Nearly nine out of ten wildfires are preventable. So, douse your campfire until it\u2019s cold. Keep sparks away from dry vegetation. Hey, I\u2019m talking to you. Get off Instagram and listen up. You think you\u2019re better than me? A guy in a bear costume with a ranger hat and hollow eyes. You think because you live in New Jersey you won\u2019t be affected by micro-particles floating south from fires in Canada? Have you seen the inside of your lungs lately? No, I\u2019m just messing with you. It\u2019s cool, really. I know, I know. You\u2019ve heard it all before: dry weather high winds climate change human carelessness blah blah blah. I feel you. Fun fact though: in California, 10,000 giant sequoias have died. Deforestation is up 40 percent in Washington State, That\u2019s a lot of dead hemlocks. Not to mention the moose. They smell godawful when their flesh burns. Makes a sizzling noise, like moose on a grill. Makes me want to go home, rip my head off and grab a Bud Light. You think you\u2019re tired? Having to repeat this shit while wearing a scratchy costume is exhausting. Want to know a secret? I\u2019m quiet quitting, biding my time till retirement kicks in and I can go on Medicare. Saving up for a condo on the beach. Know what else? In Maui, right before buildings collapsed and all those people died, the sky turned this incredible flamingo pink color and it was so gorgeous, it made me cry.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Beat<\/em> (n). A regular, repeating pulse underlying a musical pattern. Also to strike (a person or animal) with blows of the hand or any weapon so as to give pain. When spoken aloud, synonymous with beet<\/em>, a succulent root vegetable used for food that yields sugar.<\/p>\n First, decide on the method. Best to take the \u201cb\u201d and \u201ct\u201d and wrap them around \u201cea,\u201d squeezing tightly. A quick, clean death.<\/p>\n Next, hide the evidence by focusing on something else. The dishes. The weather. The past\u2014in better weather. Daffodils and Snickers Bars. Chardonnay dreams. Fingers uncurled, soft as newborn kittens.<\/p>\n When the police arrive, wagging their beet-stained tongues, say nothing that would incriminate anyone.<\/p>\n At the funeral, shroud the word in unreliable memories: An argument. A bed. A fist. Something torn. An eye that refuses to open. All soaked in his vodka regret.<\/p>\n Sob into your hankie without shedding a tear.<\/p>\n Invite seclusion, confusion, and illusion to give the eulogy.<\/p>\n Sprinkle violets and euphemisms on the coffin. For instance, spin the truth<\/em>. Instead of lie<\/em>.<\/p>\n Replace with alternate words. Not synonyms like batter, thump, punch, thrash, maul, smack<\/em>. Softer sounds: pat, touch, dab, pat, stroke<\/em>. Convince yourself these are not the same thing.<\/p>\n As you leave the cemetery, passing headstones of words you\u2019ve never met, never even dared to imagine, notice the \u201cb,\u201d lying on its side like half a pair of spectacles, clawing at the dirt, making its slow, crooked way out of the cold, damp soil. Skip right past it to the profusion of beet-colored magnolia petals carefully blinking open.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He did last week. We were sitting in Biology lab and he put his hand on my leg and said, Olivia, you\u2019re da bomb. We were dissecting a sheep brain. My friend, Chloe, who\u2019s in 11th grade, said frogs are worse because they look like what they are, only dead. Riley\u2019s knee was touching mine under the table. Scalpel, he said when I handed it to him, his voice all serious.\u00a0 The sheep brain had these pouches that look like worms with bumps. It was gross but interesting if you know what I mean. Riley plays goalie on the JV soccer team. He\u2019s got a grin that tilts and eyes the color of sea glass. There\u2019s the pituitary gland, I said, when what I meant was you\u2019re really cute. The brain was slimy, and we both wore gloves. It stank so bad we covered our noses with the tops of our T-shirts. I kept thinking five minutes ago that brain was in a bucket at the front of the classroom and before that it was inside a sheep and the sheep probably lived in a field somewhere with grass to munch on and clouds overhead. What a waste, Riley said, like he\u2019d read my mind. We were supposed to find the nerves. If I knew what was going to happen later when Riley came over and sat on my bed, which Mom wouldn\u2019t have let him but she wasn\u2019t home because Aunt Charlotte fell and broke a bone in her foot and someone had to drive her to the hospital, if I knew then we\u2019d do things to each other\u2019s bodies and I\u2019d leave mine behind, not floating above it because that sounds like heaven, more split off so there were two of me disconnected \u2013 which was weird \u2013 I wouldn\u2019t have laughed when we stuck pins in the thalmus, when we poked and prodded like it wasn\u2019t once part of something else. I like him so much because he\u2019s smarter than he pretends to be and he listens when I talk and remembers stuff I\u2019ve said. That poor sheep. You think it was a girl? Riley asked and I wondered why Mr. Benevento, our Biology teacher, didn\u2019t tell us that, why nobody thought it mattered. We cut the brain together, his hand over mine, so the right and left hemispheres came apart. Severed, Riley said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You think you\u2019re better than me? A guy in a bear costume with a ranger hat and hollow eyes. You think because you live in New Jersey you won\u2019t be affected by micro-particles floating south from fires in Canada?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-beth-sherman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20066"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20517,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20066\/revisions\/20517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}It\u2019s not my fault Riley Kajowski doesn\u2019t like me anymore<\/h5>\n