Cauldron Anthology Issue 3: Year 1 Collection Cauldron Anthology Year One Issue FINAL 1.17.18 | Page 56

The next morning I saw a worm inching its way across the sidewalk on my way to class. I
wondered if maybe this worm had been related to our biology worm. Maybe it had ventured all the
way from south of campus to crawl across this sidewalk just as a way of thanking Sara and me for
giving its fellow worm the kind of funeral a worm would deserve. I decided right then we would
bury all of our class projects.

The next week proceeded much in the same fashion, but this time Sara dissected a
frog. When she slit open her stomach, we found it was filled with tiny black eggs. Sara and I both
cried until we got her in the ground and long after. We buried her by the river that ran through our
school, and our salty tears covered the grave.

We had our first argument over where to bury the rat. I thought he should be buried
by the worm in front of my dorm, but Sara insisted he needed to be laid to rest with the trash. I
finally won the argument by pointing out that burying him in the trash would be no different than
letting him be thrown out with the rest of the dissected rats. Sara finally agreed to let him be buried
in front of my dorm, but she pulled an old banana peel out of a trash can and laid it on top of the
grave like a headstone. The gothic kids thought we had gone too far with that one.

The shark was a real adventure. At that point we were fully dedicated to giving each
creature a resting place that felt like home. If we were sane, we could have just buried the shark
near the river like the frog. However, we were obviously not sane since we were on a mission to
bury our biology projects. We stole a cooler from a frat boy and put the shark on ice. In the dead
of the night we drove to the beach. As the sun rose along the horizon, we watched as the shark
disappeared into the dark salt water.
Of all the burials, we knew the last would be the hardest. The class was set to dissect the cat in
our last class. It would be stored for a week until our final exam, and then we would have to name
all of its parts one last time. I was in agony over leaving the cat in a freezer for a week, but it didn’t
seem to bother Sara at all.
On the dreaded day, I showed up for class early as always. I didn’t start to worry until time
seemed to slip right past me, and a cat appeared in front of me. It would have been a cute little
thing if it wasn’t wet with formaldehyde and frozen in fear. I was surprised no one had taken
in the silver cat with three white paws. It would have made such a cute house kitten. Sara never
showed up, and after all of this time avoiding the dissections I would have to begin with the most
compatible of creatures.
The scissors cut through the skin like paper. I found myself pulling back the muscles of the
cat’s chest with animal like precision. Sticking the pins through the flaps and onto the board
bothered me the least of all of my tasks. For a moment I wondered if I had been a fool to let Sara
be in charge of the dissections the whole semester, but the moment passed. I was done and stood
looking at the blood left dripping on my hands and the body of a cat’s carcass on the table.
A week passed and I still hadn’t heard from Sara. I brought two cups of coffee to our final
exam. I was certain that she would show up to that. It was our final mission, and I had no clue how
we were going to steal the cat.
The lab teacher arrived fifteen minutes late, and there was still no Sara. Everyone filed to the
freezer in the back to collect the dead cats for the final exam. I looked through the racks three
times for my silver cat, but it was nowhere to be found. “Did someone take my cat by mistake?” I