They Had Goat Heads

THE MONK SPITTER





There was a machine that spit monks. “Ptk,” went the machine. “Ptk. Ptk.”

Brown bundles of fabric sailed across the sky . . .

A police force patrolled the field to make sure the monks didn’t break anything when they landed. For instance: A monk hit the ground face first and swallowed a mouthful of dirt and a policeman helped him up by the elbow and patted him on the back so he didn’t choke on the dirt and the monk dusted himself off and thanked the policeman and the policeman asked the monk if he had broken any bones and the monk felt his body from top to bottom to top and told the policeman he believed his bones were in good shape. Nodding, the policeman folded arms across chest, and the monk said, “If you think about it, all white people look vaguely like Macauley Culkin. The skin. The lips. This is assuming, of course, that all white people have blond hair. Likewise must they possess a certain undernourished quality.”

Next: The clouds fell into the horizon, exposing an unforgiving red sun, and all the monks pulled down their hoods, and the policemen pulled down the brims of their hats.

Next: One of the monks noticed a small tear in his hood. He brandished a needle and thread and sewed up the tear.

Next: . . .

Next: An old man took a sip of hot bouillon.

The bouillon tasted sour, and the old man died of malaise, but not before writing a letter to the bouillon factory that produced it. The letter read: “I’m extremely saddened by your bouillon.”

Next: . . . Dunno. A violent shipwreck?

The S.S. Buzzardspoon crashed into a towering island reef at a speed exceeding 80 knots. Bar tenders, lounge singers, captains, navy seals, smokestack sweepers flew off of the deck and were impaled on a vast, otherworldly bed of stalagmites. Death throes. Spurts and rivulets of gore. The native islanders swarmed the carnage like termites. Colonists must be taught a lesson. Frozen screams. Sequence of apocalyptic explosions. A kraken rose out of the surf and devoured the natives by the handful. Sopwith Camel warplanes sputtered overhead and dropped bombs the size of mules. More explosions. One of the planes flew into the kraken’s cyclopic eye and the beast toppled over with a resounding grunt. Across the universe a meteor spiraled into a black hole. On the other side of the island a second ship, the S.S. Yanomamo, crashed. No stalagmites here. No boulders or rocks. Only a smooth white coastline—and yet the S.S. Yanomamo still, somehow, crashed. Every soul on board survived. They dashed to the island’s highest peak and erected a church with steeples and bell towers and gargoyles and the pastor slammed his fist into his palm and the congregation took communion and spoke in tongues and put on capes with collars that swallowed their heads. In the vestibule, children poked each other in the ribs. In the belfry, an arthritic hunchback swung on a bell clapper like a monkey. In the basement, a stranger wolfed down his medication and waited, patiently, for the pain to subside.

In the distance: “Ptk” . . .

INFANCY





A man screwed an antenna into the soft spot of an infant’s skull and tried to get a signal. No luck.

He called the front desk of the hotel. “The baby doesn’t work,” he told the concierge. “I’m getting rid of it.” He hung up the phone, opened a window, and honored his promise.

The shriek of radio static dopplered down to the street . . .

THE LESSON





The lesson-giver’s elbow wasn’t working. Whenever he thrust his finger into the air to accentuate a point, the elbow convulsed, swung like a pendulum, and struck him in the cheek. His audience: a morass of taxidermists imitating ornery, cigar-smoking bullfrogs.

Nearby a tree shook its leaves. Everybody pretended the tree wasn’t there . . .

The lesson-giver grew more careful. He thrust his finger softly, gently, and his elbow began to kiss him on the cheek. A taxidermist acknowledged the feat of acclimatization with a powerful ribbit! The tree acknowledged it by shaking its leaves harder.

Overhead the silhouette of a kung-fu fighter sailed across the night sky. His karate chops were as fluid and true as a child’s mother-love . . .

The finger stopped thrusting, the elbow stopped kissing. The taxidermists swallowed their cigars and stood as the elbow blackened, withered, died. It fell off of his arm and swam to the earth like a leaf.

The lesson-giver pushed out his lips. “Let that be a lesson to you,” he croaked . . .

