Shifty: The Man, The Myth, The Cretin

I guess we should start with the aptly named man himself: Shifty. What a problematic little fuck he was. He was that reckless, unpredictable maniac of a friend who’d do the craziest shit on a whim, no matter how dangerous or unethical - our wild card. Every group has one: the friend who should never be left unsupervised, the guy whose mere presence guarantees that whatever started as a tame evening will end in property damage, police involvement, or surgery. That, in the briefest of nutshells, was how he became known as ‘Shifty’. Of course, if you asked him where he got his sobriquet from, he’d tell you it was because he was part Mexican. He wasn’t. I first met Shifty when I was sixteen, one summer morning at the local skate park, where I’d spent most of my teenage years hanging out with my best friends, Steve, Alan, and my younger brother, Sean.

Steve was my childhood best friend. We bonded over a shared love of skateboarding, drawing, basketball, and co-oping TimeSplitters on the PS2. He came from a far more affluent family than the rest of our usual mob of friends - cruise holidays, skiing trips, brand new cars, a second home, and all the latest gadgets. They even pronounced their Hs at the beginning of H-words. You wouldn’t have known Steve was posh, though. He was every bit as nefarious as the rest of us: a silver-spooned black sheep in a family of well-to-do’s, and a perfect addition to our rabble of miscreants.

Alan was a misfit who communicated mostly by yelling sentences buried beneath a barrage of cartoonish noises. Picture Pingu in human form, mannerisms and all. He had that ADHD energy - jittery, impulsive, like his brain was sprinting ten steps ahead of his body. At least some of his peculiar nature had to have been inherited, and his father was the obvious culprit - a spindly local drunk who spent most of his time practising kung fu in their living room, attacking a pair of tattered curtains with his ‘chi-filled’ fists.

I had wandered up the park by myself for a skate that morning when I first laid eyes on Shifty. He was drifting around the park by himself on a pair of rollerblades, his side-swept emo fringe bothering his face as he soared through the air. He wore thick eyeliner, studded leather bracelets, and a pair of fashionably ripped jeans, which were lassoed to his waist by a piece of withered shoelace. I sat down on one of the smaller ramps facing into the skate park and started rolling my ritual pre-skate joint. That’s when I noticed a stack of vandalised fence panels, branches, and fly-tipped garden waste piled up on the grass verge at the back of the park - about as tall as a man and as wide as one who’d given up. Shifty coasted towards it on his skates, clutching several rolls of old newspaper he had just torn out of his bag. He sidestepped up the grass bank, slipped out of his rollerblades, and then began circling the pile of scavenged junk on his hands and knees, stuffing fistfuls of paper into its crevices. I lit my joint and watched as he pulled a lighter from his pocket and set the whole thing ablaze. He stood there for a moment, admiring his towering inferno with an expression of wondrous pride. Then, without any sign of thought or hesitation, he began removing various articles of clothing, casting them into the fire until he was left standing in nothing but his shredded jeans. He paused again, transfixed, then put his rollerblades back on his bare feet, clambered down the grass verge, and resumed skating around the park half-naked like nothing had happened, leaving the fire raging behind him. I’m unsure how or why we became friends from there, but we did.

Over the next couple of weeks, early warning signs of his errant behaviour started piling up fast:

• Shifty got shitfaced on alcohol he’d nicked from a shop and somehow ended up in two separate naked boxing matches at a beach party we’d invited him to, both of which he lost almost immediately. Later that same night, he got stuck nearly waist-deep in a mudflat as the tide was coming in after wandering off across a marsh to piss in the sea. He was eventually rescued, later caught ripping roof tiles off a protected historic building, and topped the night off by taking a shit in someone’s letterbox on the way to buy a curry.

  
  

• He robbed a gaming store and avoided arrest during a prolonged chase through a packed shopping centre by sprinting the wrong way up an escalator and hurling stolen gaming accessories at the pursuing officer like improvised missiles.
  

• He stole a large rowing boat, got confronted by the owner, still escaped, then later that same night threw a jerry can of petrol onto a fire he’d built and almost blew himself up in a huge explosion. He got a mention on local radio for that one.
  

• He accidentally dry-fucked a guinea pig to death after simulating sex with it for laughs at a house party. I don’t know how else to write that. It was exactly as bad as it sounds.
  

• He robbed a tattoo parlour and turned himself into a human porcupine by piercing his own body with a collection of hollow needles, including a giant cannula that he shoved straight through his arm just so he could smoke a spliff through it.
  

He was like some delinquent little imp who would inevitably do something stupid if left unsupervised for more than ten minutes. Thus far, his reckless buffoonery hadn’t really inconvenienced us. At that age, we mostly found his shenanigans hilarious - guinea pig aside - so we kept him around.

Around the same time, something else had been brewing in town. Our local skate park had somehow become some kind of covert hub for alfresco sexual activity. Honestly, it was weird as fuck. Over a few months, we kept stumbling across all kinds of deviants performing perverted acts on each other up there. There was even a caution sent out, warning local residents about reports of suspected paedophiles seen lurking in the area. If only we had heeded that warning seriously.

Late one night, Sean, Steve, Alan, Shifty, and I were sitting stoned out of our fucking minds up at the skate park. We were so high that nobody was saying a word. We just sat there in silence on top of a ramshackle half-pipe, each of us lost in our own ridiculous internal monologue. We were buried in near-total darkness, hidden beneath the shadow of a thick wooden barrier that fenced the top of the ramp. As we slumped there, staring out across the barren gravel car park, a random man appeared and wandered in from the main road. Now, this was peculiar for two reasons:

First, we were at the furthest edge of the village, in the middle of nowhere. No one ever ventured up that way at night, especially alone. There was nothing there except a skate park, which was too dark to skate in, or miles of empty fields and dense forest.

Second, the direction he’d come from was nothing but road for nearly two miles, which meant he’d likely made a considerable trek to come to a place where there was nothing to do unless you were five stoners sitting in the dark, not speaking to each other… or so I assumed.

As he wandered into the car park and towards the skate park, it became clear he hadn’t noticed us at all, hidden in the thick shadow on top of the half-pipe. We stayed perfectly still, five stoned gargoyles observing in silence as he hopped the fence and headed for the back of the park. He scaled the grass verge opposite, produced a purple picnic blanket from his bag, and spread it out on the grass like he was settling in for a romantic evening. He sat down and glanced over each shoulder to check for witnesses. The coast was clear. He unbuckled his belt, whipped his cock out, and started going to town on himself like he’d booked the place out for a private performance.

After the briefest moment of utter speechlessness, we all erupted into a howling fit of laughter from the dark, no more than three or four car lengths away from him. He shot up off the blanket in a blind panic, stuffed his still-hard dick back into his jeans, fumbled his belt shut, snatched the blanket, and scurried back into the car park like a startled rat. He then made a pitiful attempt to play it cool, leaning against the car-park fence like a ’50s greaser and lighting a cigarette, hoping the forced nonchalance would somehow distract from the fact he’d just been caught throttling his dick like it had cheated on him with his best friend. He continued his shameless façade until our hysterical laughter became too much to endure, at which point he dropped the cool act and made a hasty retreat back out onto the main road. It wasn’t the first venereal endeavour we had stumbled upon in recent months, but in a way, this one had served as an innocuous precursor to what would be one of the worst days of my fucking life.

It was a few weeks later. My parents had been on holiday in Gran Canaria for the better part of a week and left me to look after the house with Sean. They were due back first thing in the morning the following day, leaving us with one last day of freedom, so needless to say, we decided to get hammered. The boys and I were loitering around the skate park, as usual, that evening, nursing a few beers and passing around some joints before we went back to my place for the night to party. That was when we spotted them. Walking across the field towards the skate park were these two chavy girls we knew from back at school named Lauren and Katie. Both of them were abominable cretins with little better to do than erupt into violence over the pettiest imagined slights, bully the younger locals, and thieve oxygen. I fucking despised them. I knew the second they appeared that they were up to no good - the buckled golf clubs they were wielding did little to allay my suspicion. All eyes narrowed on them as they strolled onto the concrete, surveyed the area for a moment, and then beelined for the back of the park. Without even saying a word to each other, they exploded into a riotous frenzy - smashing the ever-living shit out of the mini-ramp with their clubs like it owed them money. Now, I wasn’t above a bit of mindless vandalism myself back then, so I recognised the hypocrisy in getting angry at them for doing the same kind of shit I’d done many times before elsewhere - but this was our skate park. I scrambled to my feet and, in a fit of rage, screamed:

Me: WHOA! WHAT THE FUCK DO YA THINK YOU’RE DOIN’!?Without skipping a beat, she replied:

Lauren: WHAT DOES IT FUCKIN’ LOOK LIKE, DENNY!? …YA FUCKIN’ BELLEND!

With that, nearly everyone erupted into a vehement screaming match across the skate park. I’ve never heard so many “cunts” and “fuck yous” fired off in such a short space of time. The girls started threatening to get their dads, brothers, and various other I’m-hard-anybodies to come up and “kick our fuckin’ heads in”, but we just laughed it off and continued our verbal onslaught. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Shifty - who’d been quietly spectating from the sidelines until now - decided this was the perfect moment to interject with his thoughts. Now, I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it went something like this:

Shifty: Oi, Katie! Aint your mum that old fat slag in the village with fucked up legs?

Side note: Katie’s mum was an obese, wheelchair-bound amputee.

Katie: YOU FUCKIN' WHAT?!

Shifty: I've always wanted to plough a woman with no legs, so I can slip her onto my dick, spin her in circles and fuck ‘er like a rotisserie chicken. You know ‘er better than I do… d’ya think you could put the good word in for me? The park fell silent. Tension snapped through the air like a neck catching the slack in a noose, and time slowed to a torturous crawl. An expression of unbridled rage began to corrugate across Katie’s face. A riotous penance was imminent. Both girls leapt from the back of the park, stampeding towards Shifty like a pair of juggernauts, fists raised and ready for blood. And there was Shifty, sitting on the ramp, grinning like the cat that ate the canary. They launched at him, raining down a ferocious avalanche of thumps, punches, elbows, slaps, and scratches onto his skull as he whimpered out a nervous laugh and attempted to shield himself with little success. Instead of helping Shifty like any good friends should, though, we collapsed to the floor in a fit of hysterics - a knee-jerk reaction to the absurdity of it all. We were writhing across the concrete in tears, pointing and cackling at the two grisly reprobates as they kicked seven shades of shit out of Shifty. Fortunately, they tired quickly, and in a breathless final fuck you, they ripped Shifty’s rollerblades straight off his feet and sprinted off into the surrounding woodland with them. We stayed laughing for a good while after they disappeared into the treeline. Eventually, we regained enough composure to get up and console Shifty for being mugged by two schoolgirls.

With those delightful young ladies now gone, the sun beginning to dip, and Shifty looking like a poster boy for domestic abuse, we decided it was probably time to head back to my place and get the party started.It was coming close to midnight. We had been drinking since we got back and were unexpectedly running low on alcohol, so Alan and Shifty decided to accompany Steve back to his house to grab some booze from his parents’ well-stocked liquor cabinet. Sean and I seized the opportunity to take our dog for a late-night walk over the field where the skate park was because we had neglected to take him out for a few days. Once over the park, Sean kept his head glued to his phone as we neared the far-end corner of the field. He came to a gradual stop, leaving me walking several paces ahead without him. I glanced back to find Sean studying his screen in the dark, his face washed in the blue glow of his phone.

Me: What’s up, mate?He looked up at me through his brow and, with a nervous break in his voice, said: Sean: There’s someone showing up on my Bluetooth…

Now, this was back when you had to be close enough to smell someone’s body odour to maintain a stable Bluetooth connection. There we were at the end of a desolate field, surrounded only by a small forest, which backed onto a non-pedestrian road. There was no conceivable reason for anybody to be out there in the middle of the night, especially in those woods. We stared into the trees in eerie silence as they swayed in the breeze, knowing that, for whatever reason, someone was in there - perhaps staring back at us.

Sean: Fuuuuck this!

Me: Yeah, right, fuck this shit! The dog can wait… Let’s get out of ‘ere!

