19 April 2012
It was a dark,dark night, full of velvety black inky nothingness wrapping your icy limbs and senses in a sinister death shroud.
You can smell the night air; heavy and oppressively sweet like the smell of decay. The sky is overcast without a star to guide you, hanging close above the thick canopy of trees overhead.
Your boots make a repetitive crunching thud, thud, thud in the needle covered undergrowth that has obscured most of the woodland track. The cold Arctic wind howls through the trees and cuts deep into your bones in salty icy waves, making you shiver continuously, despite pulling your old wooly hat low over your ears and the fleece collar of your raincoat high. The breath from your lungs jets out in cold misty tendrils , hovering momentarily before being swallowed by the night.
You know you left it too late to leave and curse yourself for having that extra drink, that meant your warm safe car had to be abandoned and you left to trek home in this weather. You certainly feel plenty sober now, with the cold air freezing your blood to your bones.
You adjust your shoulder bag and thrust your hands deep in your pockets and continue on down the track towards the open fields just before home. You reflect that it hadn't been a great night. Conversations had all seemed to go wrong, jokes you made to lighten the mood seemed to have the opposite effect, noone seemed to be interested in you so you sat and had those drinks. Now you were freezing cold having to plod the 8 miles home. It hardly seemed worth it.
A bird, probably an owl screeches overhead, sounding the end of some small beast as it is gouged by its talons then carried away to be swallowed down whole. You look at your watch and are shocked to see that somehow it is already four in the morning. "How did it get so damn late?" you mutter. You left at 1am and it has never taken you more than an hour and a half to walk home.
Deep in the undergrowth behind you, you start to hear a repetitive scratching, scrabbling sound, distant at first but gaining volume cutting through the stillness of the night.
You are initially a bit spooked but then write it off as a fox or weasel rummaging through the brush and pick up your pace keen to make up time and get some sleep tonight. Suddenly a heart wrenching scream smashes through the air to your right followed by a load crunching of bracken. Your heart leaps into your mouth but you calm yourself that it was certainly that fox getting a rabbit, but speed up again not wanting to spend any more time in this cold damp wood.
It starts to rain and you repeatedly curse your luck,as the drops beat their staccato rhythm on the canopy above. The odd drop cascading through and running down the back of your coat like a boney dead finger of chill death.
With alarm you notice that the scratching sound seems to have got closer and is somehow all around you, herding you forward. You frantically look behind, peering into the dark curtain of brush, rain and night, but it gives away nothing. The sweet sickly smell that assaulted your nostrils earlier seems to have gotten more intense, almost as if it was something physical reaching down your throat and choking your lungs from the inside out.
The owl screeches again making you lose your nerve completely and you pelt down the treacherous track in blind panic towards they grey opening exiting on to the fields. You long for the open space, the clear view and that glimpse of home.
You thrust yourself breathless with your heart bursting in your chest out of the forest. Stopping to gulp down some air you glance behind you to see if you could work out what spooked you. As you scan the bushy opening you are relieved to note that the noise has stopped. But then you see something. The trees. The trees are full of malevolent purple eyes staring at you from the inky blackness. They don't seem to be solid almost gyrating and flickering like an old film. Crash! Suddenly the world is alive with noise, maddening scratching noise, like fingers down a chalk board and unimaginable claws dredging through wood. One of the sets of wild eyes bursts free of the woodland and forms into something from the darkest nightmares of the depraved.
Like a large dog but with thick matted fur patchy and rank as if burt off with acid. Half it's face is nothing but bone and gristle with chunks of flesh clinging like leeches. It's legs are long and powerful but it's skin is almost transparent so you can see bone, tendon and ligament flex below. It's claws are horrific yellowed talons gleaming like metal and dripping blood and mud as they fly through the air propelling the monster along. It's muzzle peeled back to reveal layers of razor sharp fangs grinding together as it runs. The beast seems to be covered in gapping,oozing saws , as if it had been flayed alive. It's face is the worst somehow as you can see an almost human image floating and flickering behind the hound features. Like a human child distorted and tortured almost beyond recognition. It doesn't even run normally but jerks and gyrates through the air as if it was suffering from a bad frame rate.
Another crash brings you to your senses and you turn and sprint towards home, madly tearing down the hill towards the settlement below. But as your heart booms in your ears and your lungs howl for air you know that you can't outrun them. What chance do you have against such demons? As soon as this thought claims your mind, extreme fatigue seems to claim your body. Hopelessness and sadness floods you shortly followed by excruciating pain as your foot is caught and you plunge headlong into the ground, air smashing from your lungs.
The creature bites deep into your shin ripping flesh from bone, the saliva enters your bloodstream and burns through your veins, keeping you conscious and somehow even more sensitive to every little tear.
Roughly grabbing you in its slavering jaws the beast pulls you back towards the wood. You try and kick it away but realise you cannot move, it's venom has somehow paralysed you. You open your mouth to scream but before you realise that you have no voice to scream with, a second beast latches onto your open jaw and wrenches it away blinding you with pain and nausea. Another shot of burning agony rips through your stomach as the beasts tear open you exposed midriff and yank out your coiled and bloody intestines, ripping and chewing them before your eyes. Before you finally pass into darkness you hear the crunch of your skull splitting and a howl of pleasure like a whooping child, from the thing, as it starts tearing out your cranium.
"One more for the road?" you think you here your brother say, as your soul slips away to the unknown.
One More For The Road... • Opuss № I