10 Ways to Kill Tom Sawyer

Morbid, I know, but I don't like the kid. He has his own story and can't stay in it. He has to jump into Huck Finn's story to do his best to ruin it. Everything Huck learns, everything he becomes all goes to Hell thanks to Tom Sawyer. So, in the spirit of literary genius, let's kill him.

Disclaimer: I am not angry, unstable, or suggesting anything by writing this. Tom Sawyer is a fictional character in a fictional story with a (soon to be) fictional death. I love people. Tom Sawyer doesn't qualify, so here we go.

1. Huck finally escapes from Pap. In killing the pig to create a murder scene, Huck doesn't realize that Tom is really hiding inside of the pig. Tom had come to save Huck (yeah right), but Huck uses the pig's blood to make it look like Huck himself was killed. Sorry Tom.

2. When Huck first runs away in the first part of the novel, the townspeople ride a ferry across the rive shooting a cannon. The superstition is that the shock waves will cause the body (if there was one) to float to the surface. Unfortunately, the cannon was aimed a bit low and blasted Tom's head off.

3. Tom eats the paint used for white washing. It's from China and has lead in it. He rots from the inside out.

4. When Tom sees Huck again for the first time after Huck's "death", he faints from shock and dies shortly thereafter.

5. The mob rides the Duke and the Dauphin out of town on a rail. They don't see Tom in the middle of the road and trample him.

6. When Huck and Tom are running away with Jim, Tom gets shot--not in the leg though. This time it's fatal.

7. Jim is so hopping mad that Tom new he was free all through the escaping process that Jim wrings Tom's neck.

8. Tom smokes too much and dies of lung cancer.

9. Tom gets shot again. He's not dead yet so the slave hunters had to get him again.

10. Just as Tom is climbing out of the window at Aunt Sally's, lightning strikes the rod used as an escape ladder. Tom is blasted several hundred feet. He survives this but then every character he ever wronged in the two stories demands that he right his wrongs. He gets struck by lightning again. By now his hair is missing and his toe nails are completely removed. He decides to listen to some music on a first generation ipod. It turns out they weren't invented yet and it was Huck's big joke. Tom doesn't understand being the butt of a joke so he keels over dead as a final bolt of lightning finishes him off.

Again, this is written in the spirit of Mark Twain. Don't worry about Tom, he'll be fine. He always is.