It was like any other morning at the barn. I got up with the dawn, hitched the buckles on my bib-overall dress (hey, a cowgirl’s gotta look her best), and took off toward the pasture with a cup of coffee in my hand. I was leaning into the steam over the fence rail when I saw the most disturbing thing. One of our beloved cows was lurching, one hoof after the other, toward the hay bales where our flash fiction contest guest judge, Stephen Graham Jones, was eating his bowl of Wheaties! Her flesh had rotted and was hanging off her shoulder. Congealed blood was catching the early morning sun and lighting up each noxious striation of muscle that had curled like an overgrown toenail and sloughed off her hide. Cud was dripping in great mucosal streams off her ruined lips, and a long mournful moan of “suuubmissioooonnns” could be heard all across the farm. For the love of all things beef and Stephen Graham Jones, submit to our flash fiction contest and stem the tide of bovine zombification. Hurry, there’s only four days left…
’til the cows stay dead,
Alisha Attella
Managing Editor