{"id":22790,"date":"2025-11-21T07:11:45","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T12:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=22790"},"modified":"2025-11-21T07:11:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T12:11:45","slug":"copperhead-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/flash-fiction\/copperhead-therapy\/","title":{"rendered":"Copperhead Therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cDon\u2019t you touch that!\u201d Dad warned. But I licked my finger and stuck it to the electric-blue bug zapper anyway. Nothing happened. He said the same about the Teflon pan on the stove, the copperhead with a bulging belly, and the poison ivy spiraling up the chestnut tree. No burn, no bite, not even an itch. When I brought home my first girlfriend, he said it again. \u201cDon\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Later, in the dark, she whispered, <em>touch<\/em> <em>me<\/em>. And I did. And she left. I told myself it didn\u2019t matter. That numb was normal. Now, alone, I prod the copperhead into striking. Call it research. Call it closure. But don\u2019t call it healing. That implies I want to get better.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cDon\u2019t you touch that!\u201d Dad warned. But I licked my finger and stuck it to the electric-blue bug zapper anyway. Nothing happened. He said the same about the Teflon pan on the stove, the copperhead with a bulging belly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":23733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-patrick-g-roland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22790","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=22790"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23734,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22790\/revisions\/23734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}