My name is Chesterberry Falls. I am an Indecent Docent. I wasn’t always good at it, but lately, I’d become serviceable – a recently decent Indecent Docent, if you will. Or at least I was. I lived in a charming, two-room cottage on the edge of town, just off Beazle Street. Or I did. I had many kind and supportive friends. Or so I thought.

  Everything changed last April.

  Forgive me, gentle reader, if I entreat you to imagine what my fumbling vocabulary can scarcely begin to describe, namely, my boundless horror and bewilderment at awaking one morning to discover that sometime during the night I’d been transformed…into a goat!

  I kid you not.

  A goat, I was – a bearded, wall-eyed, spiral-horned and cloven-hooved goat. How in God’s name had this happened? Or had it been done to me, and, if so, why and by whom? Who was the goater responsible for this goatee?

  Imagine my shock! Imagine my distress! Imagine no possessions! The point is, I was beside myself, or would have been, if I’d been born conjoined twins. As it was, I was a goat – a single goat, it is true, but a goat notwithstanding. And how was I, as a goat, supposed to determine the reason or cause of my goatification? It wasn’t as if I could simply waltz over to the teledictum and dial the operator, asking for help. In the first place, my lack of opposable thumbs made handling the headset difficult. In the second place, my new voice was not especially suited to the task. Oh, I’ve heard worse at the local nightclub and so you have you, but I wasn’t capable of articulating my emergency, if you see what I mean.

  Absent other ideas, I ransacked my home, looking for clues. I hadn’t meant to ransack it, per se, but a goat’s nature being what it is, ransack it I did. Prior to this action, in fact, I don’t believe I’d ever truly appreciated what a real ransacking is or looks like. Having satisfied my curiosity but not my need for clues, I wandered about my abode until I found myself facing my dressing mirror.

  When I tell you that I was mortified, you may be sure I was all of that and more. My boyish brown curls were gone, replaced with short, scruffy fur. My ears, though always somewhat ridiculous, were now jutting out like the arms of someone hailing a cab (though surely not a hansome cab). My eyes had turned a blue so pale they were almost white, and, worst of all, my pupils had become elongated dashes, instead of the tiny, round dots to which mankind is accustomed. It is true that I did not especially object to my new nose, but the beard I now sported was beyond absurd. How could any self-respecting goat appear thus in public? Frustrated, I butted my way through the garden door and out into the yard.

  “Baaaa!” I yelled. “Baaaa!”

  The world seemed indifferent to my plight.

  Disconsolately, I moved to sit, but as it was new to me in this body, I botched the affair and tumbled onto my side. Wonderful! Not only had I been transformed into a goat, but a clumsy goat at that. Could I sink any lower? Laying there, I wondered what my next step should be. I had friends. Or had had. Might I not appeal to one of them for aid and succor? (Just between the two of us, I had no idea what succor involved, but as I’d so often heard it paired with aid, I figured it was a mandatory component in the transaction in which I was about to embark).

  My thoughts flew instantly to my old friend, Wilmot Proviso, an accountant, whose attention to detail would surely work to my benefit in this situation. If only I could contrive to communicate with him.

  Casting a forlorn and doubtless unlovely glance at my home, I resolved to head for Proviso’s office, there to await his arrival. I hoped that inspiration would come to me somewhere along the way, and I’d suddenly understand how I might inform him of my dire circumstance. Alas, the only thing that came to me was flies. Evidently, my, er, aroma had changed along with my physique. This bothered me, but no more than anything else that had transpired this morning.

  As I walked along Beazle, I noticed people were staring at me. But why? Had they never seen a goat before? Then I understood: they were wondering why a goat was strolling down the middle of the street, unattended. Where was my owner? Were other barnyard animals possibly following in my wake?

  Off to my left, a woman I had once fancied burst into laughter when I inadvertently meandered too close. I was just formulating a response – whatever response a goat might make – when I felt a rope dropped around my neck and drawn tight. Instinctively, I tried to pull away and experienced a countering tug that pulled my front feet (so strange, to say “front” feet!) right off the cobblestones.

  “No, you don’t, little fellow!” a deep voice scolded me.

  I looked back, not hard to do with my caprine eye placement, and saw, to my terror, that I’d been captured by the local butcher.

  “We’ll find your owner, and, if we can’t, I’m sure we’ll find some use for you.”

