Welcome to my first chapter of a new story found nowhere but here! Each chapter is about 1500 to 2000 words. I hope you enjoy it.

God, help me!

My lungs burned as I blindly turned down another dark alley. Groaning at the pain in my throat, I put my hand up by my neck and felt the slick wetness.

Did they stab me?

Immediately, the thought exploded into another area of agony that filled my shin. Clamping down with my teeth to suppress the howl inside me, I realized that my leg struck something in the dark. My momentum dropped me against something that felt like a table. While I’m on my knees in the muck, I discovered a piece of wood. Instinctively, I grabbed it. It slipped from my mud-covered hand. Shouts from behind me force me to grab the wood piece again. That’s when I realized the wooden shaft is about a foot long and has a weighted curved blade at the end. It’s a tool of some sort, a sickle, I think.

Still, it’s a weapon, I decided while I hoist it over my shoulder. As I stumbled along, a flicker of light coming from the partial moon shows me the barest outline as I come to the end of the building. Rounding the next corner, I nearly fell over when I bounced off boards in front of me. The foul smell of manure overpowers me. My hand quickly determines a fence of rough wood with bark stands in my way.

“Fuck!” my unfamiliar voice growled.

Following the railing, I heard a nearby snort. The outline of a large animal remains hidden in the shadows, and it looked like an overly muscled cow. Momentarily, I consider going in there as the sounds of my pursuers come closer. Then I shake my head. A big-ass bull would kill me just as quickly as the bastards coming for me and I can hear crowd noise as get closes in.

“Findeth yond Covan, putteth a stake through his undead heart!”

They’re talking in English but it’s hard to decipher. It reminds me of listening to a Shakespeare play. Still, a stake through the heart motivates my tiring legs. The anger in their wild eyes almost made me want to pee my pants when I first encountered the growing mob. 

Forgetting about the animal in the pen, I pushed myself away from and hurried to the darker area behind the closest structure I can make out. As I get closer to the shadowed area, I use one end of the wood shaft I’m holding to probe the area. Then I stepped into the darkness. While I’m catching my breath, I follow the sounds of the people hunting for me. The ache in my shoulder grows worse and my legs are shaking from my escape.

Still, I don’t understand why they won’t give up. They’re acting like I killed someone. No, more like they think I’m a damn vampire or something.  

While I’m thinking with my eyes scanning the area, the noise and shouts fade for a moment. However, the stench of the place is getting to me. When I move to the end of the building, I realize I’m about to walk into a small pond and the smell immediately makes me puke. As I back away, trying to stop my retching, I hear a shout.

Damn it!

Immediately, I went around the shack. I’m not sure they can see me, but the guy’s voice seemed close. Then I fell into a massive pile of bones. Actually, it’s more like the carcasses of various animals from my too-close view. Fear gripped me and hurriedly got to my feet. After picking up the sickle that I dropped, my eyes noticed an open area on the other side of the bone pile. My brain insists the place is some type of rendering plant. However, I don’t care. Working my way around the dead remains, my feet keep kicking around bones and partially rotten animal skeletons.

A glance back shows me two men with lanterns coming my way. The light appears too far away for them to see me. Still, I keep moving forward as my aching legs desperately push me to stop. My ragged breathing sounds like a freight train, which I’m sure they can hear.

Coming out on an open area of grass, I can see a dark outline in front of me. It extends from my left to right as far as I can see. Getting closer, I realize it’s a wall.

This sucks!

Well, I’m too old to quit and too scared to give up. Just need to figure it out, I tell myself as I hurry to the structure ahead. It doesn’t look too tall, so thoughts of just climbing over come to me. However, my confidence quickly waned as I kept running and the wall kept getting taller.

My heart dropped when I reached it. Even in the dim light, I recognized the wall consisted of tall shafts of foot-wide wooden spikes. They’re stuck in the ground and extend up at least ten feet above me. A basketball player would have trouble touching the tops of the spikes even with a good jump. My quick glance shows the lanterns continue my way, so I followed the rows of spikes that seem to wrap around the town. The damn thing confirms the worst of my fears. The poles remain tightly bound, so it looks like the only way is to go up and over.

Obviously, this isn’t Earth! Or, at least not since before the Renaissance age. A town with spiked walls tells me I’m in the past. Just don’t ask how I got there. My brain fed me snippets of ideas as I stumbled along. However, I’m also trying to stop the confusing need to consider the reasons behind people trying to kill me while I search for an escape from danger.

Coming to a stop, I scanned for the lanterns. I’m on a rise in the ground because the figures holding lanterns are growing in number. While the lights are few, I can make out the sounds of the damned mob at this point. Hell, I know what that means if they get me. Icy fear filled me when I saw the strange rooftop outlines of the village buildings. I can’t get back to hide, so I have one option. It means I’m going over the wall.

