Apocalypse Thanksgiving
After the apocalypse, renegade hordes of fake-tan polo players rode long legged ponies through the streets using polo mallets to whack decapitated heads. They rode through abandoned avenues, weed ravaged by-ways and on out into feral countryside. Their seasoned mounts trampled seedlings and sod like buffalo herds grinding grassy, Midwestern plains. The men kept their chins tucked and their white and red helmets securely strapped. Post apocalyptic polo was a serious game played by somber, ex-gentry who gave no quarter and took no prisoners. Whoever fell behind, got left behind. No residuals were awarded to families of the fallen.
The polo riders swung their mallets with acuity. Any orphaned skull was fair game to be pursued with gusto. Their horses frothed at their bits as wild manes became entangled with reins. Little boys in ragged, white undershirts and sun lighten hair watched the cavalier riders from behind mature elm trees that lined forgotten boulevards. Visions of envy danced in their young, sky-tinted eyes as the riders kicked horse belly with silver spurs strapped to high-shined, English boots.
Abruptly, at the end of an unkept park pasture, the players rode up on an old cemetery. A battered head with it's esophagus trailing was cracked high into the air, over an iron fence, landing with a dull thud in the middle of a cemetery. It rolled to a stop against a crumbling headstone.
The horsemen pursued the head, working their mounts around tombstones and ricocheting the skull off marble and granite monuments like a snooker ball. This play occupied their focus for a long time. Long enough for a scant number of spectators to spontaneously gather. Their hollow eyes grew wide at the garish spectacle. If any of the onlookers took sides, they didn't outwardly show it. The game of ‘head polo’ continued into the early evening, splattering almost every gravestone with bloodstains. No one saw it happen directly, but a player and his horse collided with a tombstone and went down, followed by another.
The still mounted players began viciously attacking the dismounted ones, striking them with their grim mallets. They continued to mindlessly attack each other as more riders went down. The graveyard seemed bent on claiming its own victory. The apocalyptic polo player's soon dwindled in number. The sick, mallet cracking sounds lessened. Soon all the riders lay dead amongst the stone markers, the cemetery lawn awash with ebbing blood, as their steeds wandered off to graze.
The loosely gathered spectators stood mute. Their boney hands grasped the iron rod fence surrounding the burial grounds. Then almost as if acting as one, they entered the hallowed grounds and began dressing out the bodies of the fallen polo players, removing entrails and dismembering arms and legs, leaving the heads where they lay. The hungry spectators then took the spoils back to their hovels and basements and cooked the delicacies in a feast of thanksgiving.