foxxy - PREVIEW

I had been working as a pizza boy for about two years when it started. I used to turn up everyday at six o’clock, quickly change my t-shirt, stick the stupid cap on my head and walk into the store to sign in. I was always careful to keep my hands in my pockets at all times when in the store because they had this annoying rule about bare wrists. The problem was I had this tattoo from when I was back in college, it was ‘Mary’ my childhood sweetheart written in a tasteless gothic font on a peculiar looking Labrador, and it was emblazoned on the underside of my wrist. We used to have a little joke about her being a dog, say if we went into a posh shop or to the beach between the 1st of May and the 31st of September, I would point at the ‘no dogs’ sign and look at her disapprovingly and she would giggle and shake her head in that ‘you-think-you’re-so-funny-but-it’s-okay-because-I-guess-I-do-too’ sort of way.

I thought it would be cute to get the tattoo but my ‘incessant jealousy’ and ‘wandering eyes’ proved the perfect antidote to my charming humour, leaving me with a trophy of failure on my wrist. To hide this inconvenient truth I tried wearing sweatbands, but they used to get all mouldy and smelly if I didn’t take them off for bathing and showers – and taking them off for such occasions proved even more horrific as I was faced with the dog – and there is nothing worse than reminding yourself that you’ve got something to hide. So I decided to go to a few shitty festivals to get some wristbands that had a sense of permanency about them.

The one that stuck was from a hippy festival in Newton Abbot called ‘Quest’. All I can remember of the festival is taking this anonymous pill from a guy dressed up as Jesus Christ, and from then on my mood was dictated by this great big tower that had a searchlight that changed colour as it span around the field. The colours acted to dictate my mood: if it was bright and yellow I would feel ecstatic and if it was dark and navy: I would get twitchy and unsure of myself. In the morning the yellow wristband reminded me of the electric energy I had felt the night before. And the name ‘Quest’ coupled with the Jesus guy who gave me the pill, inspired me to search for God, and gave me hope of maybe finding more to life and potentially fulfilling some kind of unheard of spiritual bliss. But by the end of the day I started to come down and realized that this enlightenment was in fact, part of the trip.

But anyway, I stuck with the wristband to cover up the tattoo the same way a cutter would do, to hide their scars - sometimes I would even let people think I was a cutter, if it proved less embarrassing than admitting the truth – anything to avoid showing that dastardly dog. So when I was told that ‘Franchise policy dictates all employees adhere strictly to the uniform code’ and found out that in order to deliver pizza to somebody’s house at night it was necessary to ‘be cleanly shaven, piercing free and bare wristed’ I was quite understandably indignant. I mean who really gives a fuck when they’re stoned, drunk and hungry – ‘cos that’s the only time that I order a pizza – if the guy stood outside in the cold wearing a mojo-shattering blue hat has a bit of stubble or a festival armband saying ‘Quest’ on it. When I’m desperate enough to pay twelve quid for a pizza I don’t care if it gets delivered by Grizzly Adams and his forest-face, Snoop Dogg and his plethora of bling, or even Dick Dastardly and the unkempt Mutley. It just doesn’t matter.

At the beginning of my first shift, I was sent to the toilet with a bic two-blade razor and the cold-water tap. I went in looking handsome as ever and came out all cut up with red patches and rogue hairs scattered around my face. They said I looked a lot better.

But then they told me I would have to cut off my wristband before I could start earning any dosh. My initial reaction was to bullshit. I started itching my neck along the collar where I could feel a spot swelling up from the massacre of the bic, and I told my supervisor how important the quest for God was in my life. I explained how cutting free the band would symbolically sever my own spiritual bond with Jesus Christ and told him how damaging that could be to my emotional wellbeing. He bought it. Or at least he was too weary to argue with it, and said that I could wear the band just this once, but in future it would have to be covered up by a watch; either that or I would be ineligible to work for them.

I didn’t own a watch and I was not prepared to pay for one out of my own pocket to conform to this officious code – but at the same time I was growing increasingly anxious at the idea of exposing my wrist and the tattoo – so I resorted to stealing a spy watch from my little sister. It didn’t tell the time but it did have a little plastic hatch that you could open up. I didn’t really understand what its purpose was: I wondered whether it was supposed to harbour miniature laser beams to blind villains with, or to set off remotely controlled mines in times of crisis, but ultimately, I concluded it was just a toy.

