Dogs

I

  You know how when you’re young, you dream of being famous, you hope that you have some great impact on the world? Well I had some fucking impact alright. I don’t really know how to start this, think of it as a confession of sorts, a written record of my side of the story because God knows no one would give me the chance to speak if I tried now. At no point will I try to justify my actions, don’t expect any apologies here either though, this is just my way of closing this whole screwed up chapter. Honestly, I doubt I can ever end this, not until I’m dead anyway. When so many people are itching to kill you they don’t really listen if you say you’d rather call it quits. If you’re hoping for soppy tales of love and companionship, heroic deeds and chivalry then stop reading now and go pick up one of those bullshit vampire stories, I have no time for fairytales. Hell if you had met me you might not think of a bite to the neck as quite so romantic, real monsters don’t serenade you and declare undying love, they’re far more likely to tear you limb from limb. So I guess I better get on with it, if you think your adolescence is tough you’ll probably feel a little better about it once this is over.
  It all started in school; where else could it start really? I was dancing on the edge of consciousness while Miss Clarke our droning Geography teacher blabbered on about glacial movements. I know; epic stuff right? I had no idea what she was actually saying, being practically comatose with my head on a desk, only partially aware of the noise around me and the odd damp smell of the mobile classroom me and my fellow classmates were trapped in. Surrounded by darkness all sound became that relaxing hum you hear when you’re drifting as someone talks about something completely uninteresting, school is one of the only places where you can get away with really embracing it. It was like she was part of a circus act trying to keep all her plates spinning atop their precarious pedestals. I was just an innocent bystander, removed from the act, so better to worry about the others who were at risk of falling while I just lay there indifferent not harming a soul.  Or so I assumed until she loomed over my motionless form and woke me from my dreamy state.
“Zachary! You will not sleep in my class!” She said it very sharply, indignant as ever about the smallest little thing. Unwilling to come back to the real world my body tensed and my hand instinctively covered my head in a glorious display of reluctance, then I bit the bullet and talked back,
“Don’t call me Zachary... and I wasn’t sleeping.” I told her groggily. You know that I’m telling you the truth here I wasn’t asleep at all, no point writing an honest account right from the start if you just lie about petty stuff like that. She remained unconvinced though.
“Not sleeping? Well what would you call it then?” she spat at me; I hated it when teachers did that, tried to make an example of someone in the class to show their authority. The class is her pack and she is the Alpha that was the message she was sending.
“I was just taking it all in; I listen better when I’m relaxed.” I still had my head on the desk at this point.
“Well you have a funny way of showing you’re paying attention!” She was getting annoying now, increasingly loud to further assert herself; everyone else in the room was quiet just seeing how this whole dialogue would play out.
“Well I do apologize Miss,” finally I looked up from the desk “Allow me to leap upon the table and applaud in appreciation of your fine teaching methods. Would you believe I was paying attention then?” Oh by the way, I’m quite sarcastic. A few sniggers of laughter passed over the room, but it did little to impact the awkward silence. My head hit the desk again and apparently she was all out of straw because she said that was the final one and sent me out of the mobile classroom thing.
  I strode past the matching grey desks with their matching grey chairs, all sat upon the matching grey carpet, past all the other youths in their matching uniforms all black and white. Come on she can hardly blame me for being bored in a room as stimulating as that one. I passed the white board, went down a few stairs and out into a rather bright but bitter early afternoon. The brisk air helped to wake me up fully and bring me back to my usual level of cognitive thought.
  Outside I was faced with my school, Greenacres secondary. Such an average looking place, that didn’t stop it being all over the news when shit really kicked off but that’s further down the line. Next to the mobile classroom I was in there were a few more of them, temporary replacements for rooms that were damaged in a fire a month or so before the day I’m reliving for your benefit now. A wannabe arsonist tried to torch the science labs and succeeded to a certain degree, taking out them and some other rooms with it before the emergency services finest came and doused the blaze. The kid who did it was in the year below, year 10 and he got expelled and sent to one of those young offenders’ institutions, which from what you see on documentaries and stuff are just where budding criminals are trained by their peers to become more hardcore once they’re released. Now that’s what you call justice.
  The whole school is split into two parts, the lower half and the upper half. The lower half is the one that’s partly scorched with the science blocks in it and the upper half is all fine as far as attempted arson is concerned, there’s a sizeable walk between the two which is where the mobiles and your hapless anti hero are situated at this point in our tale.  Then you have the town on one side, the crappy old town of Breckton. It’s about the least exciting place you could imagine with a concoction of dusty old buildings at its core and ugly new orange brick monstrosities radiating from it. On the other side you have the school athletic fields, backed by wondrous nature, trees as far as the eye could see. That way come across as being wholly insincere but I have to admit, the view of the fields and the forest in the harsh light of day was rather beautiful, there is a beauty in nature that makes you see how ugly the unnatural truly is.
