The small affluent town of Bogscott, Massachusetts has seen 80% of its population set themselves on fire in the past week alone, with town officials reassuring that most of the other 20% has plans to do so in the coming days. The sudden spike in self immolation can be traced back to the local devastation felt from the announcement that one Ronnie Mason, (lovingly nicknamed "Melon-Man") would cease giving out free cantaloupes at the town square.

A local shop owner, Glen Gtafton elaborated on what some of the townsfolk are going through. "We're all so shocked, and a cloud’s come over me, I haven't watered my plants since I heard the news, I never really watered them before either, the dirty little sap suckers. But still, it's like it's not even real. You never think this type of thing can happen to you."

The trauma smothering the town is like nothing the citizens of this early-Norman-Rockwell paint stroke could have ever imagined. Melon Man's Free Cantaloupes have long been a mainstay of town culture dating back to 1968. Mrs. Mason said the tradition began 53 years ago when she found a large bag of cantaloupes in a dumpster.

"I was always scared of cantaloupes so I would have liked to eat them, maybe overcome my fears or at least get back at them, but cantaloupes taste like moldy paper so I had to find some way to get rid of them."

And all of this stemmed from one fateful accident, Mason continued;

"I was lugging around the weight of that big sack of cantaloupes and one of them fell out, escaping onto the sidewalk. Someone picked it up, said ‘finally’ then walked away. No one ever really much talked to me before, but I figured it was a good way to get rid of them. So I started handing them out to anyone. At most I'd hand out 30 or so melons a day and it was just last Tuesday when I finally ran out"

Over the years the citizens of Bogscott grew so enamored with the free melons they began to rely on them. It was such a source of joy that everyone from children to the elderly would bask in what seemed like an ever-glowing warm presence of fruity goodness. However not everyone believed the free melons should be given that much attention. In 1983 local scientist Dr. Louis Baeck warned of the possibility that one day Mason's sack would run out of cantaloupes. However the warning was quickly disregarded and shortly thereafter he was hung for low treason in the town square.

Those same downtown streets once filled with a happy hum of families munching on free fruit are now only filled with the lonesome screams freed from newly skinless bodies. In the town park figures both big and small stood like weeping scarecrows outlined in flames which disguised any final expression that would be left frozen on their faces.

When asked if she would be setting themselves alight Mason replied "Of course not, I don't think it's that big of a deal, like I said I'm glad to be free of the melons."

With all the newfound vacancies in town, Ronnie Mason hoped she could finally move into one of the empty houses. However she was written up for squatting by the police chief while he was on his way to get his lighter. This reporter reached out to the Bogscott Police Chief for comment but he had already dozed himself in gasoline and he couldn't hear me over the flames.

Mrs. Mason looked down at her empty old backpack as she told me of her plans for the future. "I'm fine. I won't miss being called "Melon-man" one bit. Never really got to know anybody here, plus the whole town smells like burnt rubber now. So I think I'll move down to Peabody, I heard they have a Quiznos there, and the two-for-five melted grinders isn't a bad deal"

However upon further investigation the Surreal Times could find no evidence of a Quiznos in Peabody.

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