End Games...

The windscreen wipers beat a restless tattoo and Andrew increased the volume on the car stereo to compensate for the sound: he had turned onto the moorland road two miles back, and there were at least three more mind-numbingly dull and deserted miles to go before he reached anything even approaching civilization again. Still, anything was preferable to staying at that weird dinner party, he reflected with a twinge of unease. He had made his excuses early on, and as soon after dinner as etiquette, and his conscience, allowed, he had begun the long drive back across the moors. And what a night for it! He squinted out of the windscreen at the rolling black hills and dense woodlands.

Damn these parties! - it wasn't even as if he enjoyed them anymore; since the divorce he was forever being trotted out as the good cause, as in; 'I'd like you to meet Andrew McPhearson, you'll cheer him up, won't you?'

He flicked the wipers onto double speed as the rain, borne on a sudden gust of wind, splattered heavily against the windscreen. The weather seemed to match his mood, and his thoughts turned back once more to the party he had left half an hour ago. His brother had been persistent in his invitation.

So Andrew had gone, for Michael's sake. Sure enough, Christy had produced the inevitable friend, and with resignation Andrew had watched the two of them bearing down on him. He accepted the introductions politely and mechanically, but had found his attention distracted almost immediately by a woman standing by the window, alone and pale against the dark curtain.

He hesitated, the flicker of recognition quickly becoming solid memory, one that made his chest tighten with misgiving. She looked different now, which was why it had taken a moment to place her, but without a doubt it was the same woman; Stephanie McCallum. They had met months ago, after each had suffered painful break-ups and had naturally drifted together for a while. And a short while was all it was, he remembered, a shudder running through him as he recalled her sudden and frightening collapse into depression. She had seemed fine at first, a little nervous which was only to be expected, but that night, the night she had tried to persuade him ... He shivered every time he thought about it; how close they had come ...

Driving home now, he remembered an inexplicable coldness in her eyes as she swept them over him at the party, too harsh a judgment from an old and casual lover, surely. Even despite the manner of their parting; that terrible row when, in desperation he had agreed to her hysterical suggestion that they end their misery together. She had been talking about it for weeks, crying to him that she couldn't go on, and that she knew he felt the same - she was wrong, of course; he had been over Claire by then, at least over the worst of it, but Stephanie wore him down. He had no intention of going through with any crazy suicide pact, with her or with anyone else, but he had finally given in, pretending to agree - God, anything to get her off his back ...

Except he hadn't gone through with it, and so in the end neither had she. She had screamed and wept, swearing that she would still go ahead with it, and at last run from the house where the stage had been so carefully set for their final and terrible act.

Obviously she had changed her mind, he thought to himself with relief, and she looked good tonight, despite her haughty demeanor. She seemed to have got her life back on track, and he had been about to cross to her, maybe to ask if she was glad she had changed her mind, he didn't really know, when Michael arrived and clapped an arm across his shoulders.

"Come and have a beer, Andrew." Then, under his breath: 'Christy says you're ignoring what's-her-name ... she's not happy.' Andrew obediently went with his brother, uneasily aware of the continued stare of the woman by the window. She stood completely alone, speaking to no one but watching Andrew across the increasingly crowded floor.

He tried to ignore her presence, and almost succeeded until dinner, when he noticed that she was not at the table. He found himself looking around for her, intrigued and more than a little spooked. What exactly was she doing here? Then he saw her, one of Christy's hired catering staff left the door connecting the dining room to the lounge open, and Andrew glimpsed Stephanie, staring fixedly at him and emanating a suddenly fierce malevolence. He gave a shocked gasp and stared back down at his plate, his heart hammering, his face on fire. When he looked up again, the door was closed.

He remembered now, how tight his chest had become, how panicky he had felt; he had never realized how frightening it was to find yourself suddenly barely able to draw air. Loud laughter down the table had broken the moment and Andrew had breathed more easily in the echoes of the familiar sound. After dinner he had followed the other guests back into the lounge with a certain amount of trepidation and begun to make his excuses to Christy for his early departure.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Stephanie again, and she was approaching him. To his surprise she did not wait for Christy to finish speaking, but cut directly across her. Andrew had been so astonished at her rudeness that he could hardly make sense of what she had said, and it had barely occurred to him how odd it had been that the flow of conversation had continued, uninterrupted.

