“Awhs yer melk?”

“Tastes like” – he spat a thick lurgy he’d been rolling – “shite.”

He turned and looked out the window to the storm outside. The rotten frame of the window vibrated as if the whole shack was built on an electric massage seat. He pulled his face together in a sour wince.

“It ain’t t’at bad. ‘Ere, try mine. Think mine waza fresha one.”

Seated next to him was a spindly lad, the one who was doing all the talking. He enjoyed the silence of his own tongue and despised the energy of other tongues. This lad’s tongue was burning the energy of a small sun. He hurled the can against the wall and a wood plank managed to hold firm and deflect it down. He stood up keeping his face turned to the storm outside.

“T’is all a pil‘o shite. Ta hell with yer batches and yer sources and yer gabbing about filtration and crap. A pile o’ shite. That’s what we’er drankin’.”

The spindly one felt a reply on his lips but decided to keep his gates closed for now. There wasn’t much time for squabbling over milk. Storms as hungry-sounding as this one ate shacks for lunch. In his hand was a can. The liquid inside was black as the grit between the wood boards. It spun like molasses as he tossed it about, asking it for questions and receiving gloopy silence. The liquid was milk. He frowned.

“Pap, tell me again aboot the melk ye had as a boy? Tell me aboot the coos and the goots. Aboot the bloo skies and the rain so sweet it tast’d like honay.”

Jesus. Impending death did weird things to people, especially first timers. The old formalities like parents, fathers, and mothers made him ill. This lad hadn’t let them go or had got himself all caught up in the linguistic fashion of the youths. Jesus. This bloody lad’s dying wish was for story time with “Pap.”

He turned coarsely to face the lad on the other side of the shack and looked through the boy to the wall behind. The fungus clung to the planks and dressed it for a green carnival. Or clung to it like a boat trapped in a swelling ocean.

“Look here ye…” He cut sharply, then stopped. A humming that had been minding its own business in the background suddenly took off and became a sharp “Prrrrriiinggg…” His instinct was to leap towards the lad to shield him, but as he took his first step one entire side of the shack disappeared. His half of the shack was fine. The wound opened in the side of their rotting shelter let in yelling gusts that pinned him to the opposite corner. If his tongue had anything to say, any noise to release, the wind wouldn’t have allowed it to be heard.

He couldn’t move his neck. The force of the wind was holding him like a puppet in ice. His eyes were all he had will over. He glanced down. There at his foot was a can, slightly dented from hitting the floor in a bad way. A black liquid was bubbling out of the side of it. Little chunks of black cubes bounced along for the ride out of the can. Curdles. The can was sashed with the label, From Farmers You Know, and below it some bulletin text read, “Milk containing at least 99% natural sources from free-roam cows. Antibiotic free. GMO-free. Organic and tastes great on cereal, in a pancakes, or straight from the can.” He spat a thick lurgy he’d been meditating on since half the shack had gone free-wheeling down the pasture.

He looked up at what had hit the shack. At first he was confused, the side of the shack that had been ripped open didn’t look like the outside of the shack he remembered. Then he realized he was looking at the upturned trailer of a lorry that had taken the liberty to transplant itself in place of the other half of this decaying coffin. A lull in the raging winds gave him a free moment to cock his head and upturn the image on the lorry for his eyes. The image was a closeup of a big brown cow standing in a field with a bright orange sun in a bright blue sky. Behind the cow green grass rolled on in all directions and more cows could be seen speckling the hills like black and white candles on a green cake. The cow at the front – the cow taking up half the side of the lorry with its pink snout – didn’t have eyes. Planted where eyes should have been, where nature had instructed eyes to grow and been betrayed, was a single large strip of black plastic. The plastic stuck out from the cows skull and took on a charcoal hue where the sun caught it. From Farmers You Know, read the plastic in white engraved letters. And below it, Virtual Free-Roam 3000.