  I didn’t have a lot to do aside from just waiting for Miss Clarke to come and give me permission to go back inside, I could hear the conversation already. They were always the same when a teacher sent someone out of the room. “You’re doing yourself a disservice, it doesn’t matter to me if you fail it’s your life and you’re wasting it, this is your final and most important year, don’t you care about your future?” It’s like they all read from the same script. The truth of the matter is though, I didn’t care, I didn’t know what I wanted to be so there was nothing to work towards. When you’re told you can become anything it’s hard to become anything at all. There’s so much pressure to decide what you want to spend your entire life employed as, that’s why people end up just taking any old job in an office. Innocently enough they take the easy route to work promising themselves its temporary. Before they know it they have been there for ten years, obsessing over the same pretty secretary that they’d never even talk to, coffee every morning milk with two sugars, trash TV every night, then a night of resting easy safe in the knowledge that they get to repeat the whole routine the next day. Back then I considered that a soulless existence, it wouldn’t happen to me, didn’t know what I’d do but it would be something that mattered. Of course in retrospect, perhaps the dull meaningless existence was the way to go.
  Getting a little misplaced wandering through my own mind I lost track of time, I don’t know how long I was stood there in my self induced trance but I was promptly snapped out of it when the door to that wood and fibreglass prison swung open and the old warden Miss Clarke came marching down the stairs towards me.
“Zachary, why do you insist on being such a bother in class?” she asked me. I hate being called Zachary, I despise the fact I have a name that sounds like it’s from an all American 90’s sitcom, why must people draw attention to it when Zack is entirely sufficient? The edge of authority had left her voice, probably because we were alone now and she didn’t have to put on a front in an attempt to keep her class in line.
“I wasn’t being a bother, if anything I was the least bothersome person in that whole room, I may as well have been out here this whole time it would have made no difference.” This was true and I said it earnestly, when it came to school I was pretty much a none-entity throughout, moving from class to class in a monotonous blur of meaningless motion. I wasn’t a popular kid and I never tried to be, but I wasn’t exactly what you would call a victim in my time there either.
“True I suppose being a bother wasn’t what you were doing, but your lack of attention bothers me. It’s obvious from your manner and your vocabulary that you aren’t exactly dumb, you have far more potential than most here but you choose to waste it.” I sort of enjoyed that compliment, I do have quite an adept grasp on the English language and my manner of speaking is unusual for my age group I suppose, at least in circumstances where i choose to speak in such a way. I thought about perhaps congratulating her on her excellent enunciation but decided against it. All I could do to fill the silence afterwards was shrug, I had no real explanation, not one I thought of as appropriate given the situation anyway.
  “Look, I have worked at this school for many years and I hate to see a student wasting their life, don’t you care about your future?” I told you she’d say it, right on cue. I just stood there waiting for her to get all that crap out of her system, all the time just thinking to myself what is the point? I didn’t mean in the why am I stood here having this conversation? sort of way I meant it in the broadest possible sense. Is there any meaning in caring about the future or should we just embrace the chaos knowing that in the end none of it really matters? These were the sorts of questions that kept me up at night, made it hard to sleep. I always found it easier to drift off in school where all the noise and commotion drowns out all that sort of deep thinking. Kind of ironic that the only place where I could relax and switch my head off was a place specifically designated to broaden the mind and make me think.
  She had probably said some other things but I was lost in the forest of sporadic thought again and it’s hard to see or hear much through its gnarled and twisted branches, I snapped back to reality when she ordered me to go back inside. I don’t know how I look when I drift off like that but I hope it’s not too embarrassing, it’s like my eyes cease to function and the synapses firing in my brain translate into a swirling mass of near physical entities that I can almost see and touch, but not quite.
  All eyes were on me as I trailed in behind her and then took my place on the matching grey seat behind the matching grey table wearing my matching uniform. Damn, those uniforms were just wool to the sheep and I hated them. The silence didn’t last after I sat and before long everyone was chatting amongst themselves again while Captain Clarke spoke in vain about how rivers deposit sediment or some other equally thrilling part of geography based knowledge. I just sat there not really paying attention to anything, lost in my own world again until this kid Jake leaned over from the table next to me.
“Man you get shit like that in every lesson, just make more of an effort to keep your head up and they’ll leave you alone.” He chuckled about my apparent inability to even feign interest. Jake was a good enough kid, I rarely saw anyone from school outside of the building but I saw him occasionally. Within the corridors and classrooms he was the most bearable person around and one of the only people I would have considered a friend. He was a bit of a misfit but that was a good thing in my eyes, conforming is for assholes anyway right? He was also pretty smart, if you wanted intelligent conversation then your best bet was him but he was also well practiced in chatting utter shit.
“Hey, if I’m not interested I don’t see why I should fake like I am.” I shrugged indifferently and he laughed at that to.
“Fair point, at least you’re honest about it I suppose,” he smiled “you still up for camping out in the sticks tonight?” I had foolishly agreed to this a few days previous, worst decision of my life, period. Still it’s so easy to say things were a mistake looking back, at the time you’re running blind straight for a fate you know nothing about. It’s kind of scary when you consider that. Even then I wasn’t sure it was a good idea though, I’d like to say it’s because I have a super human ability to detect danger ahead but it wasn’t, it was just ‘cause I despised staying places overnight, give me my own bed I say. The idea of sleeping on the cold hard ground never appealed all that much, why would it?
  “I dunno, wont it just be really boring?” I can tell you now that it was not, but the thing is with unforeseen circumstances is that they’re kind of unforeseen, had I known what was coming id have gone home, boarded up all the doors and windows and refused to leave.
“Come on don’t be a faggot! It’ll be fun, you’ve heard all the stories about big cats and stuff living in there, we might even see one you never know.” He said the last part in a massively sarcastic way and gave a very cheesy wink to punctuate it.
“Yeah I must be a faggot ‘cause I’m not sure I wanna stay in a tent overnight with three other guys, it sounds a bit “Brokeback Mountain” to me youth.” I still maintain that I am entirely right about that, his argument, as convincing as it may be lacked logic to an almost offensive degree.
  “Just come man it’ll be a right laugh.” He argued, I couldn’t be bothered to fight back and since I had already agreed to it anyway I just accepted that I was going to go, this seemed to appease him and it wasn’t long before my head met the table again and I was right back in the swirling vortex of my own cavernous mind.


  The rest of that school day was pretty uneventful; you may be wondering why I told you about the whole conversation with my teacher and stuff. Well there was no meaningful reason to but I think with all the shit I’ve been through I have earned the right to be a little self indulgent, if not right now when telling this whole twisted tale then when? Anyway after that lesson all we had between us and the end of day bell was what could loosely be referred to as a science lesson, like I said though the labs were torched so we just sat in an unused IT room and rather than working through the irrelevant time wasting questions the teacher helpfully handed out to us, we wasted our time in a more creative way. There’s a lot of stuff to find on the internet, some of it interesting even if not always for entirely wholesome reasons.
  After that it was a case of just going home for a while and killing time which I did like a pro. I lived a stone’s throw away from the school gates so people always questioned how I managed to be late without fail, it may be close by but I was never in any rush, that’s as close to an explanation as I can give in all honesty. When I returned to my own personal brick built monstrosity I just did what I did every day, breezed past my mother with a half hearted greeting, threw my scruffy excuse for a school bag in the hallway then it was straight to the cramped kitchen to satisfy my gluttonous side. Completely abusing my fast metabolism, it would catch up with me one day or so I was told. Then I just dragged myself upstairs and into my rabbit hutch of a room. It wasn’t what you would call grand, the bed took up a large percentage of my available floor space but id call a bed essential in a bed room so you know, it couldn’t be avoided. Then there was the wardrobe and the TV on its stand, what little space wasn’t taken up but that stuff was just a mess, no inch of carpet visible past the thick layer of unwashed clothes. The whole house was small to be fair not just my room, but it kept the wind out and kept my head dry so no complaints about it here.
  Several hours of shit TV later I received the call I was waiting on and also in a way, dreading. As soon as I answered I was assaulted by wind noise and rapid speech.
“Hey man, it’s Jake, we’ll be walkin’ straight past yours any second so get out here.” he told me and then put the phone down, as if he were a business man with very important things to attend to, so important he couldn’t waste precious seconds to allow me to speak in return or even to bid me goodbye. Never the less I did as I was ordered, I was still in my uniform but it was a matter of seconds before I was changed into my usual out of school shabby attire. That day it was black cargos with a rip in the knee, battered white trainers and a wonderful t-shirt displaying the charming and hope-filled message “Fuck the Future”, sartorial elegance is not one of my strong points and never has been. I also took a musty, tattered white hoodie with me in case the weather decided to turn against our little Boy Scout troop’s expedition.
  With an indifferent farewell to my mother from across the house I left the front door to see my band of merry men a short way down the street, nice of them to wait for me I thought to myself sarcastically. They were chin-wagging about god knows what, probably something either filthy or irrelevant, either way it didn’t matter to me. I looked at that group of social pariah’s and thought to myself; if anyone at our school was planning to go postal it would probably be this lot. They we’re all nice enough people to be sure but at the same time they did seem to have all the generally accepted attributes for a band of Columbine candidates. What, too soon?
  Firstly there was Jake but you already know a bit about him, he was the son of a single parent, same as me. His mom and dad weren’t exactly on speaking terms though to say the least; I’ll just tell you that his home life was far more troubled than my own and leave it at that for now. Jake was on the tall side, easily surpassing the 6ft mark and laughing defiantly in the face of adult rated movies and those little signs you get at theme parks that say “You must be THIS tall to ride”. He was only sixteen years old like the rest of us but he looked like an adult, already sporting a healthy amount of facial hair. As for the hair on his head it was short, black and gelled to within an inch of its life. He wasn’t what you would call a “looker” but none of us were (I sadly have to admit that I’m still not, time has done me no favours) with his morbid interests and taste for all things strange and or Japanese he sat perfectly well with me.
  Secondly there was James, a scrawny little mote, pale as bone even set against the others, we were all sun dodgers to an extent but he took it to the extreme. He claimed he had a skin condition which meant he couldn’t be in direct sunlight for very long, lest he burst into flames I suppose. Then again he claimed lots of things that we were all sure were bullshit. He was a compulsive liar but not in any dangerous way, perhaps hypochondriac would be a more accurate way to describe him although his dishonesty did extend to other subjects at times. It was sort of like he thought having all this weird stuff supposedly wrong with him made him special in some way, I personally wouldn’t class illness, medical conditions or an intolerance to dairy products as anything to scream about but hey, each to their own I guess. He was definitely shorter than average which was all the more apparent given his company and his wide framed, dark glasses stood on his face in stark contrast to his skin. Still young but not young at heart already he wanted to be a politician, what better profession for a compulsive liar though right?
  Finally there was Venn, I know what you’re thinking and the answer is no, I don’t know if his parents were drunk when they named him. He was another tall one, slightly taller than Jake although you wouldn’t really be able to tell by looking. He was always hunched over, walking with his face to the ground and he had curly blonde hair that sat awkwardly atop his head. I’m sure when he was younger he wouldn’t have looked out of place in a sailor suit with one those giant swirly lollipops but now he just looked like the before example in an advert for acne cream. He had that kind of acne that makes all your skin look red and raw, it wasn’t pleasant but James had comfortingly told him that “Hey at this age some are just doomed to hit puberty harder than a pikey hits his wife.” Yeah I know, not that politically correct for a would-be politician but you’ve got to love the irony. Venn was into weird stuff, like musicals and tennis, just an unusual mixture of things you wouldn’t expect from a teenage boy and that he never really admitted to openly. Maybe it speaks more about the rest of the groups faults than his own though when you consider the fact that we found Jakes appetite for Serial Killers and Anime to be more socially acceptable than a west end rendition of Mama Mia. Still I think I’d rather fall victim to a serial killer than have to sit through that shit. Anyway Venn was the quiet type, the very quiet type, rarely said a word and that was always cool with me.
  Well that covers everyone I was resigned to share a tent with, I jogged to catch up with them and they all just carried on with their conversation when I joined the group as if I wasn’t even there, apart from Venn who acknowledged me with a slurred noise made up entirely of vowels. It was a good effort for him though so I gave him a nod in return.
  “Mate that things gonna collapse faster than a pensioner in a harsh winter, no way are we making it through the night.” Offensive as ever James was irate at Jake over his choice of tent. He sounded genuinely frustrated but Jake just laughed at him, with how small he was it looked like when a child gets pissed off with its parents, it’s all flailing arms and meaningless sound, entirely futile. The tent in question was still in its clear plastic wrapping and was tucked under Jakes arm, the reduced to £4.99 sticker stuck fast to its packaging.
“Well you’re welcome to sleep outside or you can piss off home now if it bothers you that much.” he told him casually with a shrug and a smirk.
“But what if it’s cold or it rains?! I don’t wanna get sick.” James retorted, frustrated as he was.
“James you’re always sick...” I told him “I’m surprised you haven’t brought a pharmacy with you to be honest, maybe some medical staff just to keep you ticking?” The others laughed at this, Venn’s raspy breathy chortle sounded almost like he was choking on something. James didn’t seem to find much humour in it though, he went red in the face and said
“Fuck you Zack, you’re such a prick!” I agreed with him and the banter continued as we walked around the perimeter of the school fence and down the length of the track fields towards the woods that would be home for the night.