He had left soon afterwards, and now, heading home he tried to remember Stephanie's words, something about some kind of dance ... A moment later the car gave a shudder and a jerk, hard enough to make his safety belt tighten across his chest.

'Oh, no you don't, not out here...' he muttered. He switched off the radio and blipped the throttle, swearing as the engine cut out altogether and the car coasted to an eerily quiet stop, the hissing of the tires on the wet road the only sound. Andrew switched off the lights and sat in angry disbelief, staring out at the darkness through the waterfall of his windscreen. He twisted the key again, not expecting anything but feeling a surge of annoyance anyway, when the engine gave an almost apologetic coughing sound and fell silent once more.

'Nuts!' Andrew thumped the steering wheel in frustration. He glanced at the luminous face of his wristwatch, then back along the road the way he had come. He knew a couple that had been at the party who lived in this direction, but they would not be leaving for a good couple of hours yet.

Irrationally, Andrew felt his anger directed towards Stephanie, who had been his main reason for leaving the party early, and as he recalled her piercing gaze he felt his skin prickle. A gust of wind seemed to carry her whispered words;

He gave a muffled cry and stared around wildly. Then he ran his hands through his hair and forced himself to think about his present predicament. Was if further to go on, or to go back? All he needed was a phone and he was sure he had passed a call box a few minutes ago; he had always meant to get himself a mobile, and never before had he wished so fervently that he had done more than think about it. Pushing open the door against the wind he steeled himself, turning the collar up on his jacket, and began to walk.

Although the back of his head was soaked in seconds and ached with the freezing rain, at least he was not fighting the wind, and he put his head down and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. He had been walking for no longer than five minutes when he saw it. Or thought he did; when he turned his head there was nothing. Then it came again; out of the corner of his eye - a shape moving along the edge of the woodlands to his left.

The road separating Andrew from the first few trees suddenly did not seem wide enough. He hurried on, telling himself that he was behaving like a frightened child; there was nothing there, otherwise he would have been able to see it when he looked directly into the forest. The problem was, he felt like a frightened child. Part of him was still ten years old, knowing for certain that there was something under his bed, waiting to seize his ankle the moment his mother turned out the light.

Andrew began to hum softly under his breath, trying not to glance sideways at the dense black woodland on his left. To his right lay open fields, but who knew what potholes and marshlands waited, like the boogeyman, to take hold of him and never let him go? He walked faster, forcing himself to think rationally. There was nothing there. He even managed to chuckle to himself, 'You read too much Stephen King, mate!'

But the soft laughter died in his throat as it occurred to him what he might have seen; something swift, hidden, out in the dark when it was safest from human hunters?

There had long been tales of a large, cat-like creature that roamed the moors in Devon and Cornwall, some said it was a puma, others a strange hybrid mixture of lion and panther - either way it was dangerous, as many farmers would testify, having found the gutted remains of precious livestock on many occasions. The stories had been too numerous, and too similar in content to ignore, however far-fetched they might seem in the cold light of day - and Andrew's pace slowed as he struggled with the idea that he might be alone out here with that animal on the loose.

He snapped his head sideways - he had seen it again. A low cry escaped him as he saw that whatever was there, was no cat-like mystery beast. For the first time, the shadowy image remained when he looked straight at it, and it was human in shape. Andrew kept his eyes fixed on the side of the road and walked faster, until he wanted to run. The shape kept pace with him, although that should have been all but impossible; Andrew was on a flat stretch of road, while the edge of the forest was littered with fallen trees, broken fencing, all manner of obstacles.

He took his hands from his pockets, knowing that at any moment he would break into a run, but fighting the impulse with every fiber of his strength - for that way lay madness. Once he lost control and began to panic he may run anywhere, even out into the marshlands. The wind gusted hard against his back, and he heard the whisper again, even felt the hiss of it against his left ear.

He screamed aloud, the sound whipped away instantly, and then he did run. Arms pumping at his sides, his jacket torn away behind him, the rain stinging his face and plastering his shirt to his body. His mind tumbled and whirled and finally became mercifully blank, taken over by his body's need to get as far away from whatever shadowed him as possible. The long, straight road turned into a steep hill but he barely slowed his pace, his heart screaming for rest, his muscles aching, his breath coming in huge, sucking gasps.

