Thoreau’s Cabin (Short Story)

The smell of freshly baked pie wafted through the air as Thoreau’s mother came into his cabin wearing an apron and a smile.
“Mmm,” Thoreau’s lips curved into a smile as he inhaled the warm summer airs “smells divine.”
“I made it just the way you like it, honey,” his mother’s words oozed into his ears like sweet honey as she laid the pie on the table.
Thoreau licked his lips, staring lustily at the pie. He was about to begin his descent into the pastry as he instead looked up into the deep blue eyes of his dear mother.
“I must say, your pies truly are the marrow of life, the sublime light that I am to split with what some may call a knife, but what I would instead call a scimitar of truth, a cleaver that cuts away all that is mean and superficial, leaving only that which is pie. If I have learned one thing from my time at Walden Pond, it is that life is but a warm, hot, pie: simple and pure, unfettered by the shams and delusions of that which is not pastry. I cannot articulate the gratitude that I feel with language, so instead I will merely eat what is before me.”
Thoreau snapped his head back to the attendance of his freshly baked treat. His hands shaking in anticipation, he cut jagged lines through the crust of the pie and plopped a large piece of it upon his plate. Sawing the pie into a bite sized piece, Thoreau’s entire body began to tremble in childish delight. He pierced the piece with his fork, and sprung into the air. Crumbs fell onto his plate as he shook, smelling the piece for one last time. Birds sang a Roman chorus as he finally gave into his lust and shoved the pie into his mouth.
Thoreau stopped his trembling as his light and jovial smile morphed into a dark, sunken scowl. He let the fork fall onto his plate, his fingers having lost their will to hold onto his utensil any longer. He slowly lifted his head to stare into his mother’s eyes once again, this time with the sting of fury and betrayal in his eyes.
“What is this?” Thoreau exhaled a storm with every word, barely keeping his anger boiling in his chest.
“What’s wrong dear, don’t like your pie?” His mother’s voice still endeavored to sound sweet and warming, but the fear in her eyes gave away her true feelings.
Thoreau’s fist slammed into the table, sending his fork and knife flying into the air.
“To think I am your son! I awoke this morning with anticipation in my gut, awaiting the gospel of superb pastry, but instead I found that I had been fooled by a witch and a scoundrel! Why, to think that one of my kin, a woman of my flesh and blood would concoct this monstrosity. Any sober man knows that apple pie is an affront to nature, to the well-being of man and beast, a blight on the face of truth and honesty. You give me apple pie; this is what I think of your apple pie!”
Thoreau catapulted the pie into the face of his mother, flinging the wig off of her head and revealing the scarred and blemished face of a boy in his late adolescence.
“I knew it! I knew you to be an imposter, my mother never would have contrived such a devious scheme. Tell me, who are you demon?”
The shape before him grew a piggish grin as he spoke, “it is I, Samuel of the Young, and I have come with a message. You are a total lamecake.”
Thoreau picked up his knife, squeezing the hilt until his chapped hands bled.
“It is you who is the lamecake! It was not my intention, but it is the duty of every man to banish monsters, those who would slander the name of the good world that we live in. My pen kills fascists, and so must this knife.”
Thoreau lunged towards Samuel and stuck the knife deep into his belly. Samuel began to cry like a total wuss as he collapsed to the floor.
Thoreau shoved the heel of his shoe into the nose of his fallen foe, and leveraged the weight of his body upon his face. He stared out his cabin’s open door into the blue morning sky. The clean air of Walden Pond blew itself upon his beard, purifying and cleansing it. As the villain Samuel breathed his last breaths, Thoreau spoke.
“There will always be those who wish to destroy what is pure and beautiful about this world. They see a mountain, its peaks glistening with snow and the majesty of the sun, and they are not stunned, they are not awed by its beauty. They only seek to loot it of its metals, they chip away at its flesh and its organs until they rip out its heart and beat it into a monstrous machine that billows smoke and fire so that they venture to brutalize more and more of our landscapes, never stopping but to rest their bodies for the next pillaging. That is why we must stand watch, to stand up those that would tread upon beauty, and decency, and chastity. I am Henry David Thoreau, and I will never give in to monsters.”
Samuel exhaled for the last time as his body collapsed under its own weight. His head rolled to the side under the weight of Thoreau’s foot, and blood began to pool under his cracked lips. The monster had been slain.