story: The Goat on the Mountain

The Goat on the Mountain

By Peter Wild - peter (at) wild1234.wanadoo.co.uk

My wife doesn't understand me, he says as he sits writing at the bar.

The pretty girl balanced on the stool next to him takes a sip from her Bud and says, I hear you.

I feel like a tiger left out in the snow, he writes in his notepad, pencil gripped awkwardly between stubby fingers. Or a?

Or a?

He lifts his head and catches the girl's eye. She is really not bad. She has a nice smile and hair the color of straw. He likes hair the color of straw.

Or a goat left untethered on a mountain looking for affection from an outcrop of rock.

She thinks: he's cute. She evaluates. She thinks: sure, he's not as tall as her regular boyfriend but it's quarter to ten on a weekday night and there probably won't be any better offers and anyway who chooses to sleep alone? No-one.

So she punches his arm hard enough to hurt and says, are you going to scratch away at that notebook all night or are you going to buy me another one of these?

He looks up. She is holding the neck of the bottle between her index finger and her thumb and jigging it back and forth, the base of the bottle rocking like the ass of an Egyptian belly dancer.

He says:
Same again?

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bio: Peter Wild is the editor of a forthcoming series of books for Serpent's Tail, the first two of which - Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall & The Empty Page: Fiction inspired by Sonic Youth - will be published in 2007. He is also editor of The Flash, which will be published by Social Disease in February 2007. His fiction has appeared in Word Riot, Pen Pusher, Scarecrow, Thieves Jargon, Rumble, The Beat and a bunch of other places. He also runs the Bookmunch website.