  Now if this were a film or something, this is where the montage of our epic journey would be, we walked a lot further into the dense foliage than was really necessary but I just followed and didn’t say anything about it, far be it from me to complain. As you can imagine there were a crap tonne of trees all in various shades of green and brown (hey I’m not a botanist or whatever you call them) they surrounded us on all sides, filtering out what remained of the dying suns rays until only dappled spots of it made it through the canopy to the ground. It looked later than it was amongst the dense forest, dwarfed as we were by the enormous trees but I could tell it wouldn’t be too long before darkness fell entirely. Throughout our woodland march, hopping over fallen trunks and occasionally tripping on roots hidden by devious leaves Jake and James continued to argue about anything and everything. Their personalities really did seem to clash but I think that’s probably why they liked each other, they both loved the fight, trying to best each other in a debate was probably like gladiatorial combat to them. Certainly with the way they went on you’d have thought it was a matter of life and death.
  Whether it was about religion, the government or the correct amount of time to boil an egg, each of them had the definitive answer. Of course their answers were entirely different but both were adamant that they knew the ultimate truth in an “I am right, you will believe what I believe” sort of way, each of them took the kind of blunt stance on a subject that any religious fundamentalist would be proud of. I must admit though it was entertaining on the journey, I have no idea how far from home we were but we were deep into the tangled web of greenery by the time we stopped to pitch our sorry excuse for a tent.
  When we finally came to a halt Jake and James were still deep in philosophical debate, the subject was God and the argument was woefully inane, a circular debate with no end and no beginning, it had a fair amount in common with The Big Man himself if James were to be believed.
“You can’t just write of hundreds of years of dedicated religious following as people being stupid, don’t you think there’s anythin’ in it?”James’ tone was almost pleading for a more open minded approach to the argument from any of us but he wasn’t getting it.
“Hey there’s millions of stupid people out there, look at the X-Factor and all that sort of shit, millions of people obsess over that it’s pretty much a cult, there’s no worth in that either in my opinion. This should be a good spot for the tent.” Jake replied in matter-of-fact style and dropped the still packaged bargain tent to the ground. Venn who was carrying a backpack also dumped his cargo. It was filled with all sorts of essential items, you know like cheap supermarket Vodka and copious amounts of Oreos, stuff that’s vital in any survival situation.
“Yeah I’m not saying there aren’t dumb people out there but there has to be more to life than just this right? Like where did we come from, why are we here, you know all the big questions?” James said, he was one of those people who wasn’t convinced enough to actually be a Christian or any one of the other major groups of organised lunatics out there in the world but he was scared enough of the unknown to want to believe in something. It was at this point Venn pointed a finger at the sky and added his two cents
“I don’t believe in God either.” but the conversation continued as though he’d never spoke at all, I swear that kid blends in with the scenery too well. If he stood still in the street long enough passing dogs would probably try to piss up him.
  This is where I decided to butt in.
  “Right now guys I’m attending the church of who gives a fuck, it’s gonna be dark soon and I’m not exactly expecting any divine influence to help us put this tent up, let’s get on it.” I was right, the sun was fleeing the scene faster than we would have liked so we got to work, the discussion continued as we pieced together our £4.99 dwelling. Flitting from one topic to the next, getting particularly heated when the subject of fate cropped up. It’s one of those questions we will never know the answer to, that sure as hell don’t stop people asking it again and again though. I for one hate the idea of fate, the thought that I’m not in control of my own destiny. Simply being dragged by my thread as the Sisters of Fate weave their tapestry with all of our lives, creating a story where we are nothing more than characters, a means to an end with no real freedom. Scary shit when you think about it.
  Anyway the tent was erected just in time right before the disappearing light evacuated the sky entirely, it looked as good as you’d expect a £4.99 tent to look, it was going to be one cramped night for us lot put it that way and I was half expecting to wake up just wrapped in whatever was left of it. I remember thinking one of us should sit inside before the gentle breeze took it upon itself to relocate it to a location it deemed more suitable, in all its windy-wisdom. We stood and surveyed our camp site with just enough illumination left to see it in all its glory, dead leaves littered the ground in such numbers that they had a fighting chance of burying our crappy tent if they banded together and made an effort, there were branches strewn across the ground and towering trees made me feel very enclosed. We were deep in the woods and a long way from home. That was when the expert conversationalist in our group Venn decided to chime in with
“This reminds me of The Blair Witch Project...”
  Probably not the best thing to say just as all luminosity disappeared from the world around us but hey, it was a shit movie anyway.
















