Parade killer

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Parade looms with antsy pedestrians and restless parents. With a heavy storm brewed the wave of the parade drama, the residue of the people hovering around had turned erratic. Peter Austin had just died and the party was alive with questions. The oldest man in the run down town had been killed by a stilt walker. It was an absurd way to go, at least, that's what the community had to say with their whispering and insistence muttering. We had bet, each of us, me too. I had a bet of 100 dollars he would die of cancer. My own brother had bet that the old fart will die at his sleep, what are the odds of been stepped on in the middle of the annual parade. Boy would I like to sit down to a bottle of beer with a lucky sucker. A lone paramedic had leaned behind the unmoving ambulance. Peters body had been confined to the back of that oversized coffin car. I inched closer to the strange man and then i saw it; the stick in hand with the glowing red tip.
With a crooked smile, I picked up the pace until I was next to him, by this time, I was holding a stick similar to his hand but hadn't lit it. "Got a lighter?" my voice came out hoarse, cracky. It'd that maybe I would die by cancer and my 100 dollars would not go to a complete waste.

The man patted down his pocket and brought a lighter. "Peter really gone" huh, the man nodded, I handed his light back and drew a puff. "What did you bet?" He looked at me as if i was crazy. The whole town had bet on this old fart passing and the paramedic was looking at me like a mad man?. "He died of a heart attack" 'what about the stilt walker?, stepped on the old coop in the middle of the attack'. It was too weird to be true. Peterson could not have died by stilt walker, but it was fun to assume. It was although an axiom that he did passed away today, just not in the way the newspaper outlets and radio, television stations would have liked.
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