Andrew Rivas
“The Milk Has No Mouth and Yet It Screams”
The milk screamed and everyone heard it. They thought it was me but it wasn’t. It was the milk.
Or maybe it was the carton. The carton was closed now and scaled to a child’s hand and had a brown cow on the side. Maybe the cow screamed. I opened the flap and the milk screamed again. Louder than before.
I threw the carton in shock and it splashed Ashley O in the face. Jamie R yelled “food fight!” and threw his tray of mac and cheese at Lara T. Everyone looked at me.
There was no food fight; no one followed Jamie R’s lead. He got detention. I got
y e a r s o f
t h e r a p y
Even now, a lifetime later, when my granddaughter asks me for cereal I pause. When I open the gallon of milk I flinch. She smiles and shovels marshmallows into her face while I stare at the cow smiling on the label. The silence is deafening and the milk gets louder and louder—
Andrew Rivas is a normal man that will continue writing weird and hyper-specific fiction until someone forces him to stop. You can find him on twitter at @andrewtrivas and you can find his work at andrew-rivas.com.
