Swing

by Ryan Dilbert

It felt to him like it was only seconds after bashing in the intruder’s skull that David was doing commercials for Sorelli’s baseball bats. “The grip is great,” he read into the camera, “and take it from me, the wood in Sorelli’s is rock solid.” He wore the guilt under his collarbone and it felt as heavy as a car engine. The newspapers and Oprah and his Jewish foster family and the cops and the cute girls who snuck him a rum and coke all called him a hero. But he was just an eight-grader who couldn’t sleep because the image of that man’s head collapsing like a rotten pumpkin hung from a wall in his brain. The director of the commercial thanked David and joked that the Cubs could use someone with a swing like his.

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Ryan Dilbert is probably writing right now or obsessing over the fact that he isn't writing (either that or eating a cookie). He lives in an apartment in Austin, Texas. He's been published in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, ESC!, and The Footnote. He makes really good sauces.