Mercy
The map was a useless tangle of ink and lies.
Somewhere, I’d taken a wrong turn, and now the fading sun painted the forest in long, grasping shadows.
I cursed under my breath, my useless boyfriend’s name a venomous whisper.
He’d bailed last minute, leaving me to haul my own gear through this suffocating wilderness.
Three days’ worth of supplies weighed me down, but the real burden was the silence.
It remained thick and watchful, like the trees themselves were holding their breath.
A shiver prickled my skin despite the sweat slicking my back.
The canopy above swayed, a slow, skeletal dance that choked out the last of the sun’s warmth.
The air smelled of damp earth and rotting pine, sweet and cloying, sticking to the back of my throat.
I folded the map with trembling fingers, the creases sharp as knife edges.
My head jerked toward the movement behind me. Not the wind. Something else.
There was nothing but the darkness of the forest.
My pulse stuttered as I scanned through the trees.
Between the knotted trunks, a sliver of light beckoned—a clearing. Maybe safety. Maybe something else. The underbrush whispered as I pushed forward, twigs snapping like brittle bones underfoot. The deeper I went, the heavier the air became, thick with the musk of something wild, something hungry.
And then I felt it—the weight of eyes on my back.
Not human. There was something else in these woods.
My pace picked up as I rushed toward the clearing. I was too loud and clumsy.
It wasn't until I reached the light that I chided myself for imagining horrors that were non-existent. It was probably birds. My backpack landed with a dull thud on the soft ground as I groaned and stretched my back out.
After a few different stretches for my back and legs, I got to work setting up camp. I made sure to face my tent toward the area where I came from. There was no harm in being cautious.
By nightfall, the fire roared, painting my skin in flickering gold.
My dinner was some instant pasta from a packet, but it tasted better when cooked over a fire.
I’d always loved the scent of smoke, even as a kid in London’s smog-choked streets.
My great-grandfather had traded East Africa’s wilderness for post-colonial labour, swapping baobabs for brick walls.
Sometimes I dreamt of lions roaring, though I’d never heard one outside a zoo.
My grandmother swore it was the past whispering.
Back in her village, she’d spin tales of creatures that weren’t quite lions—things with too many teeth, voices like broken drums, laughter that rolled like thunder.
“The old ones,” she’d say, “walk in skins that don’t fit. ” I’d chalked it up to a metaphor.
Now, in these woods, the memory curled around my ribs like the smoke from the fire.
Safer here, I told myself, poking the flames. Welsh woods don’t eat tourists.
But as the embers spat, a sound cut through the dark—
Not a howl.
A laugh?
Hungry.
And far, far too close.
My hand flew to the knife beside the fire, fingers tightening around the hilt.
Damn you, Liam.
I cursed my boyfriend for the hundredth time, his absence a fresh wound. He should’ve been here. Should’ve had my back.
But the anger burned quickly, swallowed by the ice flooding my veins.
Something moved in the trees. A shadow, low and liquid.
My breath hitched.
A snarl tore through the dark. Not mine. Not human.
But my lips peeled back anyway.
Come closer, something in me whispered. Let’s play.
My mind was playing tricks on me until my eye caught sight of the glaring full moon.
“You've got to be shitting me.”
The words barely left my lips before I was on my feet, knife glinting in the moonlight. Every survival instinct screamed at me to run, but some deeper, dumber part made me stand my ground until the thing stepped into the clearing.
Branches shattered like gunshots. I whirled, blade raised, and my breath turned to ice in my lungs.
Not a wolf. Not a man. Some grotesque fusion of both. It was seven feet of corded muscle, with claws that scraped the earth and a muzzle dripping saliva that sizzled where it hit the leaves. Its black eyes locked onto mine.
Oh hell no.
I ran.
Behind me, jaws snapped shut on empty air close enough to ruffle my hair. The monster's growl vibrated through my bones, more sound than any animal should make. Then the moon vanished behind clouds, plunging the forest into perfect blackness.
I crashed behind the widest tree I could find, knife clutched so tight the hilt groaned. My lungs burned, but I forced each breath through my nose, silent, shallow. The metallic tang of blood filled my mouth where I'd bitten my cheek.
Somewhere in the dark, I heard it sniff. Then again. Wet nostrils flared.
It was hunting by scent now.
Fuck. This wasn’t the badger or fox I was expecting. This was a giant monster.
“Come out, and I will go easier on you, little human.”
The words slithered through the trees in a voice that shouldn't exist. The half-growl, half-mangled human speech was like something learning to talk by tearing out a man's vocal cords first.
Lies. He was going to eat me up and spit my bones out in a fucking cave somewhere.
My stomach lurched as a wet, rhythmic slurping cut through the dark.
It took me three horrifying seconds to realise that the beast was drooling.
The sound was obscene, like a starving man staring at a banquet he couldn't touch yet.
A fat droplet hit the leaves near my hiding spot with an audible splat.
Gross. Absolutely fucking gross.
Some primal part of my brain short-circuited between terror and disgust.
The voice was distorted and not human. My mind froze when I heard the loud slurping noise, and I realised it was the beast's drool.
Gross.
The monster sniffed again, closer now. My fingers turned numb around the knife.
Then I felt it. A traitorous, hysterical laugh bubbled in my chest. The kind that comes when things are so horrifying they loop back to absurd. I bit my tongue hard enough to taste blood.
Not now. Not here. My nervous laughter would get me killed.
The dark clouds parted enough to allow the moonlight to shine through the forest. I stared at the luminous globe of white light but denied what my brain was telling me.
I was being chased—No. Hunted by a werewolf.
God help me, they were real and in Wales.
The snarl ripped through the air an instant before claws seized me. The world became a whirl of shadows and moonlight as the creature spun me with terrifying ease. My back hit the forest floor hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
I swung the knife up or tried to. A massive paw swatted it away like it was a child’s toy. The blade disappeared into the undergrowth with a mocking thud.
Hysterical laughter bubbled up my throat as I stared past the monstrosity pinning me down, up at the indifferent stars. This was how it ended. Not with a bang, not with some grand finale. Just me, some nobody office worker from London, about to be mauled in the Welsh backcountry.
The beast's weight pressed me deeper into the earth, its growl vibrating through my ribs in a way that felt disturbingly intimate.
Hot drool splattered across my cheek. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the pain.
It never came.
When I dared peek, the creature's face was...changing. The muzzle seemed to be melting back into something almost human, the fur receding from its chest in uneven patches. My relief lasted exactly until my gaze travelled lower.
“Oh, fuck no,” I whispered.
The massive, red erection bobbing above my stomach was the final straw. My brain, bless its cowardly heart, took one look at that nightmare and pulled the emergency exit cord. Darkness swallowed me whole.
I was never watching monster porn again.