  I screamed, or tried to, but all that came out was a muted whimper. I then attempted to kick my captor and again tasted the bitter savor of failure as he swung me wide of his legs.

  “Does anyone recognize this animal?” he called out.

  I very much doubted it, but could not help hoping against hope that someone would claim me. To remain in the butcher’s care was to embrace my doom. I had to escape. All at once, I sat. The butcher then started to yank me back to my feet, at which moment I leapt, getting much higher and farther than he’d expected. I swiped at him with my horns, and he dropped his end of the rope, raising both hands to protect himself. He did not cry out, but I felt no less satisfaction than if he’d wailed like baby. Quickly, I dashed off down the street in the direction I’d been heading and slipped into an alley between two buildings. Now, I could hear the butcher cursing me, and I assumed he meant to follow. I ran faster.

  And, frankly, I was surprised at how fleet of foot I’d become. As a man, I’d never been much for exercise; there was too much reading to be done! But goat-me, as I began to think of myself, could race with the best of them, could leap like a kangaroo. I’m almost embarrassed to confess that, even in the face of peril, I enjoyed the chase. When I reached the end of the block, I looked back and saw the butcher huffing and puffing after me. I gave him what I hoped was a fetching smile and bolted off down the side alley. Another turn to the left, I knew, would take me back to Beazle Street, but the butcher might anticipate that, and, besides, I knew of some horse-drawn carriages near the park that I could easily scramble under that would positively give my pursuer fits.

  What I did not account for was Mrs. Dibbins’ mutt, Wodger – a crossbreed of a Great Dane and that popular American breed, the Chihuahua. The instant it saw me, its ears perked up, its eyes widened, and it leapt to its feet in order to join in the chase. I cannot say, even to this day, whether that dog wanted to play or attack me; all I know is that I could not afford another opponent.

  I raced onward, altering my plans. There was a hedge of rosebushes in the park, backed by a stream. Those obstacles, I hoped, would test both the butcher’s and the dog’s commitment to this adventure. Goats ate thorny plants, I knew, and so I expected the bushes would present little difficulty for me. I would soon learn if men and dogs had a similar advantage.

  I charged out into the next street, narrowly avoiding a motorcar bearing down on me, and threw myself headlong into the park. Behind me, Wodger yelped and the butcher barked. Or maybe it was the other way ‘round. The motorcar’s horn blared at someone, and the sound of a bicycle bell trilled. I got onto the grass in good time, but suddenly came up all peckish-like, quite in the mood for a good mouthful of the greensward, never mind that I’d been running pell-mell in the race for my very life. A goat’s got to do what a goat’s got to do.

  And, I must tell you, grass is a damned sight tastier than you might expect. I was about to harvest a second mouthful when I chanced to look up and see Wodger a mere ten feet from me, with the now-wheezing butcher close behind. In a flash, I was off to the rosebushes without looking back. To my chagrin, my horns made entry a deal harder than I had anticipated, but fear gave me the extra momentum I needed to penetrate the hedge. And no, that is not a euphemism. At my back, Wodger snuffed and growled and began to force his way through the thorns as well, with a singlemindedness that frightened me even further. The butcher, at least, had the good sense to remain outside the bracken.

  Abruptly, I emerged from the hedge’s far side, but as I was preparing to leap into and perhaps over the adjacent stream, the rope that was still fastened ‘round my neck got snagged on something within the rosebushes. Instead of taking flight, I pitched face-forward into the water on the near bank. As luck would have it, however, Wodger had begun his own leap mere milliseconds after my own, and he soared over my head and landed in the heart of the stream, confused and befuddled as if he’d appeared there by magic. Apparently, the water was colder and the current stronger than I’d imagined, for Wodger immediately lost interest in chasing me and turned all his energies to paddling towards the far shore as quickly as possible. The butcher, sadly, was not so easily duped.

  I had no sooner righted myself than he appeared at the hedge’s far end, eyeing me with a predatory glare. I ducked back into the bushes, hoping to extricate myself and my rope and perhaps run out the way I’d first come in. Once I achieved the middle of the hedge, though, I realized that I didn’t have to go anywhere. There was plenty for me to eat, and the butcher surely had a shop to manage. It was only a matter of waiting him out.

