Posts Tagged piñatas

1st draft [partim] – Piñata.

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I stayed working late, as usual, trying to get the week’s screw-ups sorted out for payroll.

The pile of confetti at my desk got deeper, hour by hour—I didn’t think I’d had so much fall into my mane… But it was a lot of hair, and I was always finding random stuff in it. This just would happen on the day I leave my brush at home.

It was already dark outside. I squinted at my monitor—it took a couple of seconds before my eyes focused on the numbers. “Um… definitely time to go home and sleep,” I said. I clocked out, logged out, and swept the pile of confetti from my desk into the trash bin, which gave me an all-too-clear experience of how stiff from typing my fingers were. Dang, I thought. I’m really going to have to quit doing these late nights. I gave my head one last shake over the wastebasket—at least a dozen scraps of orange and yellow paper fell out of my mane. Dammit, Stevens, I thought, as I stepped out the front door.

It was frickin’ cold outside.

1st draft [partim] – Piñata

First/previous part


Since it was my special day, I got first swing at it.

They cleared out some space in the break room to set everything up and soon the whole office was crowded round as Stevens tied a blindfold on me.

“Watch the mane,” I said. “I don’t need more tangles.”

The wolf snorted and put the bat in my paws. “You’re cool,” he said, spinning me around several times. “Go for it, old man!”

I heard the office girls cheering as I started swinging upwards. Whiffed it. Tried again, still no luck.

Stevens started making fun. I ignored him.

I swung again, and connected—but the piñata didn’t break. I swung again at the same spot, and nearly fell over as I missed altogether—darn thing must have still been swinging.

I waited a second and gave it another go, and this time broke it open with a good solid whack.

I was doused in a shower of… confetti?

I took off the blindfold. Definitely confetti.

Stevens scoffed. “No candy? What a gyp. I paid fifty bucks for that.”

The crowd dispersed to get their sugar rush elsewhere—mostly flocking to the cake in the corner—and I tried to shake the stray bits of paper out of my fur.

1st draft [partim] – Piñata

You get three guesses to tell where this story’s going to go, and the first two don’t count.


It all started with a shower of confetti.

Stevens had brought a piñata to the office for my birthday party. It was enormous, almost as big as he was, and a lion, just like me.

“Saw this in a window of that party place on the corner and thought of you,” he said. “He looks just like you, don’t he? Happy birthday, lion.”

I looked it over, and it kinda did, in an exaggerated way: it didn’t look like me so much as it looked like a piñata modelled after me would look like. It was firm papier-mâché—or whatever it is they make piñatas out of these days—with ruffled paper in tawny gold all over its body in place of fur, and long orange paper streamers for its mane. “Thanks, wuff,” I said. “It’s great. Let’s hang ’im up and have a couple swings at him, eh?”