Sometimes I would forget the spy watch. It could get left at home or in a jacket pocket or at a mate’s house by an ashtray. And sometimes I would neglect to shave: if I hadn’t washed in a while or if my mum was having a bath at the wrong time or something. The threat of the bic and of unleashing the beast under my wrist was of great concern to me. I would carefully slip in and out of the building between deliveries, vigilantly avoiding eye contact with any of the supervisors, because I came to realize that nobody actually cares about rules, they just care about power. So if you don’t directly challenge their power, if you keep out of their way, then most of the time you can get away with a few little discrepancies.

Another benefit of minimizing my time in the store each night was avoiding my ‘colleagues’. Although some of them were alright, for example, the twins with cheap Mazda sports cars who planned to open their own pizza place in Australia, the Spanish manager with a lust for olives but a lack of English skills and the Polish chef who would shamelessly smoke bongs outside the backdoor, but these were the exceptions. The majority of the staff were unfunny no-hopers, constantly participating in ‘banter’ and laughing profusely at their own jokes. I don’t mean to appear judgmental but I had a real problem identifying with people who were content to grow fat and old delivering pizzas and sticking new exhausts onto the backs of their cars. I was aiming for better than that.

I’ve always wanted to make films. As I was growing up I would always tell Mary about my ideas, they would come to me when we were lying in bed or taking a day trip on the train, and I would get all excited relaying my thoughts to her. She would listen in awe and tell me how good the ideas were and encourage me to plot the narratives in this little notebook called a pukka pad. The thing is I would write down the flashes of ideas, fleeting elements of films but I would never develop them, never put any hard graft into them. I was always too busy trying to get my dick wet or watching films that had already been made on DVD.

After we split a couple of years ago I would still carry the pukka pad around with me in my car, but it would rarely feel the pleasure of being written in. I needed the encouragement. Any ideas that I had would just get eroded by the radio, or by a traffic jam, or by an unhappy customer who had asked for no pepperoni. By the time I had finished my shift I was always too hungry and tired to search through my brain for the fragments of films that had played behind my eyes while I was driving. To my dismay I found myself resigned to being a delivery boy. For the time being. I would tell myself.

*************************************

So there I was half eleven on a Friday evening, driving to a residential trailer park to deliver three cheese and tomato pizzas with my spy watch on. As I approached the driveway I spotted the park mascot: it was a life-size wooden fox, orange with bright blue eyes and the word ‘Welcome’ scribed across its stomach inside a sparkling sunshine orb. This image of happiness unsettled me a little bit. I shone my full beam and squinted out of the window until I found number thirteen Sunnyvale Lane. I parked up, and took the pizzas out of the hot bag ready for the customer. I knocked on the door but there was no answer. This was normal. I waited half a minute and knocked again, much harder this time. Again, no answer. I was used to this type of thing, sometimes people would take ages to reply and then just rush to the door with a towel on, messy hair and a flush. I assumed that ordering a pizza worked in the same way as oysters or as Lynx would have you believe their scent works: to make women horny. If I was lucky I’d get a little nip slip, but more often than not, I was just treated to a bouncing ballbag as the guy turned to run back to his pizza-enchanted mistress.

After about five minutes of banging on the door and wailing ‘PIZZA BOY, IT’S YOUR PIZZZZZAAAA BOY’ reminiscent of Jim Carey in The Cable Guy, I was getting seriously pissed off. I got back in my car turned the light on and rung the ‘customer’s number’. As I was typing in the digits: ‘01626 2829-Wait a minute’. It dawned on me that this was the number for sexline, all those prank phone calls me and Mary used to make about fornicating with elephants and acidic discharge, how did I not see this earlier. I was furious at whoever this little prick was that set me up. Nobody orders shitty cheese and tomato pizzas. I revved my engine and jerked the volume up on the CD player: ‘You made me forget my dreams’ Fucking Belle and Sebastian. This was not the time for them. I was growing more and more disgruntled as I encountered that fox mascot again. In a moment of madness I stopped the car, ran towards the fox, picked up a metal pole – the kind of shit that prank-calling-trailer-trash-people leave lying around – and went for the fox’s head. After three wild blows, the neck snapped and the head drooped down slowly. I felt like a naughty beaver. I felt that overpowering sense of guilt I used to feel instantly after ejaculating inside another girl when I was with Mary. I deemed it most sensible to wrench the head free from its torso and place it in the back of my car on the parcel shelf.