Realizing I still hold the sickle in my hand. Since the end has a metal piece that runs out from the shaft with a heavy curve, the design gives me sudden inspiration. After closely scanning the bound poles in the ground with my hand, I realized they’re connected by a crossbeam at my chest. I use my tool to probe above me and feel another crossbeam. I sink the sickle’s metal end into the top wooden crossbeam, then use the shaft to get my feet on the lowest beam. With one hand on the next crossbeam, pull out the sickle and slide it between the pools just below the spikes. As I got to the top, shouts erupted from below.

“Make hast, the undead escapes!”

Now, I’m sure I heard curses as well. It only made me move faster. Carefully swinging over my leg to avoid my junk getting impaled on the spike, I see the first man to reach me. He held up his oil lantern, and I saw his ugly face filled with pockmarks. On top of his head is a three-cornered hat and a frock coat, like I remembered seeing in those paintings from the American Revolution. The man hurriedly pulls out a sword and swings it at me. As I get my body over to the other side, I pull the metal blade up and away.

Unfortunately, my joy was short-lived as my foot slipped on the wood piece coming out of the pole. Before I had a chance to think about it, I fell to the ground with the metal blade still in my hand. When I landed smack on my back, I heard the air leaving my lungs.

In a stupor, the pain fills me as I can’t breathe. Somehow, I turn myself over. A gathering crowd on the other side of the fence struggled to climb it. Struggling to my feet, my mind realizes my hand hurts and I realize the palm is wet as I’m still holding the blade. Shaking my head, my legs carry me away. Darkness quickly covered me as I stumbled away from the sounds of the mob. My lungs burned for air, but fear kept me moving as I continued on.

Soon, my jog becomes a swaying walk. Finally, ahead in the shadowed night, I see trees. When I got past the first few trees, I noticed the brush getting denser. My energy dropped like a rock trying to fight through the tangle of plants. Finally, I stopped and listened for my pursuers while my ragged breathing makes it hard to hear anything. 

No human voices come to me as I go back through the terrifying time inside the village in my head. I place the metal tool across my thighs as I lean back against a tree trunk. My stomach grumbles in hunger while my throat is dry.

Maybe I’ll survive now.

My mind returned to the weird things that happened. Memories are just fragments, but I know I’m not in the right place. The strange clothing, language, and a village with no paved streets definitely showed me I’m not in—where—wherever I’m from. Strangely, I’m calmer than I expected, considering I didn’t remember my home.

It’s a delayed shock!

That’s what I tell myself, even though my gut tells me differently. However, the adrenaline is already subsiding, and I can’t see anything around me. There’s no way I’m building a fire, so I calmed myself by listening to the sounds of the surrounding forest. The fear slowly faded, but I still felt too close to the villagers who wanted me dead.

Looking up through the trees, I caught sight of a few stars, but they didn’t look familiar. Still, I focus on the brightest star, which is lowest on the horizon. For some reason, a piece of memory tells me to do this, so I don’t wander in circles.

Slowly, the forest sounds come to me as I push on. After what seemed like miles, I stumbled into a clearing. Before I stepped into the open area, I noticed the scent of smoke grew. Bending over to catch my breath, I struggled to remain on my feet. Realizing the smoke would probably lead to others, I debated my next steps. Finally, I noticed an animal path amid the starlight and it’s going toward the star I’m following. Shrugging my shoulders, I stumbled along to the next growth of trees in my way.

The growing scent of cooked food mixed with the smoke, which made my stomach growl again. Ahead, I catch the faint yellow flickers among the dark forest around me. I quickly crouched down while carefully following the path. Eventually, I overhead voices, muffled and indistinct. Halting, I moved off the path between two trees. I can partially see the campfire.

“Come, my dear. Thee should eat. This meat keeps thee strength up,” a gruff voice came from the camp. “You’ll needth it for the next few nights before the full moon.”

The man’s tone gave me the creeps. It’s eerie, with plenty of menace.

“I’m not hungry!” a female voice replied in a near whisper.

I heard the fear in her tone, along with the man’s sinister chuckle.

The exchange made me curious, so I decided to get a better look. After silently crawling closer to the two people, I noticed the heavy atmosphere because of the man’s increasing lewd comments. I halt when I finally get a good view of them. Even though their still several dozen paces away from me, it’s easy to observe the man who’s dressed in green smock and brown pants. His face is angular with a heavy beard. He stared at the girl with dark, almost black eyes while he sat on a log. His expression reminds me of a wolf ready to pounce on his prey. I don’t like the fact that a longbow and quiver filled with arrows lean next to him. He’s probably a hunter of some sort.

As for the girl, I can’t see much since she has her back to me. Her red cape had the hood pushed back, and I noticed her red hair simmering in the campfire’s glow. She visibly shook, even though it wasn’t cold. Her head kept dropping like she didn’t want to look at him.

“Well, since thee won’t consume and I’m still hungry for excitement,” the man licked his lips. “Your grandma gave thee to me until the city.”

The man stood with a smile and pulled his shirt off. Thick hair covered his powerful upper body.

“Come, my little Red! Off yond riding hood. I’ll useth thee liketh the girls in the brothel. You know such things!”

The statement made my jaw go slack while I watch the woman slowly stand. She reluctantly pulled her red cape off.

Red Riding Hood?