THE SISTER





Illustrated by Skye Thorstenson





SOMEWHERE IN TIME





I climbed into a hole and dared somebody to follow me. Heated whispers. Then the crowd dispersed. I climbed out. Trees bent in the wind. Sand on my cheeks. A Xerox machine salesman ambled by carrying a Xerox machine on his back. I clotheslined him. I stole the machine and sold it to a golf club salesman for $65.99. We played nine holes. We made copies of our hands, exchanged the copies, and said goodbye. Hot today. 97 degrees and humid. Sweat soaked through my shirt. I took it off and hung it on a branch. I went to a shirt store. As I walked inside, a security guard tried to clothesline me. I ducked. “You need a shirt,” he said. “But I haven’t bought one yet,” I replied. The security guard floundered. Three hours later I selected a shirt, purchased it, and clotheslined the cashier who sold it to me. I clotheslined the security guard for good measure. Outside a fire engine ran over two lovers on a Victorian tandem bicycle with one giant wheel in the front and one tiny wheel in the back. I picked up the bike and attempted to ride it, but the chain snapped, and the wheels deflated, and the handlebars fell off. I walked eight blocks. French subtitles formed beneath my feet whenever I spoke aloud. I asked a man if he would buy me a tin of sardines, for instance, and the subtitle said, “M'acheter veuillez une boîte de les sardines.” He wouldn’t do it. “Pourquoi,” read my subtitle. The man shrugged and offered me one of his shoes. “Non. Merci. Je n'aime pas le goût des chaussures.” It started to rain. I clotheslined a pedestrian and stole her umbrella. I ran to the nearest Bruce Lee amusement park. It stopped raining. Bruce Lees everywhere. Some of them mannequin robots. Some mere impersonators. Rollercoasters passed overhead emitting signature Bruce Lee squeaks, squawks, and hiyaaaahs. I bought a bag of potato chips and poured vinegar on them. I waited for the vinegar to sink in. I ate a chip. It tasted bad. I threw the chips away and went to see what was going on in the parking lot. Cement trucks everywhere. Drivers crouched behind steering wheels and ate lunch out of paper bags. One driver blew air into his paper bag and popped it. The other drivers weren’t expecting the popping sound. Riot. Everybody emptied out of their cement trucks and attacked each other. A cadre of Bruce Lees exited the park and joined in. Spectacle of clotheslining. I escaped in a hot air balloon that delivered me to a cornfield. A farmer chased me with a scythe. I eluded him by nailing myself to a cross and posing as a scarecrow. Dusk. Dawn. I detached myself from the cross and went to a hospital to have my wounds treated. A nurse took off my shirt. I grabbed her wrist. “That shirt’s brand new,” I warned her. She shook off my grip and injected me with a sedative from a souped-up hypodermic needle. Sleep. Consciousness. Hunger. Anxiety. The cycle of life. I ran outside in a surgical gown. “They stole my shirt!” I went back to the shirt store, bought another shirt, clotheslined another cashier and the security guard. Outside the cashier’s husband waited for me. He chased me for a half hour. We both got tired and went to a bar. I drank seven Pilsners. He drank three Rolling Rocks. I apologized for mistreating his wife, then destroyed a jukebox with a sledgehammer. I fled. I entered a building, climbed one story, and jumped out a window. I did it again. On both occasions I landed awkwardly but didn’t break anything. Smell of cheap cigars. I looked over my shoulder. There was an ostrich. Smoke oozed from the thin nostrils in its bill. I sat on a bench and chewed off my fingernails. Tomorrow I was getting married. I called my fiancé and canceled the wedding. She told me we had gotten married last week. I told her I wanted a divorce. I recanted and told her I would be home late. Change jingled in my pockets as I jogged twenty miles to a cemetery. I walked around, looking for people whose names I didn’t like the sound of, and clotheslined their gravestones. The cemetery ranger saw me and called the police. They came. They looked for me with metal flashlights. But I was long gone. I was halfway across Tennessee. A long state. A thin state. Like an arrowhead or a slice of mica. Everybody wore straw hats and drove Buicks. I only saw one red Mustang.

THE EGG RAID





A boy forgot how to fall asleep. “I can’t do it anymore,” he told his mother. She ordered him to go to bed or his father was going to hear about it. The boy said, “Oh yeah. I remember how to do it now.”

He went to bed.

He stared at the ceiling and tried to remember how to fall asleep. Close your eyes—he knew that much. But then what?

In the hallway, somebody whispered in harsh tones.

The door creaked open and a butler appeared. He turned on the light. “I’m sleeping with your mother,” he said. “We’re running away together. She wanted me to say goodbye for her.”

“Don’t,” said the boy.

Rearranging a bowtie, the butler nodded apologetically, turned off the light, and slipped out the door.

In the hallway, a curt shriek . . . scuffling and grunting . . . sucking noises . . . The boy pulled the covers up to his nose.

The door opened and his father walked in. The boy pretended to be asleep.

