It\u2019s not a bar, though, but a backyard party, twins, and the princess and the clown never showed so it\u2019s just the cowboy out there, shooting water from his pistols and lassoing the birthday boy while the horde shrieks and the birthday girl wails by the fence, contorted into a sticky knot of frosting and betrayal.<\/p>\n
But where are the clown and the princess? The cowboy takes a break, can be glimpsed around the side of the house jabbing at his phone screen. Are they lost? Both of them? Maybe they did walk into a bar, maybe on the way they said You know what? Screw this<\/em> and now they\u2019re sitting at a corner table in facepaint and finery, gulping Budweiser and watching the game. The princess\u2019s phone buzzes. The clown\u2019s phone buzzes. The cowboy jams his phone into his pocket, whips it out again, jabs some more. Buzz. Buzz.<\/em><\/p>\n The cowboy shoves back his hat, runs a sleeve across his brow. The princess booted him last night after another text from the girl who was Rapunzel on Sundays and didn\u2019t even need a wig, that was her real hair and yeah, he\u2019d climbed it. So what? Anyway the princess was in a snit even before Rapunzel’s luminous You up?<\/em> blew up the silence between them.<\/p>\n Whatever. Let her bitch and moan to the clown, get it out of her system. He\u2019ll ace this fiesta solo, like the professional he is. Just watch. He holsters his phone, he sprints to the birthday girl, he bellows, \u201cYou ready to have some fun, little lady?\u201d She shrieks and swings a snot-crusted fist at him and without thinking he swings back, hard, and then she\u2019s on the ground, quiet at last, and damn, this might just get him fired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s not a bar, though, but a backyard party, twins, and the princess and the clown never showed so it\u2019s just the cowboy out there, shooting water from his pistols and lassoing the birthday boy while the horde shrieks and the birthday girl wails by the fence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":23074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-didi-wood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22224","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=22224"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23089,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22224\/revisions\/23089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}