II

  So it got dark, you know, like it does. Now I know your probably thinking “What the hell, when does shit start to happen?” Well it’s coming you bloodthirsty bastards so chill out. We decided to retreat into our insubstantial shelter, there was something ethereal about that tent, so insignificant was its presence. We had no sleeping bags and no personal space, ill thought out would be an understatement when describing our epic journey into the forest but maybe that was supposed to be a part of the fun. The tent did nothing either, so fine was it that all our heat was lost to the air and the greater universe around us, it pretty much just bowed down to the elements and did zilch to protect our fragile human forms from Mother Natures bitter night. We did however have light, Venn had packed one of those big handheld torches, you know like the kind they have in Jurassic Park. God knows why he owned one but I didn’t bother asking, for all I cared he could have had a T-Rex of his own, no matter the reason I was glad for the illumination. It was sat in the middle of the tents flimsy floor and faced up towards the ceiling and that combined with the light of an otherworldly full moon kept us from being in that can’t see your hand in front of your face sort of darkness.
  It’s hard to judge time when you’re just sat there with no TV, watch or anything to keep track of its passing; we didn’t even have phones with us because the others had agreed that it would be more authentic in a survival expert sort of way if we didn’t take them, I guess in the same way Bear Grylls rather than taking enough water with him to the desert decides to drink his own piss from a snakeskin. Thankfully we weren’t taking it to that extreme, I hadn’t settled on the whole not bringing a phone thing personally but being a somewhat forgetful soul I neglected to pick mine up when I rushed out of the door regardless. We really did make all those horror movie errors, alone and isolated, no way to contact anyone. If there were any cheerleaders there I’m pretty sure Jason Voorhees would have gone well out of his way to crash our little party, hockey mask and all.
  So anyway yeah, I don’t know what time it was but Jake was telling us about this delightful fellow known as The Camden Ripper.
“I can’t remember the guys real name but trust me he was he fucked up, he was killing all these prostitutes where he lived and cutting them up and dumping them in a river. People passing by saw the bags floating and bits of them have still never been found.” It was hard to tell if he admired or loathed the guy from his tone, all I know is that he was well into all that kind of stuff, I suppose you’d call it morbid fascination, I can’t argue I do have that in common to a certain extent. You have to wonder how the minds of people like that work, are the wires crossed or what?
“But that’s not the weirdest thing; loads of people have murdered prostitutes and all that, it’s pretty standard for a serial killer. No what makes it really weird was when the police searched his house, they found this devil mask thing, they didn’t think much of it until they found the pictures...”
“Oh I see where this is going, that’s just sick!” James interrupted “We need the death penalty back for psychos like that, what gives them the right to live when they do that to people? If I were in charge I’d have them all executed, one shot to the back of the head.” He often said things like that, about what he would do if he were ever in charge as he aspired to be, some of his views were intense to say the least. I doubt this country would be any better with a guy like him making the big decisions; the death penalty thing is up for debate sure but some of his solutions to problems are truly bat-shit crazy trust me. I told him to shut up and let Jake finish, intrigued as I was by the story of the London based lunatic.
“Yeah as you’ve probably already clocked, they found pictures of the victims with that mask on, I think they were in a box in his wardrobe or something. It gets a little bit worse though, supposedly he had sent them to other people? You gotta wonder who the hell would want those sorts of pictures...” He said in a curious manner and then I joined the conversation.
“Yeah and how the hell would you find other people who were into that shit? Like when would you even drop in the question? I can’t imagine people having a quiet drink and someone coming out with “Hey we’ve known each other a while now and we really get on but answer me this... What’s your stance on dead prostitutes?” The world is insane.” It is something that I’d always wondered, are those fascinated with such things attracted to each other by some kind of magnetic force, some kind of invisible tether pulling likeminded individuals ever closer? It always seemed impossible to me that subjects such as that would just crop up in conversation, although I suppose it had our very own conversation that evening, so maybe it was more common than I thought.
“It’s all about the internet; all the freaks can find each other on there!” James added.
“Guys can we not talk about this while we’re alone in the woods? Or ever please?” Venn said, I decided to give him some stick for it because I was an awesome friend naturally.
“Aww what’s the matter Venny-boy?” there was mock sincerity in my voice and I held the torch below my face like people do when they tell ghost stories “You scared Freddy Krueger is gonna pop out of the ground, he only gets you in your dreams mate, better not sleep.” I grinned a menacing grin, winked at him then put the torch back down. He didn’t say anything but he rarely did, that’s just what he was like and he knew I was only screwing around. Little did we all know that whilst we were all chatting oblivious, a very real monster was lurking not so far away.


  More uncounted minutes passed. The wallet-friendly Vodka was out and had been for some time, the others had been steadily getting tipsier as the night progressed. I don’t drink, didn’t then and still don’t now. My reason always was that I prefer to stay in control of myself, don’t want to act like a dick because I’m off my face or do anything I might regret. You will understand the sweet, delicious irony of that before long, it’s really quite funny to be honest. Speaking of sweet and delicious I was elbow deep in a box of Oreos, they were my replacement for drink as the others passed the bottle around again, they were doing quite well as far as emptying it went.  James took a swig and then coughed and spluttered.
