Death and Taxes

image comes from Lustige Blätter, a weekly illustrated Germanhumor magazine, circa 1899.

It was easy for people to throw around words like stingy or selfish; especially when one didn’t want to part with their prized possessions or money or whatever it was one had that others wanted. On this day Jane was feeling quite petulant as she leaned against her hoard thinking of just how much she had acquired. It wasn’t has if anyone had given her anything. She lovingly looked down and warmly interwove her long black hair in, around and through, as if giving each and every skull a familial hug.  How on earth was she to ever part with one of them?

She had worked hard developing the toxin that was emitted from her dandelion puffs.  The pesky yellow flowers that emerged each spring to show how many weeds were in one’s yard. It was the magic just after that – when the dandelion flower turned into the enchanted and seemingly perfect allure that just begged toddlers and babies to run or crawl up to one and shove their little faces in the midst of them, to make a wish; to savor it like it was a warm cinnamon roll baking in the oven or the like a fresh chocolate chip cookie. The first thing they do is stick it right near their mouth or nose to smell or blow the seeds into the wind. Unknowingly ending their young life as a new one would begin in the next spring. 

It was a rather quick process. The toxin would enter through the mucus glands and deposit the necrotizing fasciitis to immediately start eating the flesh. The dandelion would then entomb the child until only the bones remained. It was then that Jane would collect her reward, the little skull. And now, the evil government wanted some of her hard earned rewards.  “Taxes!  But in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes!”