The Bowling Green Massacre
The hallway emerges from beneath the living room carpet. The lockers piece themselves together from the scraps of carpet, then shimmy across the floor, up the walls. The couch, chairs, and table snap apart. The pieces wriggle around, forming torsos, arms, and legs. I ask them to also form heads so I can look into their eyes when I’m talking to them but the classmate flaps his couch cushion stomach trying to tell me that they can’t. I swing the M16 hanging from my shoulder, the barrel orange. Dad got me this M16 as his apology for spending more time with beer than with me last weekend and the weekend before that one. My M16 coughs and I say bless you as the classmates splinter. I know my dad is coming inside from drinking on the porch when the lockers fall to the floor, the hallway burrows, and the bodies return to what they used to be before they became bodies.
J. Bradley lives at jbradlywrites.com
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Portage Magazine 