the massive red mountains glowed all around a large expanse of sparse land covered in sticky dry shrubs. i stepped on through knowing that i would have to try and put this tent up soon. the sun was dropping fast. the tent had cost me 9 pounds from asda about 8 years or so ago and it was refusing to die. i had left it in spain and now i was back i found it again and it was on my back accompanying me into the Sierra Nevada mountains.

there was no place to discretely pitch the tent but i thought its probably ok just in the open as i dont imagine anyone passing here in the dark.

from around a bend a goat boy appeared with 3 sheep dogs and about 40 goats. their bells clinked in the silent golden evening evoking a dream from a lifetime ago. as i approached the goat boy, his eyes looked at different heights and his hair was matted up into two dirty curly horns atop his sunburned, dirty head. he  whacked his dogs with a short stick and they seemed unhappy with this arrangement. as i passed them one of the dogs spun around and clamped its gnarly jaw into my calf. i pulled back just in time for it to still bite me but avoid burying deep into the muscle. OI!! FOR FUCKSAKE i shouted. Goat boy didnt even turn back . I squealed again, only to be ignored again. The horned goat boy and his 3 dogs kept on walking. The goats all wobbled past on their bendy legs and one stopped and turned to me, eyeing me up. i looked down at my calf and blood dripped down to my sock. i sat on my rucksack and was fucking fuming. never had i been bitten by a dog before, despite being wary of the crazy jawed bastards since being a kid, when i used to have to pass a barking maniac every fucking morning on the way to school. im sure i kicked the fucker when he came at me once and he never came for me again. but now i had just been bitten in front of a dogs owner and he didnt appear to give a flying fuck.

fuck camping, i thought, id better get this wound cleaned up. i turned around, and at a safe distance followed the pack into the night. the distant misty mountains swallowed up the beautiful red sun and a tiny slither of a moon winked above the deserted mountains. the goats all veered off the dusty path and began to graze up near a farm house. i could see the dogs sat surrounding them. i veered off the other side of the path and walked a huge curve around and back down the mountain to my friends place where i had been staying. my leg was stinging like fuck when i finally got back. the house was silent and the garden dark as the bowels of hell. i got to the pool and stripped off. the water glimmered ripples of the moon as i fell forwards into it. i melted into the water like a curl of butter in a hot soup. bats flew down nipping at my head and i heard a dog bark from miles above in the mountains, i wondered if it was the little fucker that had feasted on my leg. i know where you live now. i rippled through the waters under a starry night dreaming up a revenge plan for the horny goat boy and his hounds of hell.