We reversed our position, made a swift exit out of the field, and beelined for our house like a ghost was hot on our heels. Once safely inside, we discussed how odd the whole ordeal was for a short while, but soon forgot about it and returned to drinking.

Around an hour or so later, Sean and I were nursing beers in the lounge, watching television and passing a joint between us. Out of nowhere, Shifty bombarded through the front door like a discarded battering ram and face-planted into the stairs as if he’d forgotten he had arms. Sean and I hurried towards him as he writhed in pain, slumped in an awkward, prone mess that sprawled across the floor and up the bottom steps. He was shitfaced. Steve and Alan soon followed, chuckling at Shifty’s drunken antics as he struggled to his feet, grumbling some unintelligible, slurred nonsense.

Me: Haha! What the fuck happened to Shifty!?

Alan: Oh, man, he’s fuckin’ smashed!

Me: Yeah, I can see that! 

Steve: He kept banging on about how he could out-drink us both… And you know that big liquor cabinet my parents have got at my house?

Me: …Yeah?

Steve: There’s like… thirty or forty bottles of spirits an’ liquors in there at the moment - Shifty’s had at least one or two shots from every single fuckin’ bottle!

Me: Whaaat!? No fuckin’ way?! He’s gonna be absolutely cunted!

Alan: Yeah, man! He’s fuckin’ nuts! He wanted to prove he could drink us all under the table or somethin’, so he set himself a weird little challenge to ‘ave a shot from every bottle! No one else was even doin’ it with ‘im!

Steve: We tried telling him that we weren’t gonna do his challenge with him, but he wouldn’t listen and just carried on doing it himself anyway!We all turned back to Shifty, suddenly seeing him less as a man and more as a walking chemistry experiment. 

Sean: Holy shit! He’s so hammered! I’ve never seen someone this fucked before!

Steve: I know - it’s ridiculous! You should’ve seen how hard it was getting him back ‘ere!

Shifty let out a grumpy snort, flapped a dismissive wave at us and declared:

Shifty: I’m f-f-fine! You pussies can’t drink for shhhhhiiit!

He serpentined into the kitchen, smashing into almost everything in his way, grabbed one of the last beers from the fridge, and went straight back to drinking. Bottle still to his lips, he staggered into the lounge and then toppled backwards onto the sofa. The rest of us remained by the stairs for a moment, laughing at him as beer drooled out of his mouth like an overflowing sink and poured down his front. With that, we dug a few bottles out of Steve’s rucksack and then joined Shifty in the living room.

About ten minutes later, Shifty shot out of his seat and bolted for the tiny downstairs bathroom off the lounge with his hand pressed to his mouth. As the door slammed shut behind him, I looked over at Sean, who rolled his eyes and said: Sean: Oh, for fuck’s sake… he better not make a fuckin’ mess!

A deep rumble of violent retching bellowed from the bathroom, and the roar of vomit splattering against porcelain soon followed. He slurred and groaned into the toilet bowl in despair, the sound resonating into the living room like the wails of some nauseous poltergeist. Shifty’s projectile vomiting grew louder and more violent until, all of a sudden, it stopped. The house fell into an apprehensive silence. A few long seconds passed, then something slammed into the bathroom wall with a thunderous crack. We glanced around at each other with an expression of horror, leapt out of our seats, and dashed towards the bathroom to investigate.

Inside, Shifty lay contorted in a sludge of his own puke, which had almost flooded every inch of the tiny bathroom floor. Not only had he thrown up so violently that he passed out mid-spew and headbutted the wall, but he had also pissed himself. I was fucking livid. It was close to two in the morning, and my parents were due back from the airport in four or five hours. Shifty was in no state to even attempt cleaning his own mess up, and he certainly couldn’t be in the house when my parents got back. They already didn’t like him. His many misdeeds had branded him a menace in their eyes. No doubt they would have also figured out we’d been drinking if they had come home to find Shifty in such a shit-state. So we went with the only option left: carry him back to his place half a mile down the road and try to sneak him into his house.

