It was well past midnight. Midnight in the Forest meant a blank, black sky with the occasional glimmer of pale nightlight and nothing more. No one knew anything about the light or where it came from except that it started from someplace impossibly high and had been there since the dawn of time.

Mr. Fluffington had been using it so far to navigate the dirt path, and he continued to use it long after he left the path. He figured someone must have started following him in the past hour or so, because it would make less sense if anyone hadn’t. They wanted him dead, and there was no better place for it than the rural countryside.

He weaved around bushes, bracken, trees, and reeds. Every now and then he shot a glance back without stopping. Sometimes he froze in place and listened to the ambience of the Little Woods.

Yes, the Little Woods. The first Westshire settlers struggled with the basic foundation of titling things whether it be the towns or the land itself. The Little Woods’ trees were heavy. They had enough gnarled and mangled branches to create a canopy under the woods’ canopy. The bark of the trees often looked like giant animals, especially at night. It was believable because giant animals were known to live in the woods. Despite their size, they often couldn’t be seen due to the lack of light until it was too late.

Mr. Fluffington snuck into the woods the first opportunity he got in order to lose any pursuers on his tail.

For all the effort he put into hiding, zig-zagging, and taking unpredictable turns, he should have put more consideration into scent. Most animals excelled at tracking scents, but dogs were some of the best. Unbeknownst to him, the two dogs that had been tracking him for the better part of an hour were doing just that. They never needed to hurry. They never got lost. Whichever turns he took, they took minutes later. The difference between him and them was a matter of awareness.

Down the track and further into the foliage, Mr. Fluffington planned how he was going to take down the two dogs when he, of course, eventually stumbled upon them first. He knew he had favors to call in, and so he thought about who he might approach before confronting them. But before that, he was going to get a good night’s sleep.

He found a bush to nap in for the night. It was covered on all sides and, combined with the lack of light, it hid him fully. He fell asleep not too long later.

In his dreams, Mr. Fluffington saw monsters. They looked like deformed rodents. Some had no hair and some had too much. All of them had claws, fangs, or a variation of the two, and they lived inside the heads of all the animals. They only came out at night to interact with each other. Then, before morning, they climbed back into the animals. The animals were none the wiser except for Mr. Fluffington who, at the tail end of his dream, caught the monster that lived in his head by waking up as it was trying to climb in. As the hideous thing scrambled off into the unfinished background of his dream, clarity returned to his head. His real world consciousness coincided with the awakening. He snapped into an alert state of mind. Perhaps not everything about the dream had been false.

It was still early in the morning. About an hour had passed since he first fell asleep but nothing more. The woods were still dark without an ounce of green light present to replace the occasional white light beams. He sat up onto his rear and leaned forward with the upper half of his body until he got a good enough angle of the space around his bush.

There was an unmistakable stench in the air. It came from nearby and reeked of grass, mud, and raw meat. It almost made him hungry, if not for the fear he also felt. Something was there that shouldn’t have been and the more he absorbed the smells, the more prominent they became. That was before he heard the crunching of twigs and leaves underfoot. The sound came from a direction other than the smell, but then he realized that wasn’t entirely true because there were two smells, one in each direction. It smelled like dog.

He bolted upright and landed on all fours. His nose and ears paused their search. His eyes scanned his surroundings. It was nearly impossible to see anything, not only because it was dark, but because there was so much forest around him that trees, boulders, bushes, and vines obscured his view.

He glanced over his surroundings, only moving his head when he absolutely needed to get a better view of something. There was nothing at first. The woods were near silent except for sounds so distant that they were indistinguishable from each other.

Mr. Fluffington let out a breath. He traded his stiff, rigid movements for the almost mechanical lethargy of the sleep deprived. Wherever his killers were, he would deal with them in the morning, and then he would never have to worry like this again. He turned around to fit into a more comfortable position for sleeping and then stopped mid-movement. Barely perceptible against the similarly dark background, a dog’s face looked down at him. It showed no humor, no pride, and only the cold, grim determination of a hunter faced with its prey. The outlined figure several feet behind it looked like it had white fur. The black dog would have been entirely invisible if not for the collar and tag around its neck.

It jumped first. The bush separating Mr. Fluffington and the dog saved his life, allowing him time to run out the other side. He could tell by the sounds coming from behind him that he wouldn’t be running for long unless he came up with something. It was too dark to see far ahead, so he had to hope he was running into bushes and bracken and not trees or ditches. Thorns cut at his arms and sides, and he could only imagine what the dogs had to run through at double his size. Whatever effect the cuts had on them, it wasn’t slowing them at all.

He knew he could never stop, but he also didn’t know where he was going. The woods were only vaguely familiar. He only ever passed through them during the day and only for business. It was filled to the brim with ever-changing forestation and enough hidden dens, burrows, and pockets of inhabited life to fit an entire town’s population. In the heat of the moment, it all looked the same. Every turn produced more of the woods to run through. The more woods there was to run through, the more tired he got. His adrenaline wouldn’t last forever. He felt his legs protesting. His breathing couldn’t keep up. But the dogs never relented.

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Occasionally, Mr. Fluffington made the mistake of glancing back. Both the black dog and the white dog were directly on his tail. They leapt over bushes, fallen branches, and logs. He basically ran into everything.

Tired and succumbing to the pain, he leapt for cover in a tree. His claws landed in the bark but did not get a hold. He slid down and turned around in time to watch both dogs lunging at the same time. He retaliated against the first one: the black dog which looked invisible against the backdrop of night. Mr. Fluffington went under, the dog went over. But there was a second one ready to attack.