  I managed to fall asleep somehow and awoke, later, in darkness. It is strange to think of a thorny hedge as cozy, but that was how it seemed to me at the time. But while it might have seemed a suitable home for a runaway goat, it was not so for a man seeking to regain his life. It occurred to me that I could eat my way through the rope that still connected me to the bushes, and it was the work of five minutes’ chewing to win my freedom.

  The park (and really the whole town) seemed much less inviting after sundown. And not only because there was an obvious dearth of goat-centered nightlife. One of the things that hadn’t bothered me so much in daylight that now loomed, well, large, was that my mysterious transformation had taken me from a man just shy of six feet in height to a goat of perhaps half that stature. Everything seemed larger. Distances seemed greater. And my nose was constantly teased with odors that all seemed to promise the most scrumptious of delights. Oh, it was ever so easy to get sidetracked as a goat.

  Cautiously, I crept from my hideout and proceeded out of the park. There was, mercifully, no sign of Wodger or the butcher. But there were plenty of other causes for concern. For instance, although I had seen badgers before, I had never smelled one until that night. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to avoid meeting the creature. I had enough problems without getting mauled by some jumped-up weasel. Unable to sight him, I determined to move away from his scent, reasoning that if I could no longer smell him, he couldn’t possibly be nearby. This is, in some ways, the same logic employed by politicians: if they do no work, they can never be accused of mucking things up.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Anyway, I felt confident that I’d evaded the badger. But there were other things in the darkness that worried me. The night was full of the hoots of owls, the cawing of ravens, and the vapid giggling of debutantes. No sooner had I noticed all this, then I was overcome with the desire to eat a pair of underpants – clean ones, certainly, but underpants nonetheless. For the man inside the goat, this was distasteful; for the goat, however, it became an almost overpowering craving. As I walked along, I wondered where I might find a pair of underpants. Just, you know, to convince myself of their inedibility.

  The topic must have been more fascinating than I imagined, for the next thing I knew, I was standing outside my friend Wilmot’s home, without much memory of the journey there. Still, it was night and well-past bedtime, from all I could tell. I resolved to lie down myself and sleep ‘til Wilmot came out on his way to work, and, in fact, I was nearly asleep when the stone started speaking to me.

  No, you have not misread what I’ve written. Nor am I madder than any other goat. A stone spoke to me.

  His name, as far as I could make out, was Mumbleton, presumably because of his rather poor diction and somewhat sedated volume.

  “Mrmphll lrr lrr mppitt,” he said, by way of introduction.

  The day before, I might’ve been stunned by such a development, but that had been a world in which men did not wake up as goats. Now, suffice it to say, I was more open-minded. “And my name is Chesterberry Falls,” I told Mr. Mumbleton.

  Whether he was pleased or ashamed to meet me, I could not have said, due to his rather stone-faced demeanor. But he took it in stride, stationary though he was.

  “Do you happen to know,” I inquired, “when Mr. Proviso leaves for the office each day?”

  “Shhhtttppp Mnnnnlll.” No, he told me. He was just passing through.

  “What do you mean, passing through? You’re a large rock.”

  “Nzzz pt.”

  And so the conversation went. The gist of it, as best I could understand, was that Mumbleton was an itinerant stone – a boulder, actually, who couldn’t be bothered to heft his entire self above ground most of the time. I had some difficulty, as I suspect you do, accepting his claims of travel, but as I’d only just met him, I was in no position to judge. I mean, a good goat doesn’t call a stone a liar at first acquaintance. That is hardly good manners, as I am sure you know.

  Although Mumbleton was not the most riveting of speakers, he captured my attention well enough that, before I knew it, the sun was rising. I could barely contain my excitement at the chance to speak with Wilmot – if speak I could – and attain his help in the solving the mystery of my transformation.

  As I waited, a man came by to deliver the newspaper. Upon seeing me, he thought better of approaching too closely and simply lobbed the thing at Wilmot’s doorstep. I never thought much of the Daily Mail before, but it was certainly tasty. Next, a truck pulled up and spit out its driver, a milkman, come to collect any empties on Wilmot’s step and replace them with filled bottles. The milkman attempted to shew me away but I resisted, whereupon he threatened to throw his bottles at me. I scooted from his path and allowed him to do his job. Once he’d driven off, I moved to inspect Wilmot’s order and thereby learned he was a great drinker of chocolate milk. Mumbleton informed me that he was not a fan of the stuff, which of course begged the question of how, exactly, he’d come to such an opinion, being a stone and all. For my part, chocolate milk seemed just the tonic for everything that was currently wrong in my life. I can’t say much for the heavily waxed-paper cap of the bottle, but the milk itself was to die for. I was just pondering the wisdom in drinking Wilmot’s regular milk, as well, when his door opened and the man himself appeared, at first horrified and then enraged at my presence. Or my presumption. Or my consumption. Or my gumption. In any case, he was not pleased.

