Introduction
I thought I would try and enter the Scholar and Scribe monthly writing competition, I have never done any story writing so I have to say this was a bit of a challenge. More than anything else it was a learning process! You can find a link to the post below.
Post: https://www.scholarandscribe.com/hive-199275/@thinkrdotexe/sands-monthly-short-fiction-contest
Prompt
Genre: Action
Thematic Prompt: Canine
Source - "Dark for dark's sake" by Kevin Dooley is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
A good night for a run
I was blinded by the darkness. The kind of dark that makes you feel truly alone and you can feel the blood being pushed around your body by your every increasing heart rate. Yes that kind of the darkness. Now we have all woken up in the middle of the night, in the dark wondering what was happening. Like when you were a kid and you would wake up after a nightmare and then maybe your mum would come and soothe you and put you back to sleep. I wasn't in my bed now, my mum was not around.
I had woken up, the last thing I remember was the sharp pain on my head while I was walking home. Then I woke up here, blind and confused. When you can't see your other senses become more aware, so I tried to calm myself a little and reach out with my ears. I could here some faint scratching noise not too far away. Further in the distance I could hear the sound of dark barking, not small yappy barks but barks that rumbled and twisted across the air like thunder coming.
I froze. My breathing stopped. I concentrated harder on making out the sounds I could. Now I was concentrating I could hear words being shouted, sounding almost like a bar where people were having fun and mucking about. I tried to pin down what they were actually saying, I could only pick up faint words. Tonight, fun, dogs, hunt....
I could here clashes and bangs of some kind of equipment, all of this got my mind spinning with fear and question in equal measure. Where the hell was I? What was happening? how could I escape? Life is easy when you know the answers but impossible when you don't. I had all of the questions and none of answers.
I tried to calm myself again, trying to get some control of the situation. As Frank Herbert said "fear is the mind killer" I need to control it and work out the answers one by one. My eyes had started to slightly adjust to the light and I could see I was in some kind of small room with wooden walls, maybe some kind of shed or hut. I could vaguely make out a door on one of the walls and a table in chairs in the corner. I could still hear the sounds from outside as I shuffled over to the door. I tried the handle, nothing. It was locked or bolted from the outside.
At this point the noise from outside was getting louder and more frantic. I could hear the shouts of men closer now and then I heard heavy steps approach the door. I jumped back and got ready to pounce. There was a sound of a heavy blot being slid across and the door opened. Light came with it and I had to shield my eyes. At the doorway was a heavy set man and he just softly said two words to me..."it's time".
My thoughts ran into overdrive, my adrenaline pumped and I had an instant fight or flight response with no time to decide, my body decided and I ran. I barged past the man in the doorway shouldering him out of the way and put my head down and ran.
I don't know how long I had run for, but every muscle ached and my breathing was laboured. All I remember doing was putting my head down and running until I could run no more. As i started to get control again of my body and breathe I started to listen and look around me. It was dark and around me were dark ominous trees. From where I had run from I could hear men's shouts in the distance and the barking and howling of dogs.
I took a minute to regain my composure and for the second time that evening tried to work out where I was and what was going on. Luckily there was nearly a full moon out and once my eyes had adjusted to the dark I could see a little of what was around me. I was definitely in a light woods because all I could see was trees. I could not hear any signs of civilisation, all I could hear were the dogs and the men in the distance. I focused on them for a while and then terror struck my heart. I could hear them getting closer.
I could hear that I did not have much tome before they caught up to me. I started to think through my options, what would you do in this situation? Climb a tree and hide? Go and see them and ask them for help? None of these seemed like a good idea. So yet again I did the one thing my body was craving to do, I ran. I put my head down and ran from that terrifying noise. I would never stop, I would run and run until I could hear those noises no more.
Thanks for reading my story and big up all the writing on Hive!
