1 The Night Walk Home

"Bloody Tom, he's always like that, that cunt," he cursed, kicking a pebble on the road. 'We go out drinking, and he embarrasses me by telling everyone of when I pissed myself in university. Like, bruh, I was drunk and stuck around to listen to Jaine talk about her late dog, Smirny (named after her favourite drink). It wouldn't do to just leave in the middle of her sobbing now, would it? So I stalled, listened, and when her friend, Yianah, god bless her soul she must've noticed my legs squirming about to unleash a flood, interrupted our conversation, giving me the chance to flee to paradise-

"What's that constant buzzing I'm hearing?" A sharp-soft interchanging buzz, like a bee's, if only the bee was one second next to the ear and the next a mile away, somewhere in the forest of... "I don't remember passing a forest on my way here. In fact, where the hell am I? Missed a turn or something and ended in an undergroomed park, I reckon?" He checked his Gamsung s69 and found it had no signal. "Brilliant, can't even find my way home now." He licked his index finger and held it in front of him. "Yep. Still no clue how that works, but I usually turn left at the crossing, so if I go left, I reckon I'll find my way home, or out of the park." He turned left and the buzzing sounded like it just flew by him. "Bollocks to that! Is this a prank or something? Fuck off, eh?" he shouted, yet no laughs, nor rustling from any bushes. It was, for once, dead-quiet, in the middle of a forest full of tall and looming trees. He gulped as the thought of him being lost in an undergroomed park seemed less likely by each passing second. "How long was I zoned out for?"

A loud wailing came from north of him. The buzzing flew past him, stopped, and now there's a wail. "Bah, balls to that," he started running towards the wailing person. "Don't you dare- hugh- die on me, haahhh, not before you tell me where we are!" he shouted on, almost choking on his breath, and wheezing by the end of it. "Christ, I'm dying," he coughed out.

The sight was a morbid mess of torn entrails, steaming spilled guts, a decapitated hand hanging by a branch, and a feminine-looking body still writhing, yet surely not alive. In movies, he had often seen people running down and kneeling beside the dying to see if they were breathing or if they had any last words to pass on. But with all that mess around it... "Are you alive, lass?" he called softly, as if being loud might offend her and wake her up from her eternal sleep.

"Psst-" he cut his psssst short as he heard her wheeze. "Christ, she's alive, what do I do?" He saw the hanging arm rapidly rot, and a new one slowly forming where it was cut off from. Her entrails and organs were turning putrid black, absorbed to the ground, and new ones were forming in her abdomen. Now it was him that was wheezing. "Uhuh. Yeah, I, uhm," he cleared his throat, and sprinted faster than he ever had before. Something crashed down where he had stood, followed by sounds of bones breaking and more wails, yet this time it wasn't the same voice. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-" something flew above his head, touching his hair, and crushed further ahead of him. 'Right!' he kept sprinting and turned right to the trees, then left and right, zig-zagging his way through the forest until he found a tall enough bush to hide behind. He tried to calm his gasping, so he could hide and hope to go unnoticed. There's no way that thing something flew past him a second time for no reason. Whatever happened there, or whoever, maybe, it was now after him. That girl was regenerating like mutants did in movies, and if there's anything he learned from the MW-men movies, men women men, as he liked to call them, was that women mutants were the type to kill first, ask questions second, just like the men mutants.

'Calm, calm, 'tis all a dream, young lad, aye, we dreaming big fantasy tonight. Tom didn't embarrass us again. In fact, we didn't go to Herald Hoxton's today.'

The buzzing had begun again, constant back and forth, a fire had begun racing through the forest. Time was running out, he had to escape. He took a deep breath, "Bollocks," whined as he wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand, and sprinted again, this time, as far away from the fire as he could. Hiding wouldn't save him from burning into a crisp, but running might. "Don't fail me legs, I'll cheat and buy a juice ribeye if we live this-" He felt something smash at him with such intensity it knocked the air out of his lungs. He felt himself tumble and crash into something with his back. As he opened his eyes, he saw a bottom half with his same black Jean's and white shoes, laying on the ground a couple meters in front of him, with entrails getting leading closer to him. "Balls..." he coughed, and everything went black.

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