She heard him before she saw him: A scrape on shingle, then a sound like someone dropping a saucepan of gravel.
Noelle came out of the side door, towel in hand because she had been drying herself off after having been waist-deep in the stock-tank fixing that damned water-pump again …
… there was a goat on the house.
Not a neighbor’s pretty Boer. A mixed, barrel-chested, unbothered sinner with an expression like he had paid rent. He looked down at her as if she were the surprise.
“No,” she told the roof. The goat considered this, chewing contemplatively.
Remy came around the corner from the shop, wiping his hands, followed her gaze, and went still in the way that was not the Green — just a man doing math that was not mathing.
“That,” he said, “Is on our house.”
“I see that.”
“How?”
“I wasn’t here for how.”
The goat took two dainty steps along the ridge and settled over the kitchen window like a bad weather vane.
Remy’s voice dropped into the register he used for private wars, “Get off my roof.”
The goat, unbothered, did not.
Noelle felt it rise in her — the same unwise fondness that had kept a sunfishing horse. She didn’t need a goat. She had forty acres and a crap water-pump they couldn’t do without and a mother who thought a choker was a moral failure. She wanted, disastrously, this specific idiot to keep existing.
“I like him,” she said, mild.
Remy looked at her. “He’s on our house,” he said, reasonably.
“That,” she said, “Is a good point. I still like him.”
A long quiet. Cicadas offered their unwanted opinions, and her wedding ring tapped against her throat when she tipped her head back.
“We are not keeping a goat on the roof.”
“Honey,” she said, reasonably she thought, “We’re not keeping him. He’s just … passing through.”
He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them the green was only tired, “If he comes through the ceiling I will —”
“You’ll cuss,” she said, already smiling. “Quietly, so I don’t hear.”
He stared at her. She stared at the goat. The goat stared at God.
“What’s his name?” Remy asked, which was how she knew she had won.
She didn’t think. The words were already there, as if the animal had arrived with paperwork: “Roof Goat.”
He made a sound that was not quite a laugh, “That is not a name.”
“It’s his job description.”
He pointed at the roof ridge, already losing, “You eat one shingle and you are chili.”
Roof Goat flicked an ear.
Noelle bumped her shoulder into her husband’s arm, grease and sun and her wedding ring warm against her skin.
“He won’t,” she said, with no evidence.
Remy stood in the yard and began, very quietly, to explain to a goat what a roof was for.
She giggled.
Roof Goat stayed.
Something has happened that hasn’t happened for a very long time — I’m stuck into building a fictional world. Unfortunately, when that happens I tend to hyperfocus on what’s in my mind and let other things slide. Like this blog. Sorry about that.
The current hyperfocus started on a sudden curiosity about the hypothetical bio- and neurochemistry of berserker rage. During my research I discovered that the field of psychology has a subset of folks who thoroughly1 enjoy debating the berserker phenomenon, complete with lists of berserker analogues from other cultures.
A lot of them.
So. I’m sitting there with things like “catecholamine surge”, “glutamate storm”, “5-HT drop”, “dynorphins”, “Stress Induced Analgesia”, “amygdala versus prefrontal cortex versus periaqueductal gray”, “transient hypofrontality”, and I’m thinking, “You know, for something that is actually scientifically feasible … this guy would be a damned nightmare.”
Then I learned about the hypothetical “crash phase”, and words like “hyperalgesia”, “excitotoxicity”, “amino acid bankruptcy”, and “vesicle depletion”.
Now, I thought, he’s interesting.
I was sitting there mulling, “Trigger Cycle (seconds) → Hijack and Peak Rage (minutes, possibly hours) → Synaptic Collapse (12 to 48 hours) → Synthesis Recovery Cycle (days)”2 and I wondered, “Hey, would it be theoretically possible for another person, say his wife, to give his prefrontal cortex a vote during the first two stages?”
Which led to words like: “multi-sensory input” leading to “C-tactile afferent activation”, “insular cortex”, “oxytocin surge”, “amygdala brake”, “parasympathetic rebound” and “HPA axis suppression”.
All of which is a long-winded scientific way of saying, “Sure, but it’ll be limited to one extremely close person, and she’ll have to engage as many senses as possible.”
And I was off — A married couple. On a small ranch, because his default state is mildly hyperaware, and a small rural ranch limits interaction with other people.
I started pounding out scenes from their backstory, trying to learn about my protagonists3, and as each scene got set down, the story get a little clearer. A man whose brain is “war chemistry turned to 11”, the woman he loves, and a rich idiot who unwittingly pulls the pin on a six-foot two-inch, 215 pound grenade.
Action! Adventure! Violence! Intrigue! Bodyguards getting thrown through barn walls!
So, what scene comes out of my fingers first?
A roof goat.
I hate my brain sometimes.
Ian
Psychologists are weird, y’all.
Yes, that’s from an email.
As an aside I really hate her mother — more so than the actual antagonist.
*grins* Ah, but Roof Goat shows who he loves, and how far he's willing to go to make her happy... even putting up with Sudden Roof Goat... Which means when someone pulls the pin, we're all gonna be rooting for him.
I like the roof goat, and I am now invested in the lives of his people. Also,where would one find a roof goat of one's own? Hypothetically, of course.