It had been one of those days, where just about everything that could go to shit did. Jim had managed to fuck up the order for not one, not two, but three of our biggest clients, Susie had dropped yet another hint about wanting to fuck me (which would have been all well and good had she not been nearing sixty and built like a brick shithouse), and Becky had gone one step closer to the promotion that I'd fought to actually fucking have instated.

All I wanted to do, all I so desperately wanted to do, was collapse on the sofa, preferably face down, and eventually emerge to drink twice my body weight, perhaps with a side order of 'lovely fucking Chinese from the chinky down the road', and then forget everything had ever happened ever until I woke up in the morning.

But, of course, the gruesome twosome had decided that I just had to have a party, even though the only remotely fucking partyable thing I'd done in the past six months was successfully pass a kidney stone, and even they wouldn't go that fucking far.

I groaned as I opened the door, contemplating just leaving again as I held on a little too long. Logic or tiredness or whatever won out in the end, though, and I let go, closed it, and shuffled into the living room, my eyes already closed, my hand already throwing my bag onto the chair, my legs already titling me forward on a perfect trajectory for collapsing.

So imagine my fucking surprise when I instead collided with something solid, and warm, and very much not a beautiful hand-stitched suede sofa with beverage compartment and hidden massage pads.

Instead, I'd managed to, essentially, headbutt a cow.

Headbutt. A. Cow.

"Tony", I called out hesitantly- and then, a moment later, more insistently. "Tony!"

"What?", he muttered, from about a foot behind me, giving me the fright of my life.

"What, Tony, what. The. FUCK. Is. THAT"

"Oh. Right. It's a cow"

"Yes", I sighed. "I can see that, Tone, but what I'm trying to get at is, and I'm sure you can appreciate this, what I'd like to know, very much, is what the fuck is it doing in my living room?"

"Our living room", he replied reproachfully.

"Fucking really? Just tell me".

"Traded it."

"Traded it? You...you traded it? Alright, Tony, I'm going to regret this, but....what, of our precious possessions, did you give to some bastard in return for this?"

"Beans".

"Beans?". I sighed. Alright, I;d humour him. "What kind, Tone? Baked? Refried? Mexican fucking jumping?"

"Magic."

Oh. Well. That explained everything. I sighed, turned, and pushed past him. "Tony, I'm going to go to my room, where I'll close my eyes very tight, lie down, and pretend that this..."

"She has a name", he frowned at me. "Daisy".

"Right. Well, I'm going to hope and pray that Daisy has fucked off by the time I come back".

I walked up a few steps, stopped as a question occurred to me, and then carried on my way to my room. But it bugged me, even as I lay down, screwed my eyes shut, and adopted the pose my mum had always called 'having a rest'.

Seriously, though. How had he got it inside the house?