Month: April 2025

“Welcome valued customer. Place item in bag or cart, and scan next item,” the self-checkout machine blared. 

Sean dropped a plastic tube of ground beef in the grocery bag, followed by a red onion, box of spaghetti, can of marinara, and mushrooms. He wanted a Butterfingers but he’d already added everything up in his head and knew he’d be eleven cents short if he scanned the candy bar. Stomach grumbling, he paid and walked out of the frigid Wal-Mart into a ninety-eight-degree afternoon. It was the last day of sixth grade and Sean felt light and energetic despite the heat radiating up from the five-acre blacktop parking lot, which at two-thirty was as empty as the town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, itself.  

 One of the few customers, an old lady with pale elephantine legs, loaded groceries into her sun-bleached minivan. The cloudy white swirls on the van’s hood reminded Sean of the salt stains that used to form on his father’s shirts this time of year.

“Bringing home the bacon?” the woman asked, looking at Sean’s swinging grocery bag. 

“No bacon tonight,” Sean said. “My mom is making spaghetti.” 

The old lady smiled. “It’s nice to see such a young man helping out around the house.” 

“As the man of the house, it’s sort of my job.” Sean and his older brother David became the men of the house when their dad went to prison. 

“Your generation might not be doomed after all.” She grinned and so did Sean. Sean was better at making small talk with adults than kids his own age. He used to blame his lack of friends on being poor until David—this was a few years ago—pointed out that just about everyone in Las Vegas was poor. 

“You don’t have any friends ‘cause you’re a weirdo,” David said. “Sean the Yawn.” 

“Don’t call me that.” Sean hated that his own brother came up with the nickname, which had stuck in second grade. 

“Sean the Yawn went barefoot on the lawn,” David chanted. 

“Mom said you’re not allowed to sing that anymore.” 

“Slipped in dog crap, fell flat on his ass.” 

“Shut up!” 

“Now he’s scared of dogs and brown grass!” 

The seven-verse song, which everyone at school knew by heart—thanks to David—was based on a series of unfortunate but true events. 

“Walked inside and threw off his clothes,” David continued. “Smeared shit on the carpet and some on his nose!” 

Sean teared up, David called him a pussy and a fag, Sean threatened to tell their mother, and David mumbled an apology.

Sean stuffed the groceries in his backpack as he made his way across the parking lot. He waited at a crosswalk even though the only traffic was a mile away on I-25. The town hummed with silent boredom as Sean stood at the corner of the empty street, flapping his T-shirt for air flow. Sometimes he wished he lived in the real Las Vegas—the one in all the movies—instead of this boring tumbleweed town where the houses were as sun-bleached and worn-out as that old woman’s minivan. 

“Just remember, this is the original Las Vegas,” Sean’s mother said when Sean and David were complaining about Las Vegas one afternoon. “It predates the other one by half a century.” 

“Old doesn’t mean good,” David said. 

“Yeah,” Sean agreed. “David predates me and there’s nothing great about him.”  

An unexpected burst of laughter shot out of their mother’s mouth. She composed herself and told Sean not to be rude. “Brothers stick by each other through thick and thin.” She loved saying this. She loved sayings in general, as if tidy little quotes could bring order and sanity to the world.

Later, David got even in the backyard by kneeling on Sean’s sternum for so long, Sean blacked out.  

Sean walked along the uneven, weedy sidewalk. A toy poodle yapped at him from behind a fence. An old pickup coughed by on the-two lane road. Sean reminded himself to slow down and hunch over like a normal twelve-year-old. He was always reminding himself to be normal, especially when talking to people—to laugh, to smile, to frown, to reflect whatever fake emotion was expected of him instead of staring back with the slack-jawed expression that earned him the name Sean the Yawn. Brothers stick by each other through thick and thin. Now there was some bullshit. Despite his cruelty—possibly because of it—David had always been accepted by the other kids in school, if not mildly feared. Because David didn’t have to remind himself to act normal. He was normal. And normal people distanced themselves from outsiders. Ridiculed them, harassed them, assaulted them, even if they were related. 

