This is my entry for the fiction-workshop's beloved editor resident whip, @CarolKean. Please check out her Mad Cow Contest for more (and definitely better) entries.
This particular entry was written hastily and with the awesome prodding and some last-minute line-editing by 
Big thanks to 
I like BBQ, but not when I’m the main course. They hung me by my toenails over a fire, and as bad as that sounds, believe me, it was worse in person. The weekend was looking crispy unless I thought fast.
“Speak! You must tell us everything or we lower you into the flames.” As wannabe torturers they were not well-polished, but they were primitively effective.
Look, I’m pretty bad-ass. I know you’re not supposed to say that about yourself, but I don’t really care. That’s how bad-ass I am. So I said, “Mpheak! Moywanna mpheak.” Then they took off the gag, which made things much easier. “It all started--” I began.
“No! Get to the good bit, or we lower you into the fire.”
I may be bad-ass, but you only have to tell me things once. I cleared my throat and started my tale…
⁂
She was only twenty-four but already she was a Mad Cow. A real jersey. She liked to chew gum while transferring her weight from foot to foot in a kind of slow-motion hop. She kept her hair all bunched up, and secured in place with a sharpened chopstick “just in case.” Like she was going to use it for personal protection, or something. Newly promoted, her job was checking bags for shoplifters and let me tell you, she loved her job.
I was best friends with her little sister. Stayed over at her house some days. You know, listening to Taylor Swift mash-ups and--
⁂
The rope swayed. I felt the heat of the flames on the crown of my head.
“Wait! I’m getting to the good part.”
“Well, get faster,” said one. He spat on the fire. It fizzled, but not enough to make it any cooler.
Sweat poured down across my eyes. But they raised me up a couple inches.
Scheherazade eat your heart out.
⁂
Really, Mad Cow was horrible in every way. Which is why I was horrified when I discovered we owned identical bags. Identical! Only instead of my deodorant and favorite pom-pom scrunchie, I had her puke lipstick and, um, other unmentionables. I’m shuddering right now as I think of it (and not in a good way).
Handing it to her there in the store, where she forced women to open their handbags for inspection, no way was I showing up with what was in that bag. So I did what any self-respecting teenage girl would do, I paid a kid to return the bag to her.
The kid was neat, maybe twelve years old, blonde and cute in a shaggy dog kind of way. The perfect delivery boy. But the Mad Cow took one look at that kid and at the bag and waved him over, eyes narrow, lips pursed.
“The Bieb with that bag? Nuh-uh. Don’t think you can just walk out with that,” she said.
“She…said to give it to you,” he said, but the cow wasn’t listening.
“Give it here.” I’m not going to use this word loosely, but she totally seized that bag. She yanked the bag towards her, growling.
“I’m gonna tip it out here on the floor.” Her face was triumphant, breath short.
“But—”
She flashed a huge smile and upended the bag onto the floor.
There was a crash, then every face in that store turned in her direction. She knew instantly what she’d done, her mouth opening and closing--silently, like a dying carp.
⁂
I swung myself up the rope, still talking. They were listening now, waiting on every word. “But it wasn’t until it hit the floor and started to buzz its way past the checkout that she really lost it.”
I untied my feet and, with acrobatic grace, dismounted, took a bow, and ran my bad ass out the door.
“But what was it?” they screamed after me..
“Her giant purple vibrator, of course!” I called back. “So long, suckers!”