Sobbing aloud he hauled himself to his feet once more, dimly aware of thin fiery pain in his knees and the palms of his hands, where the road had torn the skin from them. He began to run again before he was fully upright, his legs almost buckling under him again, but somehow he managed, and he heard himself chanting over and over;

The top of the hill was finally in view and at the sight of it, Andrew's exhaustion almost threatened to take over, but he pushed himself further on, almost tumbling to his knees again as his limited vision blurred and swam. At the top, the road swung sharply around to the right, the open marshland on that side taken over by the high stonewall marking the edge of some property or other. That meant a house somewhere near, he thought with almost hysterical relief. Still he kept running, and as he began to round the corner he heard a sound that made his heart leap in dizzy joy. A car - a car was finally coming and he was safe.

Too late he realized that he was running up the center of the road on a blind corner, and as the beam from the car's headlights swept around the bend they illuminated his stark figure, his own shadow seeming massive as he threw his arms up over his face. Just before his own vision was closed off, he saw the looks of frozen horror on the faces of the car's occupants, and then he was knocked into the air, his body slamming into the solid rock of the high farm wall.

All was quiet on the road. The rain had stopped and the wind fallen to a light breeze which ruffled the dark hair of the man lying by the side of the narrow verge. He stirred. He lifted his head and stared around him, there was no pain, but he guessed that he was in shock after such a lucky escape, not to mention numb with the cold. Andrew sat up, relief coursing through him. The people from the car were coming towards him, moaning and crying in their fear and he wanted to tell them he was all right, but surely they could see that from the fact that he was sitting up and smiling at them?

He climbed to his feet to show them he was miraculously unhurt, but to his confusion they did not even glance at him. He turned as the horrified couple walked past him, and felt a sudden coldness as he saw them leaning over the body of a man - a man wearing his clothes ... who lay in a bloodied and battered heap in the full glare of their headlights. Understanding washed over him like a freezing shower and when he turned back to look towards the woodland again he saw the shadow that had followed him - the very thing that had made him hurl himself headlong into death. Stephanie. She had done it after all; and she had come back for him now to make him fulfill his side of the pact.

"Dance with me, Andrew," she said now, her smile cold, her eyes empty. She reached out to him, and although she was so far away, she was right there in front of him. Her cold fingers brushed against his as he held out his own trembling hand. Somehow he could hear music, but no music like he had ever heard before; light yet eerily menacing, rhythmic yet lifeless. With one last longing glance at his cooling body on the ground, he gave himself over to what lay ahead;

That was the past and this was now the future. The future for Andrew McPhearson, aka Rayne, was to become the very first PCW Champion. His goal was almost complete.

Satist you seem to be at it again. You seem to be studying ever move that I do, every word that I say, every breath that I take, and why? You are trying to find my weaknesses! Am I doing the same? If you said yes then you get ten points! Does that make me afraid of you Satist? If you said yes, then you just lost your ten points! Fear is just an absence for not being prepared! I am very prepared.

I am prepared to take some ass whoopings, give some ass whoopings, and anything else that I have to do to win the match! Satist you seem like the only one that really gives a flying fuck about what is going in PCW besides me! What does that really tell you bout the rest of the competition?

Now I am a poser. I am glad that someone informed me! Satist if you think that is what I am then that is one man's opinion! Just like ARMY says, “I can be all that I can be” and I will be the first PCW Champion!

You say that I have “pipe dreams” of winning! Well I know pipes really well as you can tell. I didn't spend four years in prison for nothing. And technically it isn't a dream, it is reality! The fact of the matter is this, you fear me because you know that in due time you will see my name as number one! That scares the shit out of the anti-gimmick, and I love every bit of it! Let's get this straight though, I am not like you, I don't love the “shit” part but I love the “fear” part.

No wonder people get tired of you all the time. I mean hell if I repeated myself all the fucking time and made no sense, I would want people to hate me. This is what I mean, “Yes it makes him number #1 technically because there is the #1 in front of his name and that's as far as it goes.” I mean dude you just basically said, “Yes it makes him number number 1 technically because there is a number 1 in front of his name and that's as far as that goes.” Um do you see the problem there buddy? If not I will let you think on it!