Have you ever had one of those ‘bad days’ where nothing goes right, and you find yourself in the arse-end of nowhere under attack from a herd of raving satanic goats? It’s not as uncommon as you might think…

“You lying bastard!”

My feet pummelled the grassy incline of the rock-strewn slope in my mad dash for salvation with the deranged desperation of a portly child racing for the last pork pie, and all the elegance of a walrus suffering from a fatal stroke. I readily confess that vigorous exercise does not paint me in the prettiest of lights, though I would challenge anyone to make racing around a field pursued by a flock of feisty farm animals look even the slightest bit attractive.

“I think they like you, Corliss…” This from a scraggly little bugger perched upon the fence that I desperately believed would be my lifeline. The stocky male was clothed in the kind of fine fabrics which suggested admirable wealth and first-rate living, but from the dishevelled and mud-spattered state of his attire he better resembled a peasantly farmhand, and he certainly wasn’t acting at all like a ‘proper’ nobleman; a snobby little shit, more like, though some might argue that they’re one and the same thing. Me, for example.

Although a fair few years younger than me- and infinitely less handsome, it has to be said- my smirking spectator was at that irritating age where his balls outweighed his wits, and he had yet to have them shrunk down to size by a heavy dose of life’s retribution for being a total and utter twat. Connor Crawford was his name. Or maybe it was Conley… to be honest, I rarely called him by his true name and preferred to refer to him instead by labels which I decreed better suited to him: Piggy, Toe-rag, Twat, Prick, Spawn-Of-A-Mutated-Sheep, all those kinds of tasteful titles. Whatever his name was, he was the eldest son of the lawful Lord of Harrowshiels and so heir to the vast expanse of northern lands which came with his name- including the roughly undulating foothills and the billy herd which now surrounded me.

Then, in contrast, there’s me. Corliss McClintock. Only son to the youngest son of the Lord of Delrow- a muddy, miniscule province but five days or so’s gruelling ride to the south- which is effectively nothing more than a few fields filled with potatoes, dotted here and there with a pig or perhaps a plague-ridden peasant or two. Lucky me.

Still running, I was painfully aware of the fact that my half-eaten shoelaces were threatening to tangle about my feet, a disaster which would plummet me into a nosedive and send me face-first into piles of stinking goat excrement. I ploughed on regardless, preferring to take my chances rather than face the fiends bleating murder at my shins.

Another difference between myself and my northern counterpart across the field is that his sickly father is at least willing to pop his clogs- unlike my grandfather, who doesn’t have the decency to die despite being old enough to have fathered the first tortoise. To be honest, considering the resemblance, I’m certain that he did. Nevertheless, at least the old fart’s tiring longevity stood me in good stead for leading a similarly long life, and under better circumstances that might have been uplifting were I not likely to be eaten by a bunch of billy goats within the next five minutes.

As I crested the rise with all the majesty of a three-legged cow, a cape of cloven-hooved devils trailing in my wake as I desperately struggled to swallow air in my mad marathon, the boy was watching me with mocking, wicked grey eyes which peered out from beneath a tangled tousle of unkempt mousey brown hair. I achingly wanted to spare a moment and snatch a pile of stinking pellets from the autumn grass to lob at his big ugly face, but my terrible aim and the petrifying pursuit which dogged my heels kept me from allowing myself the satisfaction.

The ungodly bleating which swelled in the air that day, like starving souls moaning hungrily from the realms of the dead, would prove to haunt my nightmares for weeks. Goats may not be the most terrifying of creatures on the planet, to be sure, but I was damned if I was going to let them be the death of me; I do have some pride, as it happens, and there was no way in all of creation that I was going to let the final words etched into my gravestone read: ‘Here lies Corliss Thomas McClintock: no one really remembers much about him. Got trampled to death by goats, I think’.

“Curse you!” My yell came out in a shrill wheeze somewhat similar to the sound a cat that has not yet hit puberty might make while coughing up a hairball, though I refuse to put that down to fear and blame it instead on the fact that it was so damnably cold that far North that my balls had made a hasty retreat and decided to take a holiday halfway to my kidneys. I had every mind to join them if only it were possible. “A pox on you and all your goats!”

Speaking of, the dastardly things were gaining on me. I hadn’t thought such knobbly little legs capable of moving so quickly, but then my grandfather’s countenance came to mind and his terrifying ability to hobble across the most cavernous of halls with the speed of a demented squirrel when in a rage, just so he could snatch me by the ear before I could hope to escape and twist it ‘till I squealed. A shudder spidered down my spine at the mere memories, and all of a sudden my pursuers all possessed the scowling jowly features of that creepy old oaf. And, just like that, they had become a hundred times more terrifying than any fire-breathing dragon. I trebled my pace, at the cost of my lungs.

“Hm, I didn’t know goats could catch the pox.” The words had me pried from the horrifying fingers of my thoughts, much to my relief, though it might have been under pleasanter circumstances. The demon-child stroked the pitifully sparse peach fuzz of his chin, as though lost in deep and meaningful contemplation and completely unaware of my frenzied fleeing. “Chickens, though…” He thought he was a fucking comedian.

I was approaching the fence now, only several strides from freedom. All I had to do was summon the energy required to vault over the rickety fence, while attempting not to topple straight into the thing in my momentum, and I would be safe…

“You slimy little rat!” I rasped, gasping air into my lungs like a floundering fish out of water; I wouldn’t call myself an unfit man, but with nothing to do at home except stare depressively out a window or chase women I perhaps hadn’t spent so much time building up my stamina as I might have. In any case, it’s not every day that you’re forced to run several laps around a hilltop to escape a herd of ravenous goats.

“You slimy… slimy rat!” I repeated with as much venom as I could muster under such circumstances, each searing breath which snagged in my throat reinforcing my hatred for any kind of physical activity that didn’t involve the allure of women; or men, I might add, I’m not prejudiced.

“You-“ Gasp “-You knew this would happen!” Wheeze “-You told me to feed the fuckers! You didn’t say they would try to eat me!”

I heard his snivelling laughter from somewhere up ahead, so close now, but as for where exactly then damned if I knew, as I was currently battling the blackness which threatened to shroud my sight from severe hypoxia.

“Yes, they do tend to get a little overexcited during feeding time. Ah, but doesn’t everyone?” His singsong voice made me push my legs that little bit harder so that I might strangle it from his fat throat.

Bad idea.

An arm’s length from the fence and my toe found a single tussock of grass. I barely had the time to mouth a particularly foul curse before the earth came up to give me an overly-enthusiastic kiss.

The last thing I remember seeing before I was submerged beneath a tidal wave of bleating horned rodents was my observer’s smug face leering at me with wide, wormy lips… and I vowed that, should I survive that day to see it again, I would greet it with a clenched fist that would have him sucking food through a straw for days.

I’m very proud to say that I did.