“I can’t believe you didn’t bring anything to mix this with Venn.” he spoke in a raspy growl because his throat was on fire.
“I brought water to drink as well...” Venn said defensively. Jake drank some to, he didn’t cough or splutter but you could see him fighting the urge even in the darkness patting his chest with a balled up fist, trying to look like the bigger man I guess. Compared to James he was the bigger man by a foot at least so it can’t have been overly taxing for him.
  So there I was surrounded by intoxicated, bickering friends on a cold and still night in the cheapest tent you could imagine, stuffing my face with biscuits. Not exactly interesting or dignified in any way but hey that’s how it went. The minimal light from our torch was enough to make me feel like I hadn’t gone completely blind but it felt like I wasn’t far off, the shadows surrounded the torches beam made it somewhat claustrophobic; everything felt very, very close. I had drifted into one of my trademark wide eyed, lights are on but nobody’s home states, the conversation around me was just a dull hum to me, there were no words at all. Then I picked out the sound of rustling leaves and it sparked my interest, Venn heard it to.
“Guys?” he said but I remained silent still listening out and Jake and James continued a conversation amongst themselves “Guys, is something moving out there?” he sounded genuinely worried and our tent became silent.
  We listened intently for the smallest sound, the rustling increased and decreased in intensity, we were all holding our breath, the noise seemed to slow and then stop. Perhaps just leaves rolling with the wind.
  “It’s probably just the breeze.” James said but he sounded more concerned than he would have liked to let on. A simultaneous sharp intake of breath occurred across our little group as the sound of a branch snapping echoed through our silent little world. It probably wasn’t very loud but to us it sounded louder than explosions and gunfire, so tense were we at that moment.
  That was about the second it dawned on us that we were truly isolated where we were, we had travelled far further into the vast wilderness than necessary, I don’t even know why we had gone so far but in that instant where in our minds any number of demons and killers could be lurking outside our fragile fabric walls I regretted not speaking up about it earlier in the day. No one needed to say anything I knew the very same thoughts were bouncing around in the heads of my comrades. The tension became unbearable but then cold, hard logic crept into my mind. I realised it was probably just some woodland creature, a deer or whatever. Just wandering about as they do, yeah it was the early hours of the morning but it’s not like they have a curfew. Monsters don’t exist and serial killers aren’t likely to be roaming in the middle of a forest at night despite what the movies show you, this started to put me at ease and my fear began to subside.
  “You lot, I think if there’s a monster we should throw James out there and run like hell.” I said in fake B-movie terror. Jake chuckled into his palm and I could make out Venn’s wide yet nervous grin.
“That would do no good he’d be less than a mouthful, the thing probably wouldn’t even slow down to eat him, just swallow him whole on the run.” A nervous laughter passed through the tent and James muttered something, no doubt condemning us to any number of unpleasant fates under his breath. I decided to try and put the others at rest by repeating my thoughts on the situation out loud.
“We need to chill, this is a forest remember, it’s probably just a deer or som-” My sentence was cut short by a low and guttural rumbling sound, the vibrations of it ran through me and sent a chill down my spine, the night had just got a little colder for us all. Silence fell again and no one moved a muscle, eyes darted but everything else remained in a state of petrifaction, as far as we were concerned every shadow was out to get us and we were sitting ducks. To put it bluntly, we were absolutely shitting ourselves. There was a sudden click and we were plunged into total darkness, Venn had turned the torch off.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” James asked in a harsh whisper.
“We don’t want it to know we’re here.” Venn said back, his whisper equally harsh. James replied,
“We don’t even know what IT is!” he tried to stay quiet but he could not stifle his frustrations. James began a seemingly endless rant directed at Venn, it continued for what I deemed to be far too long.
  This is where I got annoyed, I was sick of the tension, sick of James, I was cold and it was probably nothing anyway, if Godzilla was out there I might as well let him eat me and get it over with I thought to myself. Any animal out there would probably run away if it saw a light or heard movement anyway.
“Fuck this.” I used my best action hero tone, picked up the torch and flicked it on, zipped open the tent and stepped out into the bleak and frosty night.
“No man, stay in here!” James exclaimed, still whispering.
  It was dark outside but you knew that already, the branches above looked like bone in the moonlight, reaching out towards the heavens in their futile battle to one day meet the sun. The evergreen trees blocked much of the silvery light of the moon so hardly any reached the ground which was just a pool of darkness beneath my feet; it was a surreal feeling being stood there that night. Trunks stood like pillars scattered around me as my friends crouched by the entrance to the tent looking out, probably expecting to see me decapitated by the Chupacabra or dragged into another dimension by Cthulhu. I shone the torch around on the ground, nothing but fallen leaves and broken branches, stones and moss at my feet. That sound came again, that horrid, monstrous growl but this time not as loud.
