Wool Boy

A spooky short story

OK, as a thank you to my paid subs, I bring you an end of November treat, just in time for nearly a month since Halloween. This is a story I wrote a few years back for the Comedian Horror anthology Dead Funny. (So if you don’t want to pay to sub, then buy the book here and get loads of other comedians’ stories too).

I will try to bring you some original or unpublished content soon (and will do another unproduced script for paid subs next week), but hope this will do for now.
And if you want to get these extras and encourage me to write more stuff like this then join my lovely paid subscribers! But you can all have a little bit for free!

WOOLBOY

Richard Herring

The following is a true story…

Tired of London, but still very much enjoying being alive (screw you, Doctor Samuel Johnson, you dead idiot) I had caught a train to Hertfordshire. I was going to walk in the woods, breathe fresh air, listen to birdsong and be alone with my thoughts.

It’s strange the way that we assume that the countryside holds none of the dangers of the city and that being alone makes you more secure than being surrounded by millions of people. In Hertfordshire, just like in space, no one can hear you scream.

I fancied that I was returning to nature, somehow communing with the past, recapturing the simple and idyllic life of the noble ancient Britons. In truth, I suspect our ancestors didn’t have much time for a nature ramble, being concerned mainly with fighting off invaders, disease and wild animals. They would probably have given their right arms to be able to escape nature completely. If you gave them the choice between living in a wood and my grotty flat in Shepherd’s Bush I don’t think they’d have to think twice about it. But I didn’t let these facts shatter my illusions of the mythical notions of our Celtic past, even if I was just allowing myself to become a member of what was essentially a medieval version of UKIP.

I allowed myself the fantasy, because I deserved the break from reality. I had been working much too hard. Days and weeks and months of my life had disappeared without me noticing them, like pages of a day-by-day calendar being ripped off by an invisible hand in a shonkily filmed 1950s movie about time travel. Now unencumbered by deadlines and bulging inboxes I could stop and smell the roses, or in this case the musty combination of dead leaves and animal shit of the forest.

My senses sharp and vivid, I had the time to observe and enjoy the world around me: the way my shoe sunk into the damp earth, insects scurrying around the surprisingly life-like corpse of a fallen crow, the grotesque, yet alluring sight of a tree felled by lightning, its blackened, splintered trunk, hopefully reaching upwards, as if it was unaware that its branches and leaves were gone. Something scampered through the leaves behind me and shot into a hole in the ground, as if fleeing from some unseen predator, its fear hanging palpably in the air.