  “What in God’s name?” he began. And then, “Get out of here, you filthy beast!” he added.

  Now, as it happens, he’d often called me a filthy beast previously – especially when we were in our cups – and so I thought at first that he recognized me. Alas, no, for he kicked at me with every intention of doing bodily injury.

  “Baaaa!” I protested, and “Baaaa!” again. (At this juncture, I should point out that, while some folks insist that goats say “maaaa,” that is, in fact, the northern dialect. Southerners like myself wouldn’t dream of anything but “baaaa.”).

  “Baaaa, yourself!” he countered, through which circumstance I discovered that my old friend spoke fluent goat almost without accent. Still, he continued to kick at me and, in order to dodge his blows, I leapt over his leg, bounded into his apartment, and shoved the door closed with my head, apparently locking him out. For a moment, I was distraught by this turn of events, until I realized it provided me an opportunity to leave Wilmot some sort of message, communicating the disaster that had befallen me.

  Knowing time was short, I raced around his apartment, quite familiar with its layout, but nevertheless at a loss as to how to begin. I decided that urinating upon his divan was a good start. In retrospect, of course, such a choice seems foolish at best, but it paled in comparison to my eventual copulation with his ottoman. What can I say? I was horny. And horned. But she had a seductive, devil-may-care twinkle to her floral pattern that I simply found irresistible. And her sumptuous, well-upholstered curves were like catnip to me. Or goatnip, if there is such a thing. And if there isn’t, there bloody well should be. In any event, let me just say her staying power was astonishing, and I have never had a more radiant or considerate lover. I know that one day, when I am an old goat – as I will be, whether man or goat – I will look back on her with fondle memories.

  Where was I? Oh, yes, my message. Well, the thing of it is, I’d found paper to write upon, but could not seem to stop myself from eating it. I mean, after a good piss and an even better rogering, a goat needs a decent meal. In truth, I was fast learning that a goat is always in need of a good meal. So: I ate all of the paper upon which I might have written to my friend. There remained his ink pen, however, and where there’s a quill, there’s a way. I hopped up onto his writing desk, grabbed his pen in my teeth, and jumped back down onto his rich Persian carpet, where I proceeded to scrawl my message. Some part of my brain understood that this was an act old Wilmot might find hard to forgive, but, as it was the very worst of emergencies, I felt I had little choice.

  “It is I, your friend Chester. I’ve been transformed into a goat. Please help me!” I wrote. Or at least that’s what I thought I’d written. Stepping back from my handiwork, however, I could make little sense of it. It was rather like the works of Edvard Munch in that regard. I had no time to come up with an alternate plan, though, as Wilmot came screaming through his bedroom window. I could not see him, you understand, but I recognized the sound well enough. As I stood, petrified into inaction, my friend came barreling into his living room and howled in rage at what I’d done to his home. I’d never known him to be a violent man, and so I stood my ground, in the faint hope he might spy something he recognized in my manner. Instead, he picked up the fire poker and advanced upon me, his eyes blazing with fury.

  For the life of me, I’ll never understand why I did what I did next, but I was suddenly seized with the spirit of play, and commenced a merry game of tag all over Wilmot’s home. He chased me into his bedroom, and I leapt onto his bed. Before he could smack me with the poker, I bit into his duvet and dragged it with me onto the floor and out into the hallway, where I left it for him to stumble upon. And stumble he did, crashing into the wall like a…thing. (I apologize if you expected more from me on that last description, but I am, after all, a goat at the moment, and I ate the last thesaurus I came across.)

  Wilmot began cursing and saying the most terrible things about me. Frankly, I was more than a little disappointed in him. Regardless, I allowed him to reach his feet and come within ten feet of me before I dashed away, resuming our game. I must say at this point that Wilmot demonstrated very poor sportsmanship, as he picked up his teledictum and placed a call to the local animal control agency. He then slammed the handset down and stared at me with malevolent glee.

