FIC­TION: Goose At­tacks Bethel Stu­dent

MISHAWAKA – A vi­o­lent goose has joined Bethel Uni­ver­si­ty’s pan­theon of Hal­loween hor­rors. 

Rooty Arch­man, who said, “My name is­n’t go­ing in this, right? I don’t want my friends to know I ran away from a goose,” is the only stu­dent on record who has en­coun­tered the fiend. Be­low is the tran­script of this uniden­ti­fied Bethel stu­den­t’s ac­count of their en­counter with the goose.

Arch­man said, “So, I had just left the DC, right? I was go­ing down the stairs, feelin[g] pretty good about my­self: I man­aged to snag a few cook­ies right as they were com­ing out of the oven, and I put those bad boys in a carry-out box, pumped some ice cream out on top, and left. I reached the clock, when I heard a growl from the bush be­hind me. Luck­ily, my RA told me about a huge squir­rel that mugs kids for food, and I kept a pack of trail mix on me for that rea­son. My friend made fun of me for the en­tirety of Wel­come Week, but I was­n’t the one to be jumped by a ro­dent, was I, Craig? 

“Any­way, I tossed Mega-Squir­rel the food, and dipped outta there pretty quick. I was takin the route to Oak­wood that went past the sci­ence build­ing and the back of the AC. On my way, I saw this pure-white goose. It was pretty cool, I guess, but I was a lit­tle dis­tracted by the fact that it was stand­ing in the mid­dle of the side­walk and wear­ing a mask. Not mov­ing. I don’t even think it was blink­ing. So, I stopped, walked up to it. Pretty sure I said some­thing like, ‘Hey, buddy. Best skedad­dle ‘fore I run you down,’ or some­thing like that.” 

“Then, the goose says, ‘try it, cow­ard.’ So, I’m look­in’ around - right - try­in’ to find the wise guy who’s tryna speak for this goose, like some sort of goose whis­perer or goose Lo­rax or what­ever. Then, this cheeky lit­tle wa­ter rat says, It’s what I thought.’ My dumb self, still think­ing this was a joke, I said, ‘nawww, was­sup then?’” 

“So, the goose pulled out a knife, and I woke up folded over a – “ 

Un­for­tu­nately, at this point in the in­ter­view, a quack sounded through the open win­dow, and Rooty at­tacked the in­ter­viewer. She barely had time to leave the room be­fore Rooty flew into a blind panic, shout­ing about feath­ers, bran­dish­ing a slice of bread, and bar­ri­cad­ing him­self un­der every piece of fur­ni­ture the room had to of­fer. By the time cam­pus se­cu­rity made it into the room, there were sev­eral peck marks on the vic­tim’s neck, a plas­tic knife on the floor, and a trail of bread­crumbs lead­ing to the win­dow. 

The anony­mous Bethel stu­dent has de­clined to com­ment on what his brother, Gan­der Arch­man in Oak­wood room 112, and sub­se­quently the rest of cam­pus, refers to as “the Goos­en­ing.” Pi­lots should do their best to stay safe. Cam­pus se­cu­rity is hot on the tail­feath­ers of this un­pheas­ant ne’er-do-well but have yet to turn up any­thing; this seems like a chase for some un­tamed goose. 

This story is a work of fic­tion. No per­son or goose was ac­tu­ally harmed. Any re­la­tion of char­ac­ters from this story to peo­ple in real life, liv­ing or de­ceased, is en­tirely co­in­ci­den­tal.