We Had It Coming: And Other Fictions

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Dead mall rodeo

Eight bulls escaped from a rodeo at the Emerald

Square Mall In North Attleboro on Sunday. Big

honking ones too. They hauled ass right through a

fence like it was nothing my buddy said. Then they

stampeded off across the parking lot before people lost

track of them in the woods behind the Dunkies.

:::::It wasn’t long before the fire department went

racing after them but it was unclear to me what

expertise they had in this kind of predicament. Inside

of the animals was a type of fire that water cannot

extinguish. I was going to say they should have sent

in a team of cowboys but look how that worked out to

begin with. Maybe they’d have to fly in some of the

more talented ones from down south. A bull negotiator

of some kind if that is a thing that they have.

:::::I didn’t even know we had rodeos up here I said.

:::::You can be New England Country now my buddy

said and I said yeah fine.

:::::Did you hear that one singer or one of those guys

bought a house down on Duxbury beach he said and I

said wow that’s crazy. The kind of shit you say about

something that is very normal.

:::::Later on the news they had a bunch of locals on

talking about how scary the event was and how lucky

they were that they hadn’t been gored to death. One

lady said they came this close to trampling her into

the bushes.

:::::I was mostly surprised that the cops hadn’t

slaughtered them all on the spot.

:::::Eventually seven of the bulls found their way into

some guy’s backyard. The eighth was still at large

presumably. The guy was laughing about it now that

the excitement had mostly died down. He said he had

hustled his dogs inside and he and his kids went up on

the roof. Like they did before and later to take refuge

from the flood. They watched the bulls run around in

a circle for a while until it got too cold out and he had

to get the kids to go to bed.

:::::It was an almost hypnotizing kind of pattern he

said. How they were circling. The boys had gotten

their nerf guns out for protection. It was like getting

a free rodeo the guy said. No he’d never even been to

one before he said.

:::::One of the bulls started playing with a soccer ball

for a while. Nosing it back and forth from one side of

the yard to the other. Chasing after it when it rolled

off. The rest never stopped their pacing to join in.

Never even looked over at the other one. Maybe it still

thought it was on the clock and felt like it had to put

on a show. Or did it sense for the first time ever that it

briefly did not.

No living witness

Scrubbing dishes in a soup splattered sink. Rinsing

out the plastic takeout containers before putting them

in the recycling bin which I will later roll out to the

curb like the most gullible man alive. To be able to tell

myself that I had given it an honest try. You can lie to

yourself about anything you want to if there’s no one

following up.

:::::Jumbling and jostling and splashing like a child

with a house hose and speak of the Devil out the

kitchen window now appeared some actual children

from next door darting around with a hose of their own

on our shared grass. That’s probably why I thought of

the hose analogy in the first place just there.

:::::Reminding me also I should get to cutting

the grass.

:::::Fine.

:::::I will cut the grass tomorrow.

:::::Do you ever hold the door open for someone at

the grocery store or vice versa or perhaps someone

waves to you to go through first in traffic and you want

to weep for the world over it?

:::::Everyone who has ever lived and died.

:::::How kind we can all be to one another when it

costs us nothing.

:::::My tablet reading the news out loud saying they

had found microplastics in the clouds in the mountains

of eastern China and saying also that this was bad news

because certain toxic metals like lead and mercury and

other elements could cling to the plastic particles and

be carried this way and that on the rain and wind to the

places where it matters when things happen to people.

:::::Describing it all in the same measured radio

reporter tone and cadence that they might use to

say something like terrorists are sneaking across the

border. Which they also started saying explicitly in

the next segment and is probably why I thought of the

comparison.

:::::That always seemed like such an Odyssean effort

to me. When I hear them tell tale of these people

supposedly traveling thousands of miles over air and

sea and land with nothing and with no one just to

come kill some random Americans on the other side

of it.

:::::And no hope whatsoever of it being one of our main

guys. More likely it’s the least powerful American you

can gain access to.

:::::I was going to say desperate people do not kill

desperate people for no reason but that isn’t really

true. Most murderers I ever heard of just turn to the

nearest weakest person available and get it over with

and then regret it instantly.

:::::Oh God what have I done?

:::::Carrying on like that.

:::::Then booted down into the hole. The ones we’ve

built here and the much deeper ones we imagined into

being for ourselves.

:::::Forget about it though because that border story

is not real so I do not have to think about it for one

second longer. Never mind that Americans are fully

eager to and capable of killing other Americans. No

one can massacre one of us like one of us. Unlike most

other dirty jobs we do not need to outsource that one

to migrants.

:::::Listen to me.

:::::I do not want to waste my life on revenge.

:::::I’m not particularly well read but I know nothing

good comes from that in the books.

:::::From what I understand digging a grave to dump

a body into is famously hard work but it can be done

with effort. Covering it back over is another thing

entirely. A hole that can never be filled no matter how

vigorously you shovel.

:::::Now the kids are fighting one another. Worrying

over who gets to control the water.

:::::I thought just now of the copperhead snake we

almost tripped over hiking in the woods by the lake.

The noise we both made. And later what I thought was

possibly a cougar standing just off to the side of the

trail sizing us up. Calculating distance and velocity

and force and mass. However felines measure the

edible world.

:::::You said later you were positive that it wasn’t a

cougar. There will be no doubt in your mind that you

have seen a cougar if you ever see one you said. There

will be no question at all.

:::::Baby I want to live so badly.

:::::And go on living without this pain or any kind

of pain.

:::::And I yearn for you not here right now drying

these dishes as I pass them over to no one.

:::::We have starved one another.

:::::Our cheeks sunken in.

:::::I hunger for you like the grinding garbage disposal

asks for my hand.

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Posted: July 9, 2025 at 8:34 pm