Sean and I grabbed some towels and wrapped him up in a hopeless attempt to avoid his piss-and-puke-soaked clothes. We hauled him out of the house and started the grim march towards his parents’ place, with Steve and Alan trailing behind us. It was fucking horrendous. The stench of piss and vomit was so pungent that we retched and heaved the entire way there. Eventually, after much hardship, we arrived at the foot of the cul-de-sac where Shifty lived. Then, as if by magic, Shifty regained some meagre level of consciousness and grumbled:

Shifty: W-w-where am I?

Me: We’re takin’ you back to yours, Shifty. You’re fucked.

Shifty: Noooo! Stop! My p-p-parents will kill me! Pleeeaase!

Me: Mate, you've fuckin' puked an' pissed all over my house! You can't stay at mine, my parents are back soon, and you're an absolute wreck! They already don’t like you ‘n’ you’re covered in shit!

You’re goin’ home!

Alan: Yeah, come on, dude, you really need to go home an’ sleep it off. 

Shifty: No! Please, g-guys! I’m beggin’ ya… They’ll k-kick me out! Please!

Shifty was on some thin fucking ice, and everyone knew it. Thanks to his proclivity for thieving and an Olympian-level dedication to recreational drugs, his parents had finally reached their limit. One more fuck-up and he was out on the streets. So, after an agonising journey to get him home, we now had to turn around and carry him all the way back. Not to my house, though - he couldn’t stay there. So, on the way back, another plan formed: take Shifty up to the skate park and camp out with him there until morning. At least that way, he wouldn’t be at my house when my parents got home from their holiday.

Once again, we found ourselves at the skate park. We dragged Shifty onto the same small ramp at the front of the park where he’d been beaten up earlier, then dropped him on the floor. We found a damp, filthy quilt and pillow dumped in the car park next to us, which we used to make a foul makeshift bed for Shifty to sleep in. It was fucking disgusting. That blanket and pillow looked like they were riddled with more parasites and undiscovered venereal diseases than a prolific necrophile. Still, it was probably better bedding than Shifty was used to, and certainly more than he deserved.

With Shifty tucked in and snoring like a lawnmower, Sean and I left Steve and Alan behind to babysit while we trudged back home to clean up the lavish creek of vomit Shifty had left festering in our bathroom. It was putrid. Before long, Sean and I were slathered in Shifty’s piss and puke, but we soldiered through the gruelling task in fear of our parents discovering what we had been up to.

Around twenty or so minutes into the rancid spring clean, though, Steve and Alan smashed through the front door like a SWAT team raiding a crack house. I rushed out from the toilet to see them both panting, wild-eyed, and pale as ghosts.

Me: What the fuck’s goin’ on!?

Steve, gasping, looked at me.

Steve: There's something up the park!

I shot him a sceptical look and asked:

Me: What do you mean “There's somethin’ up the park”?

Steve: I dunno, man… something just started fuckin' screaming at us… like these fuckin' horrible, freaky noises!

Alan chimed in, looking rattled.

Alan: Yeah, we were just sat there and heard this huge monster-like “REEERRGGGHH!” screamin’ from the woods, so we fuckin’ legged it!

Me: You ran?!

Alan: Yeah… but… only a little way at first before we stopped. Me ‘n’ Steve just looked at each other like… “Did we actually just hear that?!” Then it fuckin’ happened again, but waaayyy more aggressively! It was like this horrendously loud, screechy-growl thing! It was fuckin’ terrifyin’! 

I glanced around the room, suddenly aware that someone was missing.

Me: Wait… where the fuck is Shifty?

Alan hesitated, his eyes darting nervously.

Alan: Ummmmmm…

Me: YOU LEFT SHIFTY UP THERE?!

Alan shrugged.

Alan: Mate, we just fuckin’ ran! Seriously… there’s somethin’ up there! It was fuckin’ scary!

I didn’t believe a word dribbling out of their mouths. At this point, I was convinced they’d just been spooked by a couple of foxes going at it. If you’ve never heard foxes fucking each other before, just imagine the unholy sound of an infant being murdered, played at deafening volume through a broken speaker - it’s fucking horrendous. It seemed more reasonable to me, then, to attribute the horrific screaming noises they’d heard to a pair of horny foxes rather than anything sinister.

