They Had Goat Heads

HOG RIPPING

“I can rip just about anything in half.” I started with a sheet of vellum followed by a slice of cheese. Neither feat garnered much acclaim, so I moved on to a quarter, a picnic basket, and finally a hardcover edition of War and Peace.

Spectators observed me with bovine expectancy . . .

“What about this here hog?”

The farmer pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He removed a choke chain from the hog’s neck and kicked it in the shin. He kicked it again. The hog crept forward, glancing nervously over its shoulders. Occasionally it emitted a subdued oink.

I knelt and clicked my tongue. The hog came closer. I reached out my hand. It sniffed and licked my fingers.

I stood and circled the hog, gauging its distribution of poundage. Most of the weight appeared to be in its haunches, although its oversized head gave me second thoughts, and its potbelly commanded my attention, too. I looked into the hog’s eyes. It oinked at me assertively.

I lifted the hog over my head and ripped it in half. Offal exploded across the sky like the pulp of screaming watermelons . . .

“My hog!” shouted the farmer, falling on the carcass. He struggled like a child to cram the swine’s entrails back into its severed halves. “I loved this damned hog! It was a prize hog! God help me!”

The crowd became unruly, but their tempers weren’t beyond repair. Things didn’t really start to get out of hand until a slot technician dared me to rip his vending machine in half . . .

ELBOWS & VESTIBULES





How he denied the existence of elbows. How he engaged the machinery of tall vestibules.

A bridge made of Cornish hens.

Stitched together at the legs and wings, the hens had been neglected and gruesomely overcooked. And yet they each exhibited textbook quotas of rosemary. Still, as I began to cross them, their collective skin flaked, splintered, cracked . . . Chunks of fowl plummeted to the river of conveyor belts below.

I took myself by the elbows and ushered myself to the wayside.

THE BURN





It burned . . .

The curtain hummed into the ceiling and exposed a grocery cart. Theatergoers stiffened in their chairs.

The grocery cart inched forward. It squeaked across the stage, spitting suitcases, toilet kits and garment bags out of its chainmail belly. Bellhops rained from the roof beams. They nailed the stage and clambered after the treasure . . .

A theatergoer’s walkie-talkie came to life. He put it to his ear and listened to a voice.

“It burns,” the voice whispered . . .

The grocery cart squeaked to the edge of the stage and toppled into the orchestra pit. Tubas and maestros sprung into the air as if off of trampolines.

Theatergoers slapped index fingers against palms for thirty minutes . . . Fatigued, they climbed into Mini Coopers, sped up the aisles and out into the city. An usher sealed the theater doors behind them with a blowtorch.

The bellhops dropped the baggage they had collected and screamed for the audience to come back and tip them. Their throats shredded into long ribbons of spaghetti, and the curtain fell onto the stage with a wet thud.

The usher lit a cigarette. He took a puff, exhaled, and slowly twisted the ember of the cigarette into his palm.

It burned . . .

TO BED, TO BED—GOODNIGHT

I marched into the kitchen and dropped my suitcase onto the floor. It exploded. Dirty socks and frayed underwear sprung onto the appliances.

“I’m home,” I announced.

“Where have you been?” asked my mother, blowing steam from a cup of chamomile tea.

“Everywhere. I am a world traveler. I have seen everything and met everybody. A snake tried to bite me once. A cobra. I outran it. Now I’m back.”

“Where are you going?” asked my father, blowing steam from a cup of lentil soup.

“To bed, to bed—goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” said my parents as steam swallowed their heads and melted the cone of their throats . . .

The author in Kyoto circa 1888

D. Harlan Wilson is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, literary critic and English prof. Visit him online at:

www.dharlanwilson.com

dharlanwilson.blogspot.com