Just A Sip

Occult | Splatterpunk | Character wakes up naked in the woods with an animal chained to their ankle

         As the first bits of morning light make their way through the canopy they land on his dirty face. The rays splash across his eyes, waking him. As he comes to, a jet of recollection flashes across his mind. The pub, beer. Lots of beer. The bolt of pain rushing down the center of his skull, leaving a tingling trail. A vague memory of stumbling down the creaking back stairs of the pub, staggering and haunched over he had trodden off into the surrounding woods.
         His eyes fully open, surveying the area around him. Bodies lay everywhere. Men holding weapons, sharpened sticks. Many with their chest and necks thrashed; entrails flowing from their midsections, piling onto the leafy ground. The flies are already buzzing. Lines of ants are heading away from the bodies, carrying their bloody prizes deep underground.
         He raises his hands, examining them. Pieces of flesh cling to the undersides of his nails. Covered in drying blood up to the elbows. Looking down, he is naked. Nearly every inch of him is crimson and crusted. The metal shackle hanging around his right ankle is welded to a chain that winds around and behind him. Picking up the chain, he tugs. Feeding it through his hands, searching for the end. The slack runs out and he turns. A large black bear, 10 times his size, resting on its side. A pang of fear dashes through him before realizing this animal is long dead. The wooden spear jutting from its skull makes that easy to see.
         More flashing. That crazy bitch in the pub, raising her crooked finger to his face with that evil fucking laugh, deep and hollow. And then the splitting headache. Deductive logic says she did it. Whatever it was. There's something else. Once he had left the pub and traveled deep into the woods, a memory of his skin and bones on fire. Twisting and gnarling, stretching fabric to its breaking point. The sound of his breathing differed. It had been deeper, more. . .savage. Further into the woods he had ventured. Headed where? It hadn't mattered, the net had rained down from above, engrossing and tangling him until he had tripped over his own massive paws and stumbled to the ground. A light pierce in his neck and all had gone hazy as he had drifted off into a tranquilized coma.
         He remembers waking later in a makeshift cage assembled using the towering trees as corner posts. He and his cellmate, two black bears chained at the ankles. Fortunately the cage had been no match for the pair. They had charged the walls, seeming to shake the entire forest while their captors tried to subdue them once more. With a final crash, one of the oaks had split lengthwise and torn open the corner of the cell, permitting their escape. Pursued by the band of armed humans, they had fought, together; ripping heads and limbs with simple swipes of their razor claws.
         The flashes halt again. Time to flee before someone else stumbles upon the massacre. His now human strength is no match for the shackle. Pulling the spear from the bear's head he wedges it between the metal ring and his ankle, prying until something snaps and his ankle flops about at the bottom of his leg. The shock hangs around long enough that he feels no pain until he is freed from the shackle. And then it sets in heavy.
         Through a mixture of hobbling and crawling he makes his way back to the village and collapses in front of the infirmary.
         A few weeks later, after a short recovery and the loss of his right foot to amputation, he returns to the pub. The crazy bitch with crooked fingers is nowhere to be seen. But as the first drop of beer slides down his throat, the splitting pain returns to his head once again and he knows, it's happening again.