Sean, on the other hand, was well and truly convinced that there was some kind of malicious creature lurking around the skate park. He had already run upstairs, equipping himself with a collection of decorative samurai swords, a baseball bat, and an outrageous ornate broadsword with a tribal tattoo etched down the blade and a demon’s head for a pommel. He clomped down the stairs, cradling the pile of ridiculous weaponry in his arms, then began handing them out to Steve and Alan as if they were about to pillage a medieval settlement. Unimpressed, I decided to venture up to the park to retrieve Shifty by myself and left the boys to continue their overreaction, dicking around with Sean’s swords at the foot of the stairwell.

I made my way up the street and through a dark wooded pathway that led out into the field where the skate park was. As I crossed the field, I began to make out Shifty in the distance. Something was up. He was on his hands and knees, looking as though he was wrestling with something beneath him. My walk hastened to a jog as I yelled:

Me: SHIIIIFTY!

No answer. As I neared the park, I called out once again. 

Me: SHIFTY, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOIN’?!

Shifty sprang up from the ramp in the distance like a startled meerkat, then dashed towards the back of the skate park, away from me. I was astounded by his sudden, miraculous ability to move of his own accord, so I picked up the pace and ran after him. As I neared the ramps, I could make out a silhouette of Shifty squatting low to the ground at the edge of the skate park in the dark, ducking and weaving as if trying not to be seen. I beckoned to him once more as I slowed to a cautious walk and passed the little ramp we’d left him comatose on. As I went by, something caught my eye in my peripheral vision. Someone was still on the ramp. It was Shifty. One notable change, though - his trousers and underwear had been pulled down below his arse. The harrowing realisation of what was happening hit me like a thunderous wet slap - Shifty was either being raped, or was just about to be.

I turned to face whoever I’d seen lurking at the back of the park. The figure I’d mistaken for Shifty had sunk into a hunched squat in the darkness, like some twisted predator caught in the act. After realising the jig was up, he rose from the ground, puffing out his chest like a silverback gorilla. He was much larger than me - around six-two, with a hulking rugby-player physique and a thick bald head rippled with fat ridges. He clenched his meaty fists and began marching towards me, the dim moonlight revealing a malevolent expression on his face as he edged closer. Was this the guy who’d come through Sean’s Bluetooth earlier? Was he the one making those screaming noises at Alan and Steve? The thought paralysed me with fear like a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding vehicle.

Then, just as he reached me, Sean, Alan, and Steve skidded to a halt about ten feet to my right beside the ramp where Shifty lay, each of them armed to the fucking teeth with traditional Japanese weaponry, a worn baseball bat, and a sword that looked like it was wielded by Satan himself. The boys lingered there, frozen in nervous awe, staring at the towering brute in front of me, who had stopped dead in his tracks. It was like the scene had short-circuited his brain - three scrawny lads springing out from the darkness with enough weapons to sack a castle. Their eyes landed on Shifty, still sprawled half-naked on the ramp, looking like roadkill. Their faces became awash with horror as they pieced together what they’d stumbled into.

We found ourselves in quite a predicament - locked in some kind of intense, council-estate version of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’s three-way standoff. The giant stared at me, then at the lads, weighing his odds. The boys held his gaze, raising their weapons to their chests so they were visible. They flicked their eyes towards me for some kind of direction. I shifted my glance between both sides, having no idea what the fuck to do, petrified of what this guy might try next. Then out of fucking nowhere, as if the universe decided this was all getting too serious, the guy switched gears and started acting like he was hammered, which he hadn’t seemed like at all before. He stumbled and buckled on his feet like a dog struggling to stand in the boot of a moving car as he lurched towards the car park and continued his ridiculous charade out onto the main road. As he made a slow escape into the darkness, I turned to the boys and roared:

Me: GET SHIFTY NOW!

Alan and I sprinted towards Shifty, scrambled for an arm and a leg each, and then tore across the field with him, adrenaline propelling us towards the dark alleyway that led back home. Once at my house, we unlocked the door and tossed Shifty onto the living room sofa like a damp bag of cement as roars and screams echoed through the street. Alan and I ran back out of the house to find Sean standing sheepish in the middle of the street with Steve cowering behind him. Sean jabbed his ginormous sword up the road and screamed:

Sean: WE CAN FUCKIN’ SEE YOU, MATE! 

