Read Online They Had Goat Heads by D. Harlan Wilson - Free Book Online

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