In celebration of my two hundredth blog post and All Hallows' Eve, a dark tale of woe.

He was fifty minutes in, hot, sweaty, but he was fit. He could run for hours but not today – today he had other things on his mind. Her!

The root was a trip hazard, looping from the ground like an old Victorian boot-scraper. I’ll get you one day, it said. I’ll get you when you’re daydreaming.

He’d run the path a hundred times, maybe more, but the caw of a crow distracted him.

He flew for a second, landing gently, free from injury, but sliding, the wet leaves giving little purchase and the barrier (some old wooden posts) did nothing to arrest him.

The impact was brief, the posts giving way, and his cry rang out shrill like the birds. He was flying, free-falling, branches slapping his face, snapping beneath his weight.

The ground was soft but it broke him all the same. He tasted blood. It hurt to breathe. He couldn’t feel his legs. Something other than the branches had snapped on the way down.

He blinked and his vision blurred.

He wept and there was pain.

Darkness came. In and out of consciousness he fell, dreaming, thinking of her. What she’d said, what he’d done! Would he ever see her again? Hold her, comfort her? Would she ever forgive him?

He called, he shouted, screamed until he was hoarse but no one came: no dog walkers, no search parties, just animals. Nervous at first they crawled, hopped and slithered: a crow with a taste for eyes, a badger, sniffing but bolder over time, and then, as the moon rose and his breath clouded, they feasted.

He felt the tug on his arm, shooed a bird from his face, blew bugs from his lips, but it was no use; it was over. The creatures would gorge, they would have their meal, and as steam rose from exposed flesh, as they buried into him, the pain would take him beyond this life until he was nothing but a memory.

As dawn broke and cast mottled shadow across broken bough, a bird – the crow – the one with a taste for eyes, perched on a root that looped from the ground like an old Victorian boot-scrapper, and having supped, it listened and waited patiently.