It was a Gloomy Friday evening, and Mark was in a particularly foul mood.

‘I should have known that Sidney is a snake’, Thought Mark as he was cycling back to his student dorm.

‘It should have been obvious! She managed to get promoted to assistant manager after a week of working there with no prior job experience. Shure, she was nice initially, but it started to show through after a few days. She would offload her duties, blame others, Lie and even start drama between the cook and the old assistant manager.

And I even got myself fired for calling her a lying whore in front of everyone after she accused me of stealing her AirPods. She is such a bitch, constantly rude and annoying like I somehow offend her sensibilities by simply existing around her.’

Mark looked at the darkening sky and started to panic mildly, he still had half an hour of cycling, and the weather was getting gloomier and gloomier in an accelerating manner.

“Ahhh! Fuck it! “

He took a Right turn through some council estates. These estates have a bad reputation that is well deserved as they have been a hotspot for stabbings and even the occasional murder.

‘I know I shouldn't use this route anymore. The kids playing gangsters started to get more violent, and I didn’t want to be involved with them. After all, The best self-defence is to avoid conflict altogether.’

Mark had been a semi-professional MMA fighter in his teens, but after a particularly nasty fight, he suffered a severe concussion and even fell into a week-long coma; thus, he abandoned the sport. He was Still training in MMA but only casually, which allowed him never to fear physical conflict as he knew very few people could beat him.

As he took a left turn to go towards the exit of the estate, he had to brake suddenly as his path was blocked by a medium group of people, the petty gangsters. It is a group of mostly 14 to 17-year-olds living on the estate and going on a destructive path in life.

“Oi! Bruv, Stop Right there!!”

“What do you want, kid.”

“I'm not a kid, you Cunt! "Said the 15-year-old-looking boy in front of him.”

“You have to pay a toll to pass through our estate from now on”, said The older boy.

“Since when do sidewalks have tolls.”

“Since we took control of this estate, this is our turf. “

“Are you high? Get out of my way; I'm in a rush. I don’t have time for this crap.”

“Show some respect, you bloody bastard or we will have to teach you a lesson.”

“Respect?! Hahahaha, that is the funniest thing I have heard all day.”

“You know what, since your being such a Cunt you will have to leave your bike behind.”

“I don't think I will !”

Mark tried to push through the group of 5, but as he was about to succeed, he felt one of the guys grabbing his arm, giving it a good pull making him fall face first in a puddle. That made Mark snap. It wasn’t enough that he got fired after a long work day. Still, he was about to get caught in the rain and be late to the dorm closing time, making him have to book a hotel room for the night, but these scum were trying to mug him and even managed to get him facefirst in a dirty puddle of water.

NOW YOU’VE GONE AND FUCKING DONE IT!

Mark quickly got up and jumped towards the guy that pulled his arm. He gave him a good punch to the chin and knocked him out cold. Mark started to turn, but then he got tackled by the older boy. He managed to soften his fall and began to struggle with the older boy. He managed to get the advantage on the older boy and began pummeling his face; after a few more good hits, he got up to see the other three hesitating about whether to join the fight.

He made to charge them, which scared the rest away as the two leaders were knocked down and cold out.

You fucking waste of space!

‘Now I’m furious, but I don’t want to go overboard on the beating as I could get charged with arrest and jailed for years. Shure right now, Id love to go ham on these guys, but they are not worth the risk.’

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

The bike didn’t look so good. The fall had been far worse on the bike than on himself. The front wheel was bent slightly, and the brake assembly had popped apart and broke, meaning he no longer had front brakes, and the chain somehow popped out and got stuffed in the space between the gears and the wheel.

“God damn it !”

He flipped the bike on its seat and handlebars and started to try and pry out the chain with his bare hands that had somehow managed to get stuck entirely and unrecoverably. He could quickly fix it if he had his tool, but Mark was 4 miles away from home and panicking that he would have to spend another night in the shitty local hotel. The last time he slept there, he had gotten loads of bedbug bites that had been very unpleasant, not to mention that the infested bed still cost £40 for the night, a whole minimum-wage shift. Just as he was giving the chain another good tug, he heard someone rushing at him.

‘Shit, This is bad’, he made to dodge, but he was too late, and the older boy had tackled him with a mad glint in his eyes; only then did mark notice the kid had brandished a knife and the stupid fight turned life and death.

“YOU FORCED ME TO DO THIS”

The kid went to stab his gut. Mark snapped out of his daze and tried to stop the incoming stab; he managed to divert the stab to a grazing slash on his side. A burning pain shot from his side, and he let out an involuntary yelp. Mark pushed the boy off him and tried to get up, but in his panic, while Mark was getting up, he tripped and fell again; the boy wasted no time and lunged at him again; this time, mark blocked the incoming slash with his forearm. The knife cut a deep gash across his forearm; The boy went to hug Mark; he tried to avoid it. The shock slowed him down, and he wasn't forceful enough, leading the boy to hold him tightly and start driving the knife into his lower back once, twice, thrice. This moment seemed to last forever, but in reality, it was only a couple of seconds before mark managed to break free and started to run away from the knife-wielding boy. The boy seemed to have snapped out of his frenzy and started running away from the crime scene.