For the next few shifts I was haunted by the fox. It would reflect onto the back windscreen, and appear ominously in my rearview mirror as some kind of ethereal apparition.

I guess I must have felt responsible for the fox, because I was intrigued to look after him – I was quite sure from his rigid posture when he had a body, that he was a male fox – it was some kind of twisted Stockholm Syndrome, but reversed and with a wooden ornament.

So for a few weeks me and the fox would ride around town together delivering pizzas and surveying the streets. We delivered to drunk students, who flirted with me and asked to stroke my fox; we delivered to fat single men who left us large tips for not laughing at the number of pizza boxes piled up behind their doors; we delivered to families who answered graciously and offered me slices of pizza; we delivered to buildings with broken buzzers that rung the wrong flat; we delivered to houses with no numbers that took ages to find and we delivered to some houses that had nothing notable to say about them.

Although I was happy to have the fox on the parcel shelf, I don’t really think it had started yet. I suppose it had started in a way but I wasn’t aware of it.

One thing for sure, the evening that I met the fox, it had definitely started. It was just a normal shift at work, I had remembered to shave, and I also had the spy watch on my wrist. I was listening to some weak hip-hop on the radio and my heater was trying its best to clear the windscreen of pizza fumes, although I was defenseless against the pizza scent. It was about eleven o’clock and I had nothing planned after work apart from a lonely wank and small garlic bread I had smuggled into my boot. So I wasn’t even counting down the hours, they just travelled past me like the curb at the side of the road. Well anyway this eleven o’clock jobby proved a bit more significant than I could have guessed. 36 Starcross Street. The fox answered the door. Yes the very same fox that I had decapitated a few weeks earlier had answered the door. Well it can’t have been the same fox, but a carbon copy of the head that I was carrying in the back of my car. I glanced at one fox head and then at the other. I was astonished. He was about six foot tall, so just a little bit taller than me, with the same white whiskers I had become accustomed to that resembled the stubble around Homer Simpson’s mouth. He was fluffy all over and wore the same wide grin that had infuriated me so much during my first encounter. I wondered if I was imagining all this, an elaborate scheme devised in my subconscious to keep me entertained at work, so I touched him on the arm, and to my surprise he was real. Soft and furry. ‘Sorry!?’ said the fox. I was surprised by how human his voice sounded. I looked at the sticker and he had paid by card so I gave him his pizza. He turned around and shut the door on me. I stood still for an immeasurable amount of time before getting my shit together and getting back into the car. He was looking at me out of his window. I turned the car around and in doing so I reversed up against the fox’s front room and for a split second the reflection of the wooden fox in my rear windscreen merged together perfectly with the real fox staring out of the window. It was the kind of moment that would be turned into slow motion in a film.

I went home that night and called Mary for the first time in months but she didn’t answer.

The fox played on my mind. I dreamt about a cream-coloured country home surrounded by forest and separated from the rest of the world by a grand ornamental gate. In the gravel driveway a man with a tweed sports jacket and a hunting cap on was pacing in front of his tall arching doorway looking very animated. Then all of a sudden the fox appeared from a clearing in the thicket, he was running on all fours this time and he looked a lot more vulnerable than I had seen him before. The agitated aristocrat reached for his shotgun and raised it towards the woods. He let off a few bangs before exclaiming: ‘RELEASE THE HOUNDS’. Two posh-looking men in similar hunting gear came running from the front door and stood by his side. As they all loaded up their shotguns three humongous dogs, slightly larger than horses, came bustling from around the back of the house. The beast-hounds stopped for their hunters to mount, and then let off a blood curdling howl and set off for the fox. The same fox that I had beheaded, and then delivered a pizza to.

I woke up confