Flash Fiction: The Herdsman, the Goats, and the Wolf

The goats scattered across the field, moving in erratic, unpredictable bursts, their movements sharp and jagged. They nipped and butted at each other, bursts of devilish energy radiating from their sleek, restless bodies. The herdsman stood nearby, his voice cutting through the morning mist, yelling at them to settle down, to fall in line. But the goats didn’t listen. They never did. Every shout, every curse, every wave of frantic gestures dissolved into the cool air, evaporating into impotence.

He hadn’t grown up on a farm. There was no father to teach him the old ways, no grandfather passing down secrets of herding, whispering wisdom about reading the earth, sensing the rhythms of the animals. Everything he knew was patched together from online videos, how-to articles, and some muddled instinct. The goats had become his own private rebellion, a reflection of his tangled attempts to escape the digital maze of his past life. He had returned to this remote patch of land to reconnect with something real, to anchor himself in a world that didn’t need Wi-Fi or algorithms. Yet here he was, still tangled up, still failing to control the chaos.

There were seven goats left now. Six billy goats, each more stubborn than the last, and one lone female. The pen was a makeshift thing, built from pallets, wire, and scraps of rope he’d found lying around. He wasn’t a carpenter, either. He didn’t have the money or the skills to build a proper fence. The structure sagged in odd places, a lopsided barrier barely holding them in. There had been ten goats at the start, but three had disappeared. Wolves, he told himself. Though he’d never found a trace—no tracks, no scat, no signs of a struggle. He wasn’t sure if that was a comfort or a new kind of terror. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, the possibility of thieves, or something stranger, gnawed at him.

The last goat had vanished while his wife was out in the garden, working the small patch of vegetables she’d tried to cultivate. The garden, too, was surrounded by improvised barriers. Chickens and wild fawns regularly breached the defenses, nibbling at the pumpkins, pecking at the cabbage leaves. She’d been distracted, she said, only looked away for a few minutes, five at most. But when she looked back, the goat was gone, as if it had evaporated. She’d explained this to her husband, her voice caught between confusion and apology, while he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, fresh from one of his deep, dreamless afternoon naps.

The herdsman had inspected the pen afterward. Everything was as it should be—no gaps, no blood, no signs of mischief. The other goats were unfazed, playfully nudging each other as if nothing had happened. He tried to brush it off, but he felt the absence like a hollow ache. The goats were more than livestock to him; they were his children. Each one had a personality, a mood, a quirk. They could be infuriating, yes, but they had also wormed their way into his heart, filling a space he hadn’t realized was empty.

One of the males, in particular, was relentless in his antics. He’d mount anything that moved—didn’t matter if it was a brother, sister, or even his own mother. The herdsman had tried tying string around their genitals, a trick he’d learned from a tutorial, but it didn’t seem to help. The goats kept on, undeterred. He couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or frustrated by their persistence.

Sometimes, when he was alone, he thought about the cat they’d had when he was a child. His sister had once “rescued” a mouse from its claws, cradling the tiny, terrified creature in her hands. “It’s their nature,” he’d told her, snapping at her naivety.

“The cat is supposed to eat the mouse.”

Even then, he’d felt a pang of guilt, as if he’d betrayed something he didn’t understand. Years later, he would disown his family, walk away from their wealth, sever every tie that connected him to the life they’d planned for him. He carried a dog-eared copy of Siddhartha in his bag and imagined himself as some kind of modern wanderer, a seeker. He’d drifted through Europe, India, Mexico, Morocco, always searching for something he couldn’t name. Once, he slept under the open sky in Tangier, trading hash with other lost souls, getting beaten senseless one night when he wandered too far into someone’s turf.

But here he was, back on the land, not quite sure what he’d found. At night, he dreamed of the goats. They surrounded him, circling, their eyes bright and knowing, as if they held some secret they were taunting him to uncover. In the dream, he was naked, fighting, dancing, the rough grass scratching at his bare skin. Their laughter echoed around him, a chorus of bleats and cackles that rang out through the night. He’d wake up sweating, gasping, the sound still ringing in his ears, convinced for a moment that he could feel their hooves pressing into his chest. The scent of them lingered, earthy and raw, as if they’d somehow followed him out of the dream.

In the morning, the dream lingered, a fog that clouded his thoughts, and he’d find himself staring at the goats, half-expecting them to say something. But they never did. They’d just look back at him, unblinking, indifferent, as if daring him to try and make sense of it all.

Despite everything, he still clung to certain habits from his city life. He slept late, woke late, napped in the afternoons. The land, for all its wild beauty, was not easy for him to navigate. The winter rains had started, and water leaked into the kitchen, pooling under the tiles. He’d tried to patch it up himself, laying heavy tiles, improvising a fix, but it hadn’t worked. In the end, he’d paid a man from the village to come and sort it out. It felt like a small defeat, another reminder that he was still out of his depth.

Sometimes, when he was half-awake, drifting between sleep and consciousness, he wondered if he was the one who had been taking the goats. In those moments, he could almost see it—a flash of movement, a shadow slipping through the darkness, his own body moving with an animal’s grace, as if he’d been possessed. He thought about the mirror in the bathroom, how he’d catch his reflection sometimes, just out of the corner of his eye, and feel a jolt of unfamiliarity. It wasn’t his face—too sharp, too wild, a stranger staring back at him with eyes that seemed to belong to someone, or something, else.

Was it possible that some part of him, some buried instinct, had broken free? Was he the wolf, stalking his own herd, driven by a hunger he couldn’t understand? He remembered the eyes of the goats in his dream, bright and mocking, as if they knew the answer and were daring him to ask.

He didn’t have an answer. He wasn’t sure he wanted one. The goats continued to graze, their rough, unruly bodies moving through the mist, and he continued to shout at them, to swear and curse, trying to impose order on their wildness. And all the while, the question lingered, coiling in his mind like a serpent: what was he, really? The herdsman or the wolf?

// Zero Strike