1. DOG ENDS

Terry Jackson-Brown.

Terry Jackson-Brown was content with life until it suddenly veered up and bit him on the arse. Then the 38 year-old painter and decorator from Calne’s sole raison d’etre became his self-preservation.

‘That moment the ground opened and swallowed me,’ he explained referring to the earth-shattering moment when his name, along with others, was selected in the latest nationally broadcast draw to be hunted down and killed. ‘I had missed the beam to stand on in the attic I was renovating and my foot went through the ceiling. I felt like I had caught myself in a mantrap and made it an easy job for the gits who would now be after me blood.’

Like the majority of those selected to be fodder for the hunting classes it took a while for the enormity of it all to sink in for Terry.

‘I was stuck for a while with a leg dangling through me client’s ceiling and me phone was red hot, like, with mates and relatives telling me what I already knew. They thought my days were numbered, then when I told ’em my leg was in plaster they apologised for being so optimistic and said that me hours were numbered instead.’

After extracting his leg and dusting himself down, Jackson-Brown commenced the sobering task of putting his affairs in order before he was turned into mincemeat.

‘I asked the mother of me kids if she would marry me asap as didn’t want them classed as bastards forevermore and get mixed up with those chasing me. But when I phoned her and explained my dire predicament she just laughed and said that if I used the same dexterity to avoid the hounds and hunters as I deployed in evading all attempts to track me down to pay child maintenance for the best part of the last decade that I would have no worries about ever being snared.’

Terry stoically restarted work, maybe in the belief that if he didn’t think about his dire outlook it wouldn’t happen. But it soon became apparent he was being watched.

‘I was eating a pub lunch in Leicester when I became aware of dogs gathering in the doorway. The entrance contained frosted glass so I could see ’em outside. Licking their lips and making no attempt to conceal that I was the most appetising thing on the menu. They were dark, imposing muscular buggers. Occasionally, they pawed impatiently on the door. They could easily have used their considerable strength to push it open, but it was like they were toying with me until the rest of the pack arrived along with their gaily coloured horse riding assassins. They were still outside the pub but had broken into my mind with menaces and were enjoying the carnage they wreaked and relished the feast to come.’

Jackson-Brown sweated profusely and urinated without making a step towards the toilets.

‘I was saturated, the hairs on the back of me neck stood up like meerkats guarding their den. But in the pits of despair and frantic for devine intervention, an idea came to me. I ditched all my saturated clothing and left it in a pile where I had been sat, hoping the odour would fool the hounds into thinking I was still sat there. Me fellow bar dwellers didn’t have time to react. Even had they done so, to me way of thinking they didn’t have powerful jaws to rip me apart.’

Within seconds Jackson-Brown was naked and without feeling it incumbent to preserve his modesty was out through the side door while the Hounds from Hell remained blissfully unaware of the deception being played upon them at the front of the pub.