disobedient goats belong to belial

You miss the big kick. Your kickball team loses. Everyone gathered in Dogshit Field, where the neighborhood kids play, groan, or cheer. It’s the last Saturday of summer break. Johnny Duarte, who, yesterday, showed everyone his tattoo, a tattoo he got with a fake ID, reading: “I ↓ GO HARD ” across his pale, hairy belly, calls you a “pussy,” then mimics your kick, embellishing with a groan like a pornstar’s hyperbolic orgasm.

Everyone laughs. You get so mad you cry. 

When Johnny Duarte first showed off the tattoo, Anna Tyler, whom you kissed playing truth or dare at the beginning of summer but failed to impress, snorted and blushed.

Now, addressing you for the first time in weeks, Anna calls you a baby for crying.

You hear the tromp of your house.

The ground shakes. Pebbles jump.

Everyone knows to go home. Your house is coming to eat you.

As everyone runs, disappearing into the woods, you see Johnny Duarte and Anna Tyler holding hands.

Your house lumbers into Dogshit Field, howling the theme of Wheel of Fortune loud enough to shake walnuts from trees, to disorient and send birds tumbling into the grass.

Swinging its foyer to and fro, hunting your scent—its primitive windows are useless at this distance—it catches the scent of the prescription strength anti-perspirant on your Naruto t-shirt and rushes across the field. It opens its front door to smash down, swallowing you whole.

It lifts you. You tumble into the living room, where your grandparents’ skeletons sit, duct-taped to the couch, irradiated to bones by dozens of televisions, each tuned to twenty-four hour cycles of Wheel of Fortune.

In the calm of a Zyprexa commercial, you hear the goats bleat in the basement. The hum of the house’s engines. Feel the march of goat hooves on treadmills.

“Supper,” your mother calls from the kitchen, shouting over the Wheel of Fortunes. You smell spaghetti. Your mom makes spaghetti with ketchup. You never have anyone over because your mom makes spaghetti with ketchup. Sometimes ranch dressing on top.

You go up to your room to pray to Belial, to beg revenge on Johnny Duarte. For Anna Tyler’s renewed interest.

One of the young goats, Anna—you named her at the height of your crush—got loose from the treadmill and snuck upstairs. She stands munching one of your comic books in a way too cute to get mad.

You love goats.

If you don’t sneak the goat back to the engine room, to the treadmills that power the house, your mom will slit its throat. “Disobedient goats belong to Belial,” she’ll whisper, brandishing the sickle knife. How many times have you heard this?

Last Samhain, thinking it would make her smile, as if she were capable, you bought her a custom embroidered throw pillow reading: “D.G.B.T.B.” She didn’t get it. Looked confused when you explained.

About goats.

“I never say that,” she said.

Or, maybe better to have Anna the Goat sacrificed to the Lawless One, Belial. Maybe, the Lawless One will send you good evil in your sleep, some sexy wickedness, like claws and fangs.

Anna Tyler smokes weed. She reads Baudelaire. Legend has it, had sex in the county library, where her mom works.

You grab the goat in a headlock, try to drag it into the hall, calling for your mother, but the goat breaks free, brushing you off, knocking you on your ass. You crash through the display of Star Wars Legos, the one you’ve had since you were ten—sacred, if a bit dusty—sending hunks of the Death Star everywhere.

Your mother comes stamping upstairs. The goat rushes out of your room. You hear them collide in the hall. You hear your mother tumble, tumble, tumble down the stairs.

The house shudders, shakes, quakes. Manga crashes off your bookshelves.

You find your mom contorted at the foot of the stairs. She asks you—or asks no one, her eyes are unfocused, if you want ranch on your spaghetti?

The house rocks this way, that. Furniture topples, televisions fall from the walls and ceiling of the living room—Wheel of Fortune shuts up.

You find the house choking on Anna the Goat, who's wedged herself in the front door, sideways like a chicken bone. With a perfect boot that you wish Anna Tyler could see, you dislodge the goat, who rolls down the porch steps, stands, shakes itself off, shits in the front lawn, and prances away, into the last dusk of summer.

***

Travis Flatt (he/him) is an epileptic teacher and actor living in Cookeville, Tennessee. His stories appear or are forthcoming at Pithead Chapel, Necessary Fiction, The Bulb Region, and elsewhere. He is a 2026 Smokelong Emerging Writer Fellow. His chapbook "Five Stories"  (Sand & Gravel) was released in 2025. You can find him on Bluesky at @travisflatt.bsky.social