*Disclaimer- scenes within this chapter may be too gruesome or cause some discomfort for certain viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.*

Porter made it off work early that night. He had left at ten o’clock, rather then twelve, claiming he had come down with the flu and was feeling ill. He hoped to avoid the strange man this time, maybe he would be lucky.

Porter adjusted his normal walking speed to a slightly faster, more urgent one. He no longer found the silence peaceful, as he did yesterday. It made him feel uneasy. That man was sneaky, who knows how long he had been following Porter without him realising it. Who knows if he wasn’t following him right now.

The sky was rather foreboding tonight. The moon loomed over him menacingly, the darkness was drastically darker then last night, and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.

Porter couldn’t help but feel scared, as if the sky was trying to warn him of something. The slightest sound put him on edge, he even squeaked as a small lizard ran in front of him.

Porter’s friends have often told him he has a wild imagination. They were always surprised about the level of detail and creativeness in the stories he wrote. But an aspiring author such as himself needs to be good at those things, otherwise no one would read his stories. Right now he didn’t feel as though this was his imagination. He sensed danger, but it wasn’t the thought of the strange man that brought about this feeling. His skin erupted in goose bumps and he covered his head with the hood of his jumper, feeling like it would protect him somehow.

His head snapped towards a dark shadow in the back of an alleyway he was passing. It was huge, but it wasn’t in the shape of the dumpster that he knew was there.

He stepped backwards as the shadow began to move. Step, by step, it came closer. Step, by step, Porter moved backwards, until he was standing in the gutter.

He squinted, trying to see the strange floating orbs staring directly at him. It hadn’t occurred to him to run, he was more so intrigued. He had never seen anything like it.

Adrenaline filled his veins as the shadow speed forward, quicker then he could see, and dragged Porter into the shadows by his ankle.

Now was when he realised he should have run when he saw the shadow. He had no idea what was attacking him but it had very sharp teeth.

Porter clawed at the ground, half hoping he had powers so he could escape easier. It occurred to him, while he was trying to escape the grip of the shadow, that this thing wasn’t human. It had his leg in its mouth and was trying to eat him.

It felt like its teeth had sunk right down to the bone. He could feel the blood running down his leg as the monster pulled him off the ground.

A scream of agony escaped Porter’s mouth. He was sure he had never felt this kind of pain before.

His head was smashed on the ground, causing his head to spin. A sound, similar to a sword being drawn, slashed through the air. The sound was clean and sharp.

His vision, already decreased because of the darkness, was fading. Right now, he was at the mercy of this creature, there was nothing he could do about it.

The situation seemed very familiar to Porter. He could feel a memory trying to resurface. This feeling was very familiar to him, ever since he had lost his memories a few months ago in a fatal car accident. Every now and then, he’d randomly remember something from what he called ‘his old life’. He’d tell Joel a random story, or something he remembered about a person from the past without remembering it first. It would pop into his thoughts and he’d say it out loud.

His vision disappeared completely, swirling into total darkness. His body went limp.

The memory finally found its way to the front of his mind. Not the best timing, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

Porter was suddenly sitting in a small car. He instantly knew what this memory was, despite not having seen it yet. He had only ever been told what had happened to him, but now he was going to see it.

The car continued down the dimly lit road. He wasn’t in the city, he was in a residential area. The houses blurred past him.

He couldn’t quite see who the driver was but he recognised the guy sitting next to him from other memories from his old life.

He was about the same age as Porter with warm red hair and the clearest skin he had ever seen. His light brown eyes were intelligent, like an owl’s, and his skin was as pale as a ghosts in the low light. Porter had the urge to reach up and run his hand through the young mans hair. It looked so soft and fluffy, it reminded him of Carrot. He even had the same hair colour as the dog.

An ear piercing screech filled the air as the car began slipping and sliding over the road as if it had hit an ice patch.

The car spun out of control. Despite this being a dream, Porter could feel the dizziness and fear he had experienced in that moment. He felt the impact of the car hitting another car parked on the side of the road, causing the car Porter was in to flip in the air and land on the ground, directly on the side he was sitting on.

He felt it as the side of his body was impaled with fragments of glass and metal, a particularly large piece of metal slicing through his arm.

He was instantly knocked out by the impact of the car being pushed back the other way by something unbelievably strong.

He saw a huge dark figure, much like the thing that was attacking him in the alleyway before is vision went black…