round

     Fat and round and pale from lack of sun, he was a giant pink meatball rolling through the yard. They pulled the wall down and used a two-by-ten to pry him out of the bathroom. You couldn't see his legs, just the pink feet sticking out of the ball of him. His fingers stuck out from the folds in his flesh, latched on to the stuff, a sign of fright as he rolled over and over. Only the top of his head protruded from his neck, a thin tuft of hair on top to tell you it was a head, not a blemish or another fold, like a cork, a flesh button. His eyes were buried on the inside of the outside of him.
     As a child he had been skinny, too skinny. At school they poked fun at him; the way his socks lay like suicides at his ankles, how his giant head of hair most likely weighed more than the rest of him - they'd tackle him to count his bones. That was another life, before he lost his hair and began eating.
     Now he was rolling, blindly, dangerously close to the road.
     A quick thinker, a bystander, jockeyed his pick-up like a bronco buster into position at just the right time, and with a loud "Thud!" gave the meatball a quarter-panel assist into the hole they'd dug for him.
     Like a cue ball in the corner pocket.
     Dry soil kicked up into a swirl and when it settled you could barely tell there'd been a hole to begin with.
That tuft of hair gave a little shift, followed by some low hum, maybe a muffled sigh, and that was the end of it.