The weird thing is it must have always been there, waiting to be discovered. It’s not really something you look for, and things like that you generally know about anyway. It’s a kind of instinct. I’m not perfect, not by a long way, but this? It really brought me down. I should have paid attention to what it was I had in the first place, years I’ve been this way, I just never really looked.

All the guys at school used to laugh, I just assumed my trousers were too short, or my feet were too big; you know nothing wrong there, just the kind of things school boys would laugh at. I was very mature, I let them laugh and at times to make it easier for them, I’d trot past them just to make their day.

Here’s where I should have started asking questions, that first year of secondary school.

“Mum we’ve forgotten to buy the P.E kit, I can’t wear my normal clothes anymore.”

“You don’t do P.E. Billy, not in secondary school.”

“I do Mum, on the grass, on the other side of the road, that special field, where we used to watch Dad play football.”

“No Billy, you don’t do P.E.”

I never asked questions after that, I’d just get up and Mum would dress me, like I was silly. I just figured she was being over protective so I’d close my eyes and imagine I was a celebrity being pampered. I never saw how she’d dress me though, we didn’t have mirrors, that’s why I had to assume what people laughed at. Unless it was just because I was smaller, I could tell that, and people thought I smelt, Mum wouldn’t let me bath.

The other day Mum died, she was old, a late parent. I was kind of lost, I’d never done anything alone. I was in the house, in bed waiting for her to dress me, but she never came, I waited and waited for my breakfast, the little pellets of cereal she used to bring me in the morning, and I’d gobble them up leaving a trail of saliva, they never came either. She’d only been gone a few days but I missed her already. I think it’s because I knew she wouldn’t be back. Then I remembered something she said to me, near the end.

“Remember Billy, never look into mirrors, they’re the devils work, the devil and his trolls.”

Well I thought, she’s gone now, I’ll get a mirror and I’ll see what I look like finally. After all these years I’d know, things would be better once I knew.
So I did it, I went to the furniture shop, and as I went to step in to buy a mirror, I saw myself, for the first time ever. You guessed it, I was a goat.

Looking back on it, I wish I’d never made that discovery, I liked it better not knowing.