Sean turned onto Washington Street, which was pleasantly shaded by two rows of towering oaks. Small, neat homes painted bright purple, red, and yellow stood like toy houses beneath the old trees. Sean’s house, which was on the other side of town, was plain white. Or it used to be a long time ago. Now the paint clung to the weathered boards like peeling bark, leaving bare patches that reminded Sean of a kid in school who was mercilessly made fun of because of his genetic skin disorder. Sean and David used to have a contest to see who could peel off the longest, unbroken strip of paint from the south side of their house. The loser had to eat a bite of the winner’s paint chip. Sean always lost, but the one time he didn’t, David refused to eat the loser’s meal. David always broke the made-up rules of games he forced Sean to play. 

Sean checked the time on his phone. It was almost three. As long as he was back by five thirty with the groceries, his mother could cook dinner before her second Uber shift of the day. Right now she’d be asleep in the Lay-Z-Boy, resting up for the night, Friends or some other 2000’s laugh track droning in the background, a room-temp ice pack under her lumbar, and a sweating vodka and Sprite in the recliner’s built-in cup holder, which was mildewy because of the chronic condensation that had begun pooling there this spring. 

He cut through the side yard of a vacant, two-story house. The dead, brown lawn was strewn with plastic bags, Coors cans, and bits of paper. The windows were boarded up and tagged with fading peace symbols and freshly spray-painted MAGAs and swastikas. Last winter, Sean ventured inside by himself and kicked around one of the many plastic vodka bottles left behind by the high schoolers who’d turned it into a hangout. The boarded windows made it dim and he’d accidentally stepped on what appeared to be a translucent, burst balloon filled with snot. Sean went home and told David about the gross balloon and David howled with laughter. 

“You’re always stepping on disgusting shit,” David said. “Why don’t you ever watch where your feet go, retard?” 

“Retard? You’re the one with the stupid sagging eye,” Sean said, making his best dimwit imitation. Sean regretted saying this even as it came out, not because it was rude to make fun of someone’s disfigurement, but because no one got away with mocking David’s deformed eye—a parting gift from their father. David gave Sean a black eye of his own seconds later, plus a fat lip and a chipped front bottom tooth. When Sean saw himself in the mirror the next morning, he decided it would be the last beating David ever gave him. 

Sean ducked through the hole in the backyard fence that led directly into Monroe Cemetery. The grass here, like everywhere in Las Vegas, was dead and brown and lumpy with ground squirrel holes. Sean trudged up the steep, treeless hill, sweating now that he was out in the open amongst the gravestones. He stopped when he reached the cemetery’s newest resident. A small granite headstone was all his mother had been able to afford. “Uber doesn’t pay shit,” she’d sobbed in the funeral home, as if Sean hadn’t already known. 

Sean looked around the empty, blazing hot cemetery, unzipped his jean shorts, and urinated on his brother’s grave. 

Dusty la cholla cacti flanked the steep single-track trail that led out of the cemetery and into the foothills that overlooked the original Las Vegas. Sean hiked for ten or fifteen minutes before stepping off the trail. He made sure the coast was clear, then knelt before a bowling-ball-sized rock. Tendons strained in his thin, sun-burned forearms as he pried the rock up and rolled it away. Still crouching, he popped his head up to survey. No one but a pair of vultures circling high above. He dug, scooping warm handfuls of sandy soil between his legs like a dog. He felt the Zip-Lock bag and pulled. It came out of the ground like he imagined an organ might pull free from a roadkill carcass. He held the bag up, inspecting it for holes. It contained four red cardboard tubes with six-inch-long fuses. Sean found a shoebox full of the M-80s under David’s bed a few months ago. He spent the spring testing them on glass beer bottles, then a honeydew melon, then the arms of a cholla cactus, then an anthill, then a bull snake. Today was graduation day. 

The trail continued to the top of Sugarpine peak—a three-hour round-trip hike from the cemetery parking lot—but Sean only followed it a hundred yards further before veering off trail and descending into a dry creek bed. Knee-high bushes clawed at Sean’s bare shins. It was too hot for long pants today. But the heat was good. The heat was necessary. It would keep the pack of stray dogs hunkered in the shade of the pinon pines that lined the sandy wash. The heat would also make the dogs extra hungry because the dump, which served as their feeding ground, was too hot for them on days like this. 

Sean unshouldered his backpack when he got to the wash. He rummaged through the Wal-Mart grocery bag, ignoring the onion, spaghetti, mushrooms, and marinara. He withdrew the hamburger meat and used the edge of a rock to rip the taut tube open. He stuck his finger inside. The wet meat was still cold. He tore the package the rest of the way and balled up three portions of fatty ground beef. He laid the balls carefully on his backpack and put the tube of meat back in the grocery bag. Next, he took out three M-80s. He stuck a finger in the first hamburger ball and pushed an M-80 into the hole. He crimped the opening down, leaving a small bit of space for the fuse to stick out without touching the meat. He’d experimented and learned that the meat would put the fuse out if he didn’t leave a few millimeters of breathing room for the flame to pass through. 

