Woodside Farm, High Moor. 02.25. The scream jarred Andrew Stott awake. His eyes snapped open in the dark and he lay motionless, listening for any sounds of intrusion. All he could hear were the staccato grunts of his wife next to him. Damn, that woman can snore. He looked at the alarm clock and groaned. He rolled over, putting the pillow over his head in a vain attempt to drown out some of the noise. His bladder ached. There was no way he was getting back to sleep. He threw back the covers and stumbled to the bathroom. Andrew sighed with relief as he directed the stream of liquid into the porcelain bowl. He could still hear his wife upstairs. A bass rumble, interspersed with wet squelching sounds like a horse drowning in a bucket of jelly. Maybe we should think about sleeping separately. She can sleep out in the fucking barn, and I’ll stay in the house. On second thoughts, that would just piss the horses off. Now that he was far enough away from his snoring wife, he could hear something else.