I ran to Sean’s side and looked up the street, which T-junctioned onto the main road. I shit you not - this guy was standing with his back braced into a hedge on the opposite side of the junction, attempting to hide in about six inches’ thick of hedge foliage like a fucking cartoon character. Alan, Sean, Steve, and I were now huddled close together in the middle of the street, wielding a deadly weapon each, shrieking threats and warnings at the lunatic, who was half-hidden in a bush opposite. Not one person from the neighbouring houses came out to help or even check what all the commotion was about. Not one! What’s worse - our immediate next-door neighbour was the fucking chief of police in the local constabulary. He didn’t so much as pop his fucking head out, the useless twat.

All of a sudden, the giant bald fuck flew out from the hedge and sprinted over the main road into our street. Then, as if to further corroborate a secret cartoon identity, he attempted to hide behind a lamppost on the right-hand side of our road - his large frame and meaty belly protruding from its narrow structure. As he loomed out from the lamppost, ready to make his next mad dash towards us, we all freaked out and ran for our fucking lives into my house. We locked the front door behind us and barricaded it with a dining-room chair.

Sean: LOCK ALL THE DOORS ’N’ WINDOWS!

We scattered like roaches, racing around the house, locking every door and window like our lives depended on it. Then, as if we were re-enacting some low-budget horror movie, we dove under the dining-room window and crammed together, peering out through a tiny crack in the curtain. The man was still out there. He was lurking just beyond the driveway, scanning the house like a burglar doing inventory. Our hearts were pounding so hard it felt like they were trying to leap out of our chests. The guy was prowling around like a man possessed, looking for a way in.

After what felt like an eternity of pure terror he just… gave up. No joke, the man turned on his heel and sprinted off like he’d forgotten to turn off a gas hob, vanishing towards the main road. We were left there, stunned with fear, debating whether to call the police or someone in our families for help. But then Sean wisely pointed out the obvious: if anyone came to help, they’d find Shifty - a piss-soaked, vomit-covered, battered wreck who was paralytic on booze we had stolen from Steve’s parents. Bodily fluids were trailing everywhere throughout the house, and to top it all off, we’d just lured some kind of beastly rapist to our doorstep. In our brilliant teenage logic, we decided that calling for help would cause more problems than it would solve. So, like the geniuses we were, we elected not to call for aid but instead sat in absolute silence, sweating bullets, waiting for the man to reappear, convinced that it wasn’t over.

After around an hour or so, there was no sign of the man coming back. We decided it was safe enough to move from under the windowsill, so we crawled into the living room and locked the doors behind us. We remained wide awake all night, regaling the night’s outrageous series of events with each other over and over, as if trying to reassure each other that it had actually happened and wasn’t just some nightmarish fever dream.

As dawn finally crept in, Shifty, who had been passed out on the sofa the entire time, began to stir. When he woke up, we told him everything. He sat motionless, still drunk and disorientated, listening in silence whilst we relived every traumatic detail of the night. His sluggish eyes tracked each of us as we ranted and raved around the room, recounting his brush with comatose buggery. Once we had finished, he just sat there, blinking with a vacant expression strewn across his face. Then, he leaned forward, took a deep breath, and… laughed. He fucking laughed! He just sat back and chuckled to himself as though getting raped and unwittingly forcing his friends to defend his honour with swords from a hostile, home-intruding sexual predator wasn’t a big deal! It wasn’t the reaction we were hoping for, nor the one we expected, but we weren’t realistically going to get anything more courteous out of Shifty.

We’re still not sure whether Shifty ever actually took a sneaky dick in the arse or not on that fateful night. There was a considerable window of opportunity for a while there for at least a brisk dip. I like to think that in those precious few moments gained from me running ahead of everyone else, I may just have saved Shifty from getting buttfucked by a Neanderthal. He didn’t walk with a suspicious limp the following day, which we took as a good sign. Shifty, if you’re reading this - you’re welcome.