“Will this do?” The Company Man asked, spilling out fifty-five hundred dollars onto the gravel road below from out of his mud-stained briefcase.

“What the fuck?”

“I really do have to be going,” The Company Man said.

“Wait, buddy—”

“I really have very important business going on all of the time,” The Company Man said.

Mr. Kurtis scooped up the money and threw it into the bed of his pick-up truck as The Company Man meandered calmly across the highway and immersed himself in the woods to the southwest.

And the Company Man had a thought.

Because you just had to, didn’t you? You just had to? You couldn’t be like me and the goat. You couldn’t just be a Their Guest.

I am Their Guest, and I know their secrets, I speak their language of mortgages and cryptic chili secrets, and I have Found YOU, and I have FOUND you.

•••

In an idyllic looking wooded glen, a felled tree rests on clean dirt. It is flanked by great, yawning oaks reaching upward, congealing together in a sea of green in the canopy. Light glides in through the canopy, diffused just perfectly enough that it bathes the idyllic looking glen in light so soft and warm that the new summer particles in the air look like bubbles in the breeze.

Two figures are holding still in the orange afternoon light.

One is a tall bipedal ape covered in thick, oily hair.

One is a four-legged goat with wet, wicked eyes darting all over the place.

“Listen,” the goat said.

“I’m sorry, this isn’t—”

“HNNNNGGG FUUUUUCK. COME ON. BLLLEEEEEEEEEHHHH HYNNNHHHHHGGGGG.”

“It’s not that bad,” the tall bipedal ape said.

“Hyehh,” the goat bleated.

“Do not scold me,” the ape said.

“Hyeh. Hyehh.”

“I do not understand why we had to meet in secret. I could have come to the ranch, it’s not a—”

“FUCK. You. FUCK YOU, HEEEEEEE,” the goat yelled.

“Hmm,” the bipedal ape said.

“Listen,” the goat said, “I think you need to tone it down about thirty percent. Because this is going to be trouble for all of us. Just play ball with me. That’s all I’m asking. How many people have seen you?”

“I am sorry. I just don’t think that—”

“HYEEHHHHHH. FUCK YOU. SHIT. FUUUUUUCK,” the goat said.

The goat turned away from the tall, bipedal ape. Sounds of barking rapidly approached from behind the ape. A myriad of dogs appeared and attempted to surround the goat. The goat remained steadfast and bored.

“You, you don’t get it,” the tall, bipedal ape said.

“Nyehhh,” the goat said.

The barking dogs got closer. They bared their teeth and inched in. They were emboldened by the lack of movement from the goat. They angled their mouths appropriately, snapping their jaws, and got ready to kill it.

“Please, please stop,” the tall, bipedal ape said.

It wasn’t clear who the tall, bipedal ape was talking to.