The goat man

 Last night. (This happened)

On the edge of the village, on a far out piece of land stands a goat shed. It is full of small wide bodies and tinkling sounds. I see it every day. A low slung shack, rough and rude, with a solitary blown out window- filtering the continuous ever moving sound of goat bells that spill out. For the few first few months all I ever registered were goats and the strong muscular smell that accompanies them. Then one day, there was a man. A tall, tight, force with strong hands and no words. He used to watch me as I walked by; with a strength of field that meant for the most part, I usually kept my eyes averted until such times as I could not. On these occasions, the smell would usually get me, way before the strung, headless body hanging from a hook, and the blood pooled in swirls and smears upon the ground, ever would. Sometimes it would just be the goat man, at others, some other gathering of men all bonded in their easiness around butchery. Beyond the shock, old memories from other times would serve to buffer my dissonance, telling me that after all, this is simply what is done in these little, far off parts. Moving only to myself, I kept on with my daily walks, until one day the thick eyed man spoke - it was a strange and furtive reaching, for an intimacy I didn't want; something that said that as he worked with knives and blades; across the shuttering of headphones and eyes deliberately cast down, he saw me.

Last night, heat at 38 degrees had settled over the village like a too-tight skin of a drum, that meant I couldn't sleep. So, way past midnight, I did what I always do- made my way out into the soft tumblings of dark, laid out abstract and full like velvet. Rough paths and shapes meandering into night caverns, high-hidden by the absence of a disappearing moon. Eventually I came upon the goat shed and the low but familiar sound of bells. But this time it stood different, swathed now as it was in the soft shadowy soft light from an open door. And there at 1am, moving slowly and bodily within the space, was the goat man- naked from the waist up ( all that I could see),complete in embodied silence, under the mournful glare of a solitary overhead bulb. I don't know what he was doing, I didn't stop to look- instead quiet as I've ever been- I passed by unseen, back into the fullness of the dark . MB #truestories