Gary Gets a Goat
A goat, for reasons unknown, decides that peace is no longer an option. What follows is an unhinged rampage of hooves, violence, and disproportionate fury. No one is safe. No one is spared. It didn’t need a reason—it just needed an opportunity.
Gary Wilkins was a 32-year-old who dreamed of doing something extraordinary. Unfortunately, his current greatest achievement was being the reigning champion of his local bar’s trivia night, a title he shared with three divorced accountants.
Gary had recently been on a self-improvement kick, which involved bingeing TED Talks, taking cold showers, and writing in a gratitude journal he’d filled with complaints.
One day, while scrolling through Craigslist during his lunch break at the car wash, Gary stumbled upon an ad:
“GOAT FOR SALE. $10. SLIGHTLY CURSED.”
Gary blinked. Slightly cursed? What did that even mean? It was just ridiculous enough to be interesting—unlike his life.
Without thinking it through, Gary replied to the ad.
The goat arrived three days later in the back of a beat-up pickup truck driven by a man named Carl, who looked like he hadn’t slept since the Bush administration.
“This here’s Bernard,” Carl grunted as he shoved the goat toward Gary.
Bernard was smaller than expected, with a lazy eye and a beard that made him look like a philosophy professor who’d given up on tenure.
“Cursed how?” Gary asked.
Carl shrugged. “You’ll see.”
Then he peeled off down the street, leaving Gary and Bernard staring at each other like two strangers on a blind date gone wrong.
At first, nothing seemed unusual about Bernard. Sure, he had a habit of chewing on Gary’s mail and headbutting the fridge, but that felt par for the goat course.
Then weird things started happening.
- Every time Gary tried to microwave leftovers, the power would go out, and Bernard would bleat ominously.
- Gary’s Tinder profile suddenly got hundreds of matches—but all the messages were from people asking if he had “any more of that special goat cheese.”
- A framed photo of Gary’s ex-girlfriend fell off the wall and shattered, and Bernard winked.
Gary began to suspect Bernard wasn’t just slightly cursed—he was the goat equivalent of Pandora’s box.
Determined to understand what he’d gotten himself into, Gary dove into research.
He spent hours Googling phrases like “goat curses for dummies” and “why does my goat know my PIN number?”
His internet sleuthing eventually led him to a Reddit thread: r/CursedLivestock.
There, he discovered stories of others who’d owned cursed goats.
One claimed their goat had caused their sourdough starter to come to life and demand rights.
Another said their goat predicted the stock market with alarming accuracy—only to bankrupt them out of spite.
Gary posted his own story, and within minutes, someone replied:
“If the goat hasn’t started talking yet, you’ve still got time.”
The next morning, Gary woke up to find Bernard perched on his kitchen counter, chewing on a bag of Doritos.
“We need to talk,” Bernard said, his voice a gravelly mix between Morgan Freeman and a disgruntled DMV employee.
Gary dropped his coffee mug. “You talk now?”
“I’ve always been able to talk,” Bernard replied, spitting out an orange chip triangle. “I just didn’t think you were ready to hear it. You’re not exactly… intelligent.”
Gary was too stunned to be insulted. “What do you want from me?”
Bernard hopped down from the counter. “I don’t want anything. But you? You’re cursed now too. Buckle up, buddy.”
As it turned out, Bernard wasn’t just cursed—he was connected.
Over the next week, Gary’s life spiraled into a surreal nightmare.
Strange men in suits began showing up at his door, delivering cryptic messages like, “The Council is watching,” and, “Don’t forget to buy more oat milk.”
Bernard would just smirk and munch on celery like this was all part of the plan.
Then came The Incident.
Gary found himself dragged into an underground warehouse, surrounded by men in goat masks.
At the center of the room stood Bernard, wearing a tiny crown and sunglasses.
“This is the Goat Mafia,” Bernard announced. “And you’re in too deep, Gary.”
Apparently, Bernard’s curse wasn’t just bad luck—it was the result of a botched deal with a rival goat named Lorenzo, who ran an alpaca trafficking ring in Vermont.
Bernard explained that Gary now had two options:
- Help Bernard overthrow Lorenzo and become the King of the Goat Mafia.
- Go back to his boring life and let the curse ruin him completely.
Gary chose the first option.
Not because he wanted to, but because he couldn’t go back to washing cars after all this.
Gary and Bernard hatched a plan to take Lorenzo down.
It involved a lot of questionable decisions, including bribing a zookeeper and stealing a crate of illegally imported alfalfa.
But on the night of the big showdown, everything went sideways.
“Sorry, Gary,” Bernard said as they faced off with Lorenzo’s crew in an abandoned petting zoo. “You’re the fall guy.”
“What?!” Gary shouted.
“It’s nothing personal,” Bernard replied. “You’re just… expendable.”
Before Gary could process this betrayal, Lorenzo’s alpacas charged.
Gary woke up in a hospital bed, covered in bandages and smelling faintly of hay.
There was no sign of Bernard.
When he got home, his apartment was empty.
All that remained was a sticky note on the fridge that read:
“It’s been real. Thanks for everything. - B”
Gary tried to go back to his old life, but nothing felt the same.
His coworkers whispered about his weird obsession with goats.
His trivia team replaced him with a guy named Chad who didn’t even know the capital of Bhutan.
One month later, Gary sat alone on his couch, eating a microwaved burrito.
As he took a bite, he heard a faint bleat outside his window.
“Bernard?”
He rushed to the window, but there was nothing there.
Just the sound of the wind—
And the lingering scent of Doritos.