Sean walked amongst the dry, reed-like grass that rose well above his head. When the monsoons came in July, the grass would turn green and the scrawny desert willows would suck up the water and sprout magenta flowers. Birds and deer would flock to the area as if it were a Disney scene. He and David used to come here and shoot birds with their wrist rockets. They almost never managed to hit anything. 

Sean ventured into the deepest part of the channel, which was free of vegetation. The hot, dry sand made walking slow and difficult. He was thirsty and hungry. His planning hadn’t extended to satisfying basic bodily needs, just the needs of his soul, which were about to be met because a white pit bull trotted towards him, snout high in the air. The dog’s wide, pink tongue hung out of his mouth in a happy grin. 

Las Vegas had a stray dog problem, with new recruits bolstering the pack’s numbers faster than animal control, cars, or coyotes could chip them away. Sean whistled and held up the meat bomb. 

“Here boy! Come on! Get it while it’s fresh, you stupid fucker!” 

The pit bull came to a full stop ten yards away. A short-haired, skinny mutt watched in the distance. When Sean looked at it, the mutt vanished into the tall grass, tail between its legs. Sean turned his attention back to the pit bull, which a normal person, Sean knew, might think was cute. 

“I’ve got something for you.” Sean waved the meat bomb back and forth. He put it to his mouth as if to take a bite.

The pit bull’s nostrils flared in and out, pulling in hot desert air laced with greasy meat.

Sean felt a breeze at his back. Perfect. Things were going just perfect. He set the meat bomb on a flat piece of driftwood, and from his backpack withdrew a red plastic cup—the kind high schoolers used for beer pong. Sean lit the fuse with David’s lighter, then covered the burning fuse with the red cup because everyone knew dogs didn’t like flames. The fuse, which he’d learned how to extend thanks to YouTube, was exactly sixty seconds long.  

“All yours!” Sean said to the pit bull, backpedaling. 

The white pit bull looked at Sean, sniffed the air, and cocked his head. Sean realized the dog wanted even more distance so held his hands up in an apology and retreated until the dog was satisfied. Sean’s heart pounded as he counted off the seconds in his head. Twenty-four, twenty-five. . .  

The pit bull approached, keeping one eye on Sean and the other on lunch. He was just a few feet away from the meat bomb now. He looked like a puppy—soft pink snout, big feet, dopey eyes. His ribcage heaved in the heat. He stretched his muscular neck as far as it would go, hind legs firmly planted in the sand, tail tucked, body low to the ground, ready to spring away if Sean moved an inch. 

Sean did not move an inch. 

The pit bull sniffed the meat bomb. His tongue flicked out, tasted the cheap greasy chuck. Saliva oozed from his droopy black jowls to the sand. He didn’t seem concerned with the smoke that rose from the lip of the upside-down cup. 

Thirty-eight, thirty-nine. . .  

The pit bull took another tentative lick, held eye contact with Sean—it wasn’t fair that eye contact came more naturally to dogs than it did to Sean—and grabbed the meat bomb in his mouth. 

Forty-eight, forty-nine. . .  

The pit bull swallowed hard and the lump passed down his throat like a rat making its way down a python’s gullet. 

Sean stared in awe, his yawning mouth—Sean the Yawn!—hanging open in disbelief. It actually worked! Of course it worked. He should have had more faith in himself after what he did to David. 

Fifty-three, fifty-four. . .  

Sean plugged his ears—M-80s were loud fuckers—but then he imagined David calling him a pussy so he let his arms fall back to their sides, which was just as well because Sean wanted to hear the wet plopping squelch the dog’s flesh would make as it splattered across the desert. He’d always envisioned the bomb going off in the dog’s mouth, spraying teeth and ears. This was even better. Its entire body would detonate like that honeydew. Except instead of light green, the shower would be dark red.

Fifty-eight, fifty-nine. . .  

The pit bull puppy looked at Sean, wagged his tail, and seemed to smile. Now it would die.

Sixty!

The dog sat in the sand, panting and pawing the air with his left paw, asking for another treat.  

