[ WP ] Rewrite your favorite knock-knock joke as a serious story .

The man had n't been awake for more than a minute, having only gotten out of bed, eyes heavy from sleep, when he looked outside. The farmhouse's pasture all soft green in the windless light of the morning sun, sky painted blue, the dew smelling of the winter soon to come. A lovely day. One he wished to talk about. 
 
 I'll do it today, he thought. If not today, than never. 
 
 He dressed and sat on the end of the bed as he laced his boots. His wife lay sleeping without sound, his children asleep in their beds too, off in the house's quiet rooms. This much quiet will drive anyone up a wall, sometimes over it. 
 
 Bessie met him in the pasture, her bovine jaw smacking, her beady eyes fixed, black and depthless. She is small for a cow her age. 
 
 The man lead her to the barn. The day was cool and warming in the warm sun's light, and as he listened to his breath and the cow's breath and their footsteps clodding together through the open green, he remembered the day he met her, a calf left on a door step. He used to think of it as an act of grace. His stock was spare at the time and the creature was a blessing. Then the silence came. 
 
 The barn was drafty, full of animal scent and occasional whiffs of wood rot. He tied the cow to a cross beam and took up a sledge hammer from a wall hanging near the barn's door. 
 
 This wo n't do, the man thought. From a locker in the back of the barn, next to baled hay and an old plow, he grabbed an old hunting rifle. The cow stood dumbly smacking its lips. 
 
 The man smiled, took aim, and said,'Any last words, you s --' 
 
 The cow moo-ed. So loud her mooing. 
 
'Alright, close --' 
 
 Another moo. It hurt the man's ears. He grew angry and lowered the rifle. His finger still gently curled around the trigger. 
 
'Now you listen here --' moooo'ca n't even think straight cause all your damn' moooooo'just want to talk in my own' mooo. Moooo. 
 
 The man was frenzied, mumbling, and his eyes were wet. 
 
'Why god. Why did --' 
 
 Mooooo. 
 
 The man's wife woke to a windless blue day, a bed half cold, when she heard the rifle fire from inside the barn across the pasture.