In his panic and survival drive, Mark had managed to flee in the wrong direction into a dead end. He looked around for any flats with lights turned on, but then he realised that the entrance to the building was locked and he would have to ring the apartments to get access. He went for his phone and began to call the emergency line while at the same time calling random flats, but no one answered. The emergency line answered.

“I was attacked and stabbed. I, I, I need police and an ambulance.”

“Are you currently in danger? And can you identify the address”

No one was answering his request for entry. The machine must have been broken or simply bad luck; the operator told him to stay put and wait for emergency services.

“Sir, I need you to try and mitigate the bleeding.“

Mark took his Jacket and pressed it to his lower back. He then sat down against a tree with the Jacket to his lower back.

“Sir, can you hear me? Are you trying to slow the bleeding”

“Yeah”

“Can you repeat that I didn't hear it”

Mark felt very tired and weak, Leaning against the tree with his phone in hand and the other on the laceration to stem the bleeding. He had trouble breathing, needing more and more air by the second; he also started to lose hearing for some reason, and only then did he realise he was dying.

‘I guess this is the end. An end doesn't sound so bad; Goodbye mom, goodbye dad, sorry for this heartbreak.’

Just as mark blinked for the last time, he saw the ambulance crew arriving to help him.

‘I hope they get those bastards’

Mark was pronounced dead on the scene. The paramedics tried to reanimate him, but they had no success.

‘I'm thirstier than the Sahara. That was an odd dream getting stabbed and bleeding out before the paramedics got to me. The stress from the upcoming exams must be getting to me.’ Mark tried to roll over in his bed to stop the sunlight sliver from hitting his face, but then he got a face full of dew. He jumped up in confusion and shock.

“What is this?”

Mark Was now standing up and glancing at a breathtaking sea of very dense grass so dense he couldn't feel the dirt beneath or see it at all. It was all weed free and seemed to go on forever, or as long as the trees didn't block the view. The trees were massive, towering above him, each well spaced and unnaturally perfect. There was no moss on the bark, no small branches and all the trees were growing utterly straight with no bends. All this unnatural perfectness was located at the base of a cliff constituted of marble and dirt patches with lively green grass. The crown of the trees seemed to be dense enough to drop a full day of light to a dim room in the morning. There seem to be regular rays of sunlight through the crowns to leave enough visibility to have no issues and avoid the need to squit at all.

“Where am I?. How did I get here,” Mark said in a tense tone.

Only then did mark notice the blood on the strange medieval clothes he was wearing. The blood seeped out and permeated the thick cloth. Mark started to panic and tried to take the thick garment off. After some fumbling mark dropped the thick protective coat, he struggled a bit with the five sturdy leather belts holding it together. The loose shirt underneath was almost entirely red and soaked in blood; this dramatically increased his panic. He started to feel his back quickly, but after a few minutes of frantically feeling his upper body, he turned up no wounds. Not even a scratch or any of his scars presented a startling reality. He also found his clean skin odd as he was wearing blood-soaked clothes; how was he so clean that it made no sense.

‘Is this even me ?’ after he took a good look around, he couldn't see any water around. He then decided to look at his person, where he found a large dagger hoisted to his belt; he quickly unsheathed the dagger and promptly brought it closer to his face finding his usual self staring back.’ this is me, but my nose isn't crooked from that face-smashing knee I got in MMA.’

He took the sticky shirt off, and only then did he realise the shirt had two holes, one on the back and a much larger one in the front. It seemed to be the same for the heavy garment; there was a half-a-centimetre hole on the back and a four to a five-centimetre hole in the front.

“These look like bullet entry and exit holes.”

‘That doesn't explain the odd clean holes bullets should tear clothes much more on exit well what do I know. I just occasionally read some gun-related media.’

Mark took a second to orient himself and decided to walk next to the steep hill to avoid going in circles in the Strange forest. He decided to leave the blood-soaked garments behind. The weather was excellent, and the temperature was pleasant enough to walk shirtless around.

After a good forty-minute walk, where mark did a lot of thinking and just ended up more and more confused as to his situation. The only plausible explanation he could come up with was that he was in the far future and that all this was some simulation.’ But how did I end up in the future? Did they freeze me and then unfreeze me two hundred years later to play some twisted prank on the computer age savage or something’.

The sound broke his musing of shouts in the distance. It sounded like a group of men shouting the same word or name. He quickly decided that he might as well reach the men and see what or who they were looking for and if he could get some help. After a few more minutes, he could hear the men shout. They were now only about two hundred meters away.

“ COSMIIN!!?; COOOSMIIIN!!?;COSMIN!!? “

“ HELLO!!? “

There was a pause of about a dozen seconds before he could see twenty men fully armoured and sprinting at impossible speeds arriving and surrounding him, taking some formation around him, mainly facing outwards. They all seem to have jet black cloaks with a blood-red-eyed golden raven holding a green gemstone in their beak placed off-centre to the right, below the shoulder.

“ Young lord Cosmin are you hurt? “