“Just get back in here Zack!” James said again, everyone else was holding their breath lost in the apprehension of what might come next, gripped by a fear of the unknown. I ignored him and began to walk forwards, I couldn’t see any cause for the noise and I was curious. To be perfectly honest my heart was racing, adrenaline filled me and I was enjoying the fear in a twisted sort of way. Silently first Jake and then Venn and finally even James stepped out into the blackness and stood outside behind me. They all seemed reluctant to be there but they were in any case, come on though how much difference could a tent make if anything did happen, they were no less safe outside.
  As I searched the darkness something caught my eye, reflected moonlight. I wheeled around with the torch to point my beam of light at it but as I did I heard the telltale shuffling of leaves underfoot again. The torch illuminated the spot that grabbed my attention, there was a huge tree and I saw steam evaporate into the air, something was out there and it was breathing. I walked hurriedly towards the spot. Big mistake.
“What the hell man just stay here!” James, the voice of reason shouted this time but I ignored him, I was a fair distance away from the others as I rounded the tree and when I did the torch fell upon a set of huge, glassy eyes. They were dead things, no trace of feeling or emotion, just the cold calculating gaze of a beast. A snarl tore through the air and echoed throughout our remote location, I turned on my heels instinctively.
“Shit, RUN!” I shouted to the others but they didn’t need me to tell them they had already started running by the time I saw them, I sprinted as hard as I could the torchlight bouncing around wildly as I tried to navigate my way through the labyrinth of trees barely able to see, I couldn’t make out the others by this point they were too far ahead which I suppose was a good thing, for them at least. Adrenaline leaked from my every pore and I ran faster than I ever had before but I could hear thunderous galloping footsteps behind me and in that moment I knew I wasn’t fast enough. Just as I barrelled past the freshly abandoned tent I was swept off my feet by whatever the hell it was, I careened through the air like a plastic bag caught in an updraft in a moment of pure silence; I didn’t land quite so delicately though.
I hit the ground with a sickening crunch. I guess some of my ribs were broken, hell one whole side of me felt broken, I couldn’t breathe no matter how hard I tried and the torch was long gone, lost in my short avian journey. This didn’t stop me trying to get up and keep running though, pain was not a concern of mine at the time, my instinct to survive was far stronger than anything else. I sprang to my feet and tried to run again but the thing was still chasing me, it was big and it was strong, I knew that much, it was also faster than me. Even then I knew I was fucked, but God loves those who try and try I did. I dashed around bark and branch trying to put them between me and it, I didn’t look back but I could hear it effortlessly stomping its way around them, so it was agile to, it seriously wasn’t a fair fight.
  The chilled air whipped past me as I ran. The booming footfalls of the creature at my back got louder as it closed in. It sprinted straight past me and turned, digging its heels into the ground and sliding to a stop. It had gauged great scars into the dirt, damn thing wasn’t even trying. I slid to a stop myself. I couldn’t make out any detail in the darkness, just a great hulking shape with bright eyes and equally bright fangs ahead of me. I saw its whole shape lower, ready to pounce and I just let it happen, so exhausted was I from the chase. I gave my legs the order to move but they weren’t co-operating they just shook with a mixture of adrenaline and fatigue, my muscles burned like id been stripped bare and doused with acid, it wasn’t even panting.
  I was sure that was the end, fearsome claws tore down my side and through my stomach, warm blood ran free down my form and I collapsed to the ground, it’s hard to describe the agony, the nausea, the shock, take my word for it you don’t want it to happen to you. It bounded past me, still toying with its prey but I knew the wound I had would be fatal anyway, I just wanted it to end. Laying there amongst the moss and the leaves I wished to die, not to linger for long, harder than I had ever wished for anything before. I stared up at the moon; defiantly staring back at me, mocking me so weak and helpless was I. Then suddenly my skin started to burn, like ghostly white hot flames had surrounded me but I could not scream. I shook violently, heat built up in my chest and it felt like I was being torn apart from the inside. I thought to myself this must be what the end feels like. It took all my remaining strength to raise my head, only to see the shape of that monster a few hundred yards away. It threw its head back and a deafening howl shattered the silent night, then it began the run towards me once more, coming in for the killing blow.
  Acceptance washed over me, along with the agony and the shock, my skull dropped to the soil in surrender and I was faced with what little I could see of the forest shrouded in blackness, then yet more galloping footsteps as two more giant shapes tore through the trees towards me.
“Shit... There are more of those things...”I whimpered only to myself before the whole world cut to black.