Alex Herod

Selected for Best Small Fictions 2025

We’re two minutes out of the service station – long enough for you to spill coffee in the footwell and squash my croissant in the process – when I see it. 

“Did you see that?” 

The car swerves slightly and you shout at me to watch the road. 

“Did you see that? The cow?”

“The what?” You brush  crumbs off your legs. 

I stare in the rearview mirror, forehead creased as I squint against the winter sun. “There was a cow. On the bridge. It looked like it was going to jump.”
You laugh, not kindly. 

“It was probably an advert for something, we’re going fast and you’re hungover. There wasn’t a cow on the bridge.”

I steady my hands on the wheel and breathe. A flicker of doubt, but no, it wasn’t an advert. The bridge before had a massive sign for Greggs on it, I didn’t hallucinate a suicidal Steak Bake did I? Even hungover I can tell the difference between 2- and 3D. I look again in the rearview. Behind us traffic moves as normal. No cars screeching to a halt. No families crushed beneath the weight of a Friesian. But I know there was a cow. I flick the radio station looking for some traffic news, and glance at the phone to see if the sat nav is showing any alert for trespassers or an obstruction. 

Trespasser, singular. And not even on the road, it was on the bridge but it looked – in its big eyes – serious, like it might jump. 

You sigh. “Let’s just get there in one piece shall we? Maybe there was a cow, but you definitely didn’t see it clearly enough to determine its intentions. It is miles in the past now, and a roast dinner is only a few miles in our future.”

#

The Harvest Moon peeks out behind the trees as I indicate to take the exit. Red brick exterior, a broken kid’s slide in the side garden, and sandwich board advertising ‘the best Sunday roast around’. It looks like The Crescent Moon on Junction 28, and The New Moon at Junction 6. When it says the best roast dinner around, it means the best to be found located off Junction 19 and within spitting distance of the motorway. It has that conservatory where your parents always sit; in summer we sweat through our clothes before the starters arrive and in winter it has the radiator power to shrivel me dry in a matter of minutes. 

Just inside the entrance I clock a birthday party, a table full of sugar-loaded kids hitting each other with balloons. My head twinges. We order at the bar, carry drinks to the table, do the hugs. I get told I look tired which is surprising isn’t it since I’ve been off work for so long. I sit and count to four and a half minutes which seems reasonable then I excuse myself. No, I haven’t quit smoking yet. I know, I’m disappointed in myself too. I avoid your eyes. 

#

At the back of the pub there is a large pond and I stand for a while quietly admiring a heron and enjoying this serene moment of nature. I get through a whole cigarette before realising the heron is so still because it is fake, plastic. I light another cig, watching the smoke double in the cold air as I exhale. 

It bloody was a cow. I close my eyes and can see the look on its face, the front leg slightly raised as it was about to lever itself up onto the rusted railing. I don’t know how cows climb, but the intention was clear. They can’t get back down stairs can they so it wouldn’t have gone up there unless it knew there was only one way to get down. I feel a bit jealous of the cow. Not for what it was planning, but for removing all other options. Every day is full of decisions that I don’t care about enough to warrant how much they make my brain ache. 

#

I feel my phone vibrate. It’s you, asking where I am and can I not be a dick in front of your parents. Your parents think I’m a dick no matter what, so I put my phone back in my pocket. I hear splashing in the corner of the pond. There is a duck, arse up, wiggling and waving its feet. After a few more seconds, the underside bounces off the reeds and disappears back under the water, rotating the head up and out. The duck shakes its head, opening and closing its beak. It looks angry. If ducks can squint that’s what this duck is doing, squinting, possibly with rage. It pushes itself through the water, away from the reeds and repeats these actions. Face in and under, kicking and wiggling, the rules of gravity and floatation eventually swinging it round the right way. The duck emits an angry quack and makes its way to the edge of the water. 

I think of the cow. I get what is happening. The duck is trying to drown itself. It doesn’t want to pop back up. That look in its eyes is the same as the one the cow had. I text you: There’s a duck doing it now. Trying to drown itself. 

I text again: It’s weird. I was right about the cow. They have had enough I think. I light another cig with shaking hands and watch the duck as it goes back under. 

You reply: Ducks are supposed to be in the water ffs, they can’t drown. Your starter is cold. 

There’s a clatter in the corner and I see a squirrel nudging open the lid of a rusted barbeque. The squirrel has a handful of twigs and lint which  it places in the metal drum. I know that if I text you, you’ll just tell me it’s making a nest for winter so I turn off my phone altogether and light a cigarette.

Alex Herod is a Manchester based writer, PhD student, marketer, and counsellor. She is interested in the intersections of horror, fiction, memoir, and mental health. Her work has been selected for publication by Dark Speculations magazine, Wild Ink, and Outsider – A Stephen King ‘Zine.
Find out more on Alex’s website https://www.thebetterwithbooksclub.com/