Okay, this story will never be published anywhere.

This spun up out of a prompt for Cat Rambo’s flash fiction workshop (one of many); she said something about needing to paste the prompt into the chat window because otherwise people might mishear something as “turnip” for some reason….

And I was doomed, because my mind is super-associative at times.

Um, what has this piece given to me… well, the amusement of my fellow classmates, which I always count as a plus. As well as a feeling for what it feels like to play with first-person omniscient, and a little humor.

Anyways, if this doesn’t convince you I’m insane when it comes to timed writings, I don’t know what will.

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Barkley is the saddest superhero. Because he is not a man, not a spider, not even a dog. He is, instead, an intelligent turnip.

Why is he a superhero, you say? Don’t turnips just kind of sit there and grow, and sometimes end up as food on the plate that you shove aside in favor of the doublebonein pork chop?

That’s just the thing. Barkley is a special turnip, just as Superdog was a special dog. One day the radiation of a miniature gamma ray in space (which human scientists have not discovered, because they think too big when it comes to space) turned him sentient.

And what Barkley realized (apart from that he had no name, and he suddenly wanted one; but I’m calling him Barkley, because you cannot understand turnip names) was that his entire crop was a sitting target.

He realized this when a deer invaded the farmer’s field and started munching down on one of his siblings, fellow turnip—the one right next to him in fact! One sown from the same seed bag, which is a special kind of connection, like how we humans connect to people who share our birthdays.

But what could he do about it? Why, those teeth were coming for him, too! Munching and gnawing, messily dropping bits—horrible horrible bits—of turnip all around him.

What could Barkley do?

Barkley, having been irradiated with super powers from space, exploded from the ground and bonked that deer one on the nose, so powerful that he killed the deer, toppling it over.

The farmer discovered this montage the next day, and threw Barkley on the rubbish compost heap.

That is why Barkley is so sad.