The father turned on the light and said, “I know you’re pretending to be asleep. Your mother told me you couldn’t remember how. By the way, your mother’s gone. Everything’s going to be all right, though. I ordered a blow-up mother to replace her. Well, that’s it. Good luck with the whole sleep thing.” He turned off the light and slammed the door behind him.

The boy flipped over and sobbed into his pillow.

In the hallway, a machine roared to life and labored in quick, methodic spurts . . .

The door opened and the father walked back in and turned on the light. He leaned a blow-up doll against the wall. The doll had a 1960s flip hairdo and wore a blue airline stewardess dress.

“Mom?” said the boy, springing to his knees.

The father arranged himself next to the doll. He removed a banjo from a long wicker case, got into position, and strummed a fast, friendly tune . . . Ten minutes later he abruptly smashed the banjo to pieces against the floor like an angry rockstar, then attacked the doll with a large kitchen knife, stabbing it over and over in the chest and screaming “Die! Die! Die!” until he had reduced the doll to a clump of mauled, ruined plastic.

“Excuse me, son,” said the father, turning off the light. This time he shut the door carefully, quietly.

The boy lay flat and pulled the covers over his head. The extreme darkness beneath the covers scared him. He poked his head out into the open and peered at the ceiling.

In the hallway . . .

The door opened. Nobody came in. The door closed.

The boy remembered something about sleeping. The next step. The step that came after closing your eyes . . .

In the middle of the night, the boy awoke. Moonlight shone through a half open window. His father sat on the edge of the bed. “I can’t keep doing this,” he said softly. “Being your father, I mean. It’s too hard. There’s too much explaining to do.” Groaning, he stood and walked into the boy’s closet. “I’ll be in here if you need me.” He shut the closet door.

The boy closed his eyes to go back to sleep, but he had forgotten how to do it again. He got out of bed and went to the closet to ask his father for advice, but the closet door was locked. He went downstairs to the kitchen to get a snack, but the refrigerator was locked. He went back upstairs to lie in bed and think about things, but his bedroom door was locked.

He heard something inside . . . the sound of a crow tearing flesh from roadkill . . . The boy kneeled and peered through the keyhole.

There was a man dressed in his father’s clothes. In place of his head was a giant white egg tilted to one side. “I am an egg man,” he whirred. “I am an egg man and I commit egg raids.” He sprinted toward one wall and crashed into it. He sprinted toward another wall and crashed into it. He sprinted toward the bedroom door and crashed into it. The boy leapt backwards on impact . . . He got up. Tentatively he put his ear to the door and listened . . . No movement, no sound. Nothing . . .

Yolk leaked into the hallway . . .

He opened the door and stepped into the bedroom. The door stayed open.

Turning on the light, he tiptoed across the bedroom, and shut the window. He tiptoed to the closet and looked inside. No sign of his father. He shut the closet door.

He tiptoed to his bed where the butler slept, soundly, using the mangled carcass of the blow-up doll for a sheet . . .

STRONGMEN & MOTORCYCLES (& MONKEYS, TOO)

Well-mannered strongmen are hideous anomalies. Don’t believe their polite handshakes, their nods of friendly affirmation . . .

I edit the sound of the daily news with a synthesizer and a pocketful of nitroglycerine. Nobody minds. The lights flicker. The night retreats into a bellhop’s expectant gaze.

Dialup connection snapcracklepop.

The question is—why are muscles a prerequisite for strongmen? Strength is a relative term. Strength can indicate corporeal authority in equal measure with Einstein’s motorcycle . . .

Vroom.

Screech.

Kachunk. Kachunk-kachunk.

To drape oneself across a motorcycle. To treat the machine like a chaise lounge, one leg dangling over a chrome handlebar as words ending in -ly pour out of my speechhole. A seagull shits on the muffler. I wipe it off with a shirtsleeve and tumble into the surf.

A strongman swims closer to shore and introduces himself. He tells me his name (Giovanni Belzoni). We make smalltalk. He comments on the saltiness of the ocean, the curls in his beard. He explains how much he misses the circus . . .

Monkeys are perceptive. Monkeys are capable. Hence the expression: “Monkey see, monkey do.” Nevertheless do not approach monkeys exhibiting solar coronas or inflated penumbra. The same goes for all simian organisms and some plant life . . .

I have known strongmen who bludgeon idle circus-goers with rubber mallets. I have seen clouds evaporate into thin air.

I can tell you when the basement looks like the balcony—claustrophobic playgrounds of light beams and mothballs . . .