Sixty-three, sixty-four. . . 

“What the hell?” Sean whispered. All of his fuses were within a second or two of a minute. Maybe excitement had caused him to count too fast.  He decided to count another ten slow seconds.

Eight, nine, ten. . . nothing.  

Sean realized what happened. The jury-rigged fuse got dislodged in the dog’s mouth. How had he overlooked this?

Because he was an idiot. A stupid idiot like everyone always said. Sean heard David laughing hysterically. I may have the sagging eye but everyone knows you’re the one who came out underbaked!  

“Fuck,” Sean hissed, kicking the sand. “Fucking fuck.” The pit bull sprang away and disappeared into the brush.  Sean’s face burned with humiliation even though no one was around to witness his stupidity. He strode towards the red cup and was about to crush it under his foot when a simple solution presented itself. 

“Just make the bomb bigger,” he muttered. Yeah. That was it. He and his mom could make do without meat for dinner. She could anyway—the ass imprint she left in the La-Z-Boy had already increased in width and depth since David died three months ago. If Sean made the bomb bigger, the next dog would be forced to take bites instead of chomping the thing whole and dislodging the fuse. With any luck, the M-80 would detonate inches from the dog’s head if Sean timed it just right. It might not be as spectacular as an exploding head or torso, but it would get the job done. 

Sean divided the rest of the meat between two grapefruit-sized meat-bombs, keeping the fuse entrances clear. He put one bomb in his backpack and walked with the other, whistling and calling out in a friendly tone. If he was lucky, the pit bull would still be in the vicinity. And he wanted that pit bull. It had taken one of his last M-80s, which would harmlessly pass through the dog’s digestive tract within twenty-four hours instead of doing what it was designed to do.

Sean pushed his way through the thicket of grass, which was so tall it made him feel like a kindergartner. That brought up an interesting question. What would an M-80 do to a kindergartner? Better yet, what would an M-80 do to Eleanor Whitehead, who spread the rumor that Sean was gay? The problem was Sean couldn’t get Eleanor to eat a meat bomb. He’d have to devise some other way. Maybe tie one onto a rock and toss it through her bedroom window, or—

There was movement on his left. Sean whipped his head around just as a dog tail disappeared into the brush. He tried to whistle but his lips were too dry. Damn, he was thirsty. Feeling thirst hit so hard and so suddenly was a bit frightening, and he was half an hour from the cemetery. Plus another ten minutes to the first gas station where he could get water. He should have brought a bottle. But he couldn’t be expected to think of everything. 

Just like he hadn’t thought of everything when it came to poisoning David. Instead of putting the rat pellets back in the garage, Sean had stupidly left the box in his own bedroom closet all week when David was dying on life support. That had been a real Sean the Yawn move. 

“Come on out,” Sean cooed to the dog. “I’ve got an even bigger treat for you this time. Oh! You’re not a dog.” 

A rail-thin coyote with short brown hair emerged from the grass. The coyote’s patchy fur made it look mangy. Even a bit pathetic. It held its injured left hind leg in the air. Its massive ears stood straight up like a donkey’s, accentuating its holocaust-skinny appearance. A stiff breeze wouldn’t have just blown it over. A stiff breeze would have scattered the creature across the desert like a fistfull of dust.

The coyote sniffed at the meat bomb from a dozen yards away, ribs sticking out even more than the pit bull’s. By killing it, Sean would actually be putting it out of its misery. In a way, this made Sean less enthusiastic. 

But the result would be the same as a dog. Ka-boom. Blood and bone and fur everywhere. Sean could save the second meat bomb for the pit bull if it came around later. Besides, there was a full summer to massacre all the dogs he wanted, provided he could get his hands on more M-80s. He had a lot of practice ahead of him if he wanted to remove Eleanor Whitehead’s lying tongue. 

Sean set the meat bomb on the sand. Sweat dripped down the tip of his nose. He was thirstier than he’d ever been. His mouth and throat were painfully dry. The coyote sniffed, looked at the meat, then at Sean, then back to the meat. Sean took out his lighter and was about to ignite the fuse when the coyote abruptly turned and loped off into the tall grass. 

“Hey, wait!” Sean grabbed the cup and the meat bomb and followed the coyote. By the time he pushed through the other side of the thicket, the coyote was already twenty yards away, looking warily over its shoulder. Sean held the meat bomb up but the coyote was clearly spooked, somehow sensing Sean’s intentions.  