He leapt to the side and felt the wind of a full-force lunge missing by inches. He darted off sideways and into a new direction, realizing only too late that it was a dead end.

It was a cave, the mouth of which guarded complete darkness. The inside of which belonged to an unknown stray. Strays were not at all hospitable to intruders, especially not the strays that lived in caves.

Mr. Fluffington made a split second decision in that moment between certain death and certainer death and then plunged into the darkness. He made it several feet in before a section of the darkness parted away from the whole.

It stepped past Mr. Fluffington and toward the two dogs. They stood and watched it lumbering forward, each stepping slowly back in response. Their otherwise emotionless faces changed to reveal fear. Too little, too late.

The bear lunged forward and mauled both of them.

It was a blur for Mr. Fluffington. He could not see very well in the dark, and the giant bear's body blocked his view of the one-sided fight. When it returned seconds later with scars unrelated to the mauling covering its head, legs, and torso and a liquid related to the mauling running down its claws and snout, it lowered its head to match the cat. It then said in a low, scruffy voice, “Oi, Floofy. Never thanked you ‘nough for helpin’ me with the lice problem.”

Mr. Fluffington collapsed shortly after.

An entire day nearly passed by the time he woke up. He was in a cave, wrapped in a very thin linen sheet, on top of a pillow stuffed with straw. The cave belonged to Mr. Cuttslan, but because Mr. Fluffington was on a first name basis with him, he called him Horace.

Horace laid out three strips of synth for him to eat as soon as he woke up.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Fluffington after devouring all three pieces. “You saved my life.”

“It was nothin’. There’s always dogs like them roamin’ around.”

The two bodies had been taken inside the cave, because good meat is never wasted, causing the smell of raw meat and corpses to fester in the lair. No passing animals would dare trespass, however, because the majority of the Little Woods' populace knew Mr. Horace Cuttslan. He showed Mr. Fluffington to the bodies after lunch to which Mr. Fluffington breathed a great sigh of relief. He sat down and looked over them.

“That was awful, but I’m glad it’s over,” he said.

“They took one yer lives?” said Horace.

“They took the last life I can spare.” Mr. Fluffington shook his head.

“Don’t you worry. Now you’re just like the rest of us, and let me tell you, it ain’t all that bad.”

“I guess. Equal rights, equal lives…”

“Ay, as long as it’s all over, yeah?”

“Yeah.” But Mr. Fluffington couldn’t help but notice something. The two bodies had collars and tags. He hadn’t even known the two dogs’ names, but here they were deader than dead right in front of him. No sooner than they had arrived, they had left the world. He walked up to the nearest one and flipped the tag so that the front side faced up and towards him.

It read: “Equl Rits, Equl Livs” at the top as expected. There was also a “3” etched at the bottom.

Mr. Fluffington went to the other dog’s tag and found the same thing but with a “2”.

“Huh,” he said aloud.

“Problem?” said Horace from outside.

“No. It’s nothing.”

But he thought about it for the rest of the day.

That night, Mr. Fluffington left the cave and said farewell to Horace. The kind old bear had offered him real and authentic meat, but he had to reject it. Raw meat was a slippery slope. Besides, he had gotten a free night’s stay, protection, two small meals, and medicinal herbs and bandaging for free. Of course, that meant in the near future, a future now no longer shrouded in a bleak despair, he would have to help out Horace for free. But that was the basics of the job anyway. It also beat all the favors he was going to have to ask for had the two dogs not chased him to their own deaths. The terrible week was coming to an end, and at last, normalcy would return. With a heavy weight lifted off his shoulders, he headed through the Little Woods, exchanging greetings with the occasional stray animal he was familiar with, and―

Why had the two dogs been in the Little Woods to begin with? Cattrap had found them there the day before, or at least she had found a witness who had, but now he couldn’t help but wonder. Plus there had been the numbers on their tags… He thought about it the whole way back.

By the time he reached the edge of the woods, where the last trees met some semblance of a flat grassland, he stopped dead in his tracks and turned around.

There were birds circling the sky. A deer rode by on the path, exchanging a nod. Someone in the distance roared. A wind came through. The trees rustled.

But despite it all, Mr. Fluffington couldn’t help but shake off a sinister feeling. Somewhere in the Forest, there was something that didn't belong where it currently was. He didn't know it right then, but he was staring it straight down.

The arrow flew out of the woodwork. He turned around in time to avoid it penetrating his skull. Instead, it hit his tail and nearly sent it off. He yelped and darted off the path in a feeble attempt to run away from the shooter. It led him down the dirt path until he reached the Little Woods again. He ran into the bushes and then shot himself into a tree. He slumped against its base. His head rocked back and forth. He watched the bushes.

A second passed, then ten, and then thirty. A figure appeared inside the nearest bush, but before it could fire off its crossbow again, Mr. Fluffington jumped out at it. He went berserk off his last remaining adrenaline and the infinite pool of rage swelling inside of him. He carried himself slightly too far, but it was enough for his lunge to knock the attacker into a bush. Mr. Fluffington swung at whatever he could, cutting down branches, thorns, and leaves. When he felt the presence of the attacker had vanished, he looked around and located the crossbow laying on the ground. He knew he couldn’t pick it up, so instead he ran back into the woods. The pain in his tail expanded to the rest of his body, and his legs carried him until they couldn't take him any further.

He made it to a small grove where the forestation broke up slightly, sat down, and then tried reallocating bandages from other places on his body to his tail. The exact details of the moment aren’t worth mentioning.

Somewhere in the very same forest, the arrow shooter, first killer, and number ‘1’ lurked around to find a target for their kill shot. In a completely different part of the woods, a cat sat back against a tree and breathed, and breathed, and breathed.