It was dark and cold.
Sniffs wasn’t entirely sure why his feet were bare and covered in mud but he was uncomfortably aware that they were. It wasn’t just his feet that were bare, he realised, he was entirely naked, and the wind blowing over the deserted field in which he stood cut through his skin like a million twisted razor blades.
Panic gripped him, as it does in the worst literary fashion. This sort of thing used to happen when Sniffs was drinking and a return to that particular non-life state of blackness and despair was not something to be considered. Ever.
Where the fuck am I, he thought looking around and trying to piece together the last few hours, what the fuck happened?
The sky above was a twisted maelstrom of greys and blacks, lightning speared between the ribbons of clouds, briefly illuminating the tortured sky and the deserted ground on which Sniffs stood.
Fuck this bollocks, sniff thought, and started to walk forward but could do no more than give out a grunt of effort as he realised his feet were actually not just covered in mud, but were stuck in the mud. More lightning tore overhead as Sniffs, panicked, fell backward and only managed to prevent his spine ripping out of his body by landing on his arse and elbows, his feet still firmly planted in the ground.
It is at times such as this that being a fully paid up member of the human race allows us to let a certain level of cynical cliché into our vocabulary. After groaning for a short while at the agony in his back, legs, and elbows Sniffs decided he had been patient enough and lay back on the ground.
“FUCKING HELL. WHAT THE FUCK IS FUCKING GOING ON FOR FUCKS SAKE.” He screamed at the sky above, “FUUUUUUUUUCK...”
Sucking in a huge breath of air for his next admonishment of the scene overhead it occurred to Sniffs, now looking directly into the weirdness above, that, apart from his recent screaming, there was no other sound.
No thunder, he thought, so that’s not lightning, and then started to think rather than react.
Anyone who met Sniffs casually generally thought some, if not all, of the following descriptions: semi-literate, schemie, big mouth, coward, scum, boozehound and probably laced with violence habits. This was not wholly true. Anyone who got to know Sniffs better found that yes he was a product of Scottish council schemes and yes he did like to smoke weed; but he was definitely not semi-literate and he was neither a coward nor scum, nor did he drink anymore because drinking for Sniffs made more of those description true.
He would put his hands up to the claim of bigmouth though.
Sniffs was an intelligent, well-read schemie. Moreover, looking at the silent non-lightening tearing the sky apart above, he realised that he was scared shitless.
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