It was time to change things up. Sean extracted the M-80 from the chuck, set the meat and the red cup on top of a log—he would retrieve both later—and took the lighter from his pocket. If he lit the fuse just half an inch from where it entered the M-80, it would explode roughly five seconds later. 

The coyote limped on three legs as Sean jogged after it in the main channel of the wash. Sean’s lungs and legs burned. The back of his throat felt drier than a scab. The coyote stopped and glanced back. Sean sped up, closing the distance. He got the lighter ready. The coyote limped off again, nimble as a grasshopper over the deep, scalding sand. Had it been holding its left or right leg earlier? Because it was definitely holding its right leg up now. 

The coyote disappeared in the brush and Sean went in after it. He would light the fuse the next chance he got. He was desperate for a kill and the coyote wasn’t going to let him get closer than fifteen yards it seemed. Sean didn’t have good aim—David always teased him for throwing like a girl—but fifteen yards wasn’t far and even if the M-80 went off a few feet from the coyote, the explosion would have enough force to stun it. Then, when Sean was closer, he could light a second M-80 and toss it on top of the— 

Something hard slammed into Sean’s leg below the knee, hitting him with so much force that he was suddenly looking up into the blue sky, suspended in the air. He came down hard on his side. The wind rushed out of his lungs. Then agonizing pain gripped his leg. He tried to draw in breath to scream as an animal pulled and shook his calf. His lungs seized up instead.

Sean twisted and kicked at the animal with his feet. It was the coyote. No. It was a different one. This coyote was larger and sleeker, its winter coat fully blown. A second coyote grabbed Sean by his neck and now he did manage to scream. 

He screamed and flailed. He tried to pry his fingers in between the coyote’s jaws, which ground together like kitchen shears, cutting through tendon and neck muscle. Maybe David would have been strong enough to get his fingers in there, but not Sean. Not Sean the pussy who threw like a girl and couldn’t remember to smile or make eye contact or learn how to make friends. 

Sean realized his backpack strap was caught between his throat and the coyote’s upper set of teeth, keeping his airway free. He clawed at the coyote’s head and face. If he could just get this one off him and reach one of the fist-size rocks that lay a few feet away. . .  

But now three more coyotes latched onto his body like leeches, pinning him down and ripping at his stomach and arms and legs. The original attacker pulled a long, thick strip of skin, fat, and muscle from the back of Sean’s knee down to the center of his calf, where the flesh broke off then disappeared down the coyote’s throat. Blood gushed from the wound. Bone—white as fresh paper—stood out against the red tissue like a flash of lighting against the night sky. Sean jerked his body madly but the fight was going out of him with every second. He had to reach one of those rocks. Or light the fuse of the M-80. But where was it?

The teeth pressing down into Sean’s throat finally cut through his backpack strap and punctured his esophagus, which made a crunching sound like a chicken carcass being pulled apart and crammed into a crock pot.

There were at least a dozen coyotes on him now, swarming over him like a school of piranha, ripping meat off and choking it down as Sean’s gargled screams became increasingly impotent, a word Eleanore Whitehead used to describe him just a week ago.

Now he truly was impotent, because he felt teeth on his penis, followed by a searing rip of pain. He sensed his entire scrotum had been taken with it. 

The coyote attached to his throat jerked its head back and forth. An acidic, electrical jolt shot down Sean’s spine and suddenly, mercifully, he felt nothing below his broken neck aside from the fire in his spinal cord. The coyote let go. Then its hot, slobbery mouth enclosed around Sean’s face, blackening the sky. Bones crunched. Sean lay dead still on his back, unable to move or scream as the coyote tugged at his face as if it were a rubber chew toy. Because the rest of his body was mostly numb, Sean felt the sharp canines piercing and ripping into his eye socket, nose, and jaw all the more intensely. The coyote pulled free and tossed its head back. A gelatinous portion of Sean’s own lips and freckled cheek vanished into the coyote’s mouth. 

Two juveniles bumped the adult out of the way as they fought over Sean’s intestines in a game of tug-o-war. They growled but their tails wagged in delight as they stood above him. The thick pink rope of intestines burst and something warm splattered over Sean’s face. It smelled like shit. Because it was shit. His own shit. It leaked into the gaping wound that served as Sean’s nose. 

Somewhere, Sean heard his dead brother laughing as he came up with another verse of Sean the Yawn.