  “Checkmate, you bastard!” said he. Or he might have said “Baaastard.”

  Now, it is true that I am a bastard, but only in the traditional sense that my mother gave birth to me out of wedlock – and also out of hemlock and forelock, for good measure. Nevertheless, I was surprised and hurt to be so labelled by my closest and oldest friend.

  Then it occurred to me that, if caught by the operatives of animal control, I would certainly be put into a cage and possibly euthanized. This, I could not accept! And not only because I despise youth! I barged past Wilmot, inadvertently knocking him onto his derriere, and made for the backdoor, which I knew opened outwards onto an alley. This was important, for although I knew I could not butt open the front, inward-opening door, I believed I had a better-than-even chance of forcing the back door. And, for once, I was correct: the door offered little resistance as I bashed my way right through it and out into the morning air. To my surprise, Mumbleton was there, waiting for me. Somehow, he’d gotten himself from the front yard to the back, which seemed to support his tales of being a wandering boulder. I looked up from him, in case Wilmot was pursuing me, but my old friend chose instead to slam his door shut with a triumphant sneer.

  I resolved that I, too, would boast a triumphant sneer one day – not at Wilmot, necessarily, but at someone. I’d seen many types of sneers in my time, and the triumphant variety is by far the most attractive.

  “What now?” Mumbleton asked me. At this point, for expedience’s sake, I’ll have to ask that you accept his contributions as I relate them, for I cannot entirely say how I understood his peculiar diction any better than to say that I simply did. But as you’re reading the memoirs of a goat, after all, I flatter myself that you’ll afford me a little further leeway in such matters.

  “I need to escape before animal control arrives!” I proclaimed to my new friend.

  “This way,” said Mumbleton, who began sailing through the earth without leaving a wake behind as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  I wondered, and not for the first time, if I’d lost my mind and oughtn’t to go looking for it. Time being short (and also rather pudgy, but I’ll leave that for later), I chose to follow Mumbleton away from Wilmot’s cottage.

  We hadn’t gotten far when a deep, rumbling roar sounded in the distance, a roar I knew to be that of the Animal Control Mechanical Extractifier, a machine I’d seen put into use with stray dogs and cats upon occasion. Oh, it is a most monstrous device. Monstrous and diabolical. Shaped like a zeppelin, it rides enormous tyres the height of man and boasts eight robotic arms that branch off it like the legs of a spider. One of the arms on each side featured a great claw, another, a shovel, a third, a sort of steel Billy club, and the fourth, a cannon that fired netting over its targets. Inside an iron turret at the thing’s front end, two operators direct the arms to seize upon or assault whatever they choose, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see how such a machine could be used against the public. Atop it all, a filthy iron chimney belches a thick, black smoke into the air. At irregular intervals, the machine hisses, belches, grinds its gears, and more. It is a true horror and especially so for the animals. Now that I was its intended prey, I understood this better than ever.

  Fortunately, on this occasion, the nasty thing was racing in the direction of Wilmot’s front door, so that Mumbleton and I had a considerable head start. But, because I did not want and could not afford to be caught at all costs, we continued our flight until we’d reached a lightly forested area some mile or so distant.

  Where I found myself, at last, at a complete loss. My one and only plan for salvation had been an abject failure. I hadn’t been able to communicate with Wilmot; instead, I had almost assuredly permanently alienated him from me, to the point where I sincerely doubted I could make amends with him or find another ottoman so charming. What was I to do?

  “What am I to do?” I asked aloud.

  “What are you to do?” Mumbleton echoed.

  “Yes, what?”

  “What what?”

  “What?”

  In exasperation, I looked to the heavens. If this was to be the level of conversation I could expect to enjoy with Mumbleton, one or both of us might as well have been mute. “What I mean to say,” said I, “is what am I to do now that my plan has failed? Who can help me solve the riddle of my recent transformation?”

  Mumbleton assumed a rather speculative posture. “Is it possible you were never a man in the first place?” he inquired.

  “Stuff and nonsense,” said I. “I was man. I had a man’s life. I could take you to my home and prove it!”

  “Then, let us go, shall we?”

  I liked the idea. After all, the last time I’d been home, I’d been far too agitated, too alarmed to concentrate, and it seemed likely that I’d missed important clues as to the origins or perpetrators of my metamorphosis.