Back to that night

The trouble with walking home is that without cutting through a quiet park near to your home, your route takes roughly twice as long. It’s always a conscious choice as there is very little lighting in the field, shielded from the roads and nearby buildings by trees on all sides, and always very quiet. But that night, a little drunk, tired, and with the weather being quite cold you decided to cut through the park as usual. During the day it is entirely unthreatening despite the occasional group of fairly anti-social youths or drunkards hanging out near the cluster of park benches along the path. At night, in the pitch dark, your mind inevitably forces you to walk faster than normal, listening for any sign of the large number of threats which may be lurking in the shadows: werewolves, vampires, junkies.

Tonight your heart began to pound in your chest at seeing a small group of people standing at the gate leading out of the other side of the park. Your choices: turn back and walk the long way after all, wait to see if they leave, or walk through the gate with confidence. You chose the last one, which was the wrong one.

They didn’t stop you at the gate, but very quickly you realised that they were following you closely. Then it started.

‘Oi, mate,’ one of them called out. ‘Got a light?’

‘No, sorry,’ you replied, hurrying toward the slightly busier road at the end of this path. ‘I don’t smoke.’ This explanation was pointless, unnecessary, but for some reason you felt the need to say more than just ‘no.’

‘Hang on mate.’ Another voice, and this person grabbed your arm from behind and to the left. Both annoyed and afraid you tried to shrug away but in an instant all four of them were around you. What happened next was a blur, but in an instant you were on your back on the cold path with two of them holding you down, one with a knife at your throat, the last one rifling through your pockets.