We’re far out, way, way far out from the houses when we see him coming, the shape of a man struggling towards us from the road. He must have seen us by the fire we lit using Argos catalogues. The pages sizzle wetly from the ink saturating the pages. I say to them hey maybe we should move but nobody looks up. He isn’t on us yet. We pull on our cigarettes harder and I drink deeply of my bottle of White Lightning. Someone takes out their phone and it crunches out music. Two of the girls stand up and start dancing, the lyrics falling near silently from their half-closed mouths. The man struggles on in the darkness.
I can hear the tiny, distant noises he’s making. Grunts and flings of spit. Like a big dog. The backs of the houses refuse to go completely dark, hunched and curved against the field, shining their backdoor lights on his thrashing form. He must be one of them, I think. One of the men from the houses. I light up a cigarette and smoke it to the end, handing out the last few draws. He is still level with the houses, flailing and groaning, never getting any nearer. My boyfriend isn’t telling anyone about us yet, and he chases the girls in ever-widening circles.
He starts shouting and the voice that reaches us is low and unknowable. I hear, underneath, his grunts and the gnashing of his teeth. His rancid sweat and sour beer breath not now but when he gets close to us, when he is upon us, inevitably. He does not get any closer. I get up and the others squint at me through Argos catalogue smoke. Someone is asking me for my lighter, taking it out of my pocket. His skin somehow his skin is near to me, pock marked and sweating. His mouth twists. Are those really the words he is saying? I take off running at a hard wet sprint, chunks of grass kicking up under my feet.
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Jack Lennon is a writer from Scotland. You can find their work published by Always Crashing, Night Shades, 404 Ink, and X-R-A-Y, among others. Their short fiction has been nominated for Best Small Fictions 2026 and won the Scottish Mental Heath Arts Festival’s fiction prize in 2024. Contact them or read more at jacklennon.com.