point and could not turn back. There was only one option: go down in flames with dignity. Or so she thought...
“Just picture them all in their underwear” is what they told her. She tried... to no avail. Her mind was frozen. The stress of presenting a poetic analysis worth almost five percent of her overall grade was just too much. Not to mention what it would mean to disappoint the esteemed Old English scholar; her mentor and best friend: Dorothy Bray.

“Well H.M.? Are you ready to begin?”Bray inquired coldly from her perch in the back of the classroom.

“Uh...Uhh... I...um”

“H.M., are you trying to tell me that you did not sufficiently prepare for your presentation?”

The echoes of laughter that sprung from her peers and rang throughout Arts West were too much. She collapse on her knees, head in her hands; the Norton Anthology of Poetry she had been holding now sopping wet from her tears. The end was nigh.

“Hammy Hammy Hammy” jeered the class.

H.M. tried to start her presentation but the mascara she had put on that morning to impress Dorothy Bray now covered the words of the poem.

“Uh The wart of lovthing is net hurd to..”

The class went dead silent. They had all suffered cardiac infarctions. They had laughed themselves to death.

Epilogue

H.M. never finished her recitation. She was charged with the second degree murder of 23 students and one professor. Sentenced to life in the Kingston Penitentiary, H.M. is not eligible for parole.