We Are All Of Us Winning Now

The main thing we were known for before our team won the big game was the rain. The game didn’t stop the rain, but the main thing became something a little harder to name.

The main thing was this: we couldn’t stop watching it. The game. A few of us had recorded it, and a few more of us made copies, and copies of copies, and we played the game on our TV screens in our dark living rooms, and it got so nobody asked anyone anymore if they wanted to see it again because they were already seeing it again and again and again.

The actors in the commercials between the plays became the people our family and friends used to be. She always laughs for exactly four seconds, we said. He always spills the spaghetti sauce because he is too sloppy with that spoon.

The food trucks circled our houses and we walked back and forth until the food truck workers came inside to watch with us, until the animals grew bold and took our food from the trucks and into the woods, until the trucks were near empty and foul smelling, and the rain came in and sprouted sunflower seeds moldy in their plastic tubs.

We were surprised. It was just a game, we said. It wasn’t like we all started hibernating or eating our own young. It’s not like a big snake slithered up from the sea, or a giant man fell down from the sky. We said these things but we could no longer tell if we made noise when we said them, so hoarse was our breath in our throats, so deafening were the sounds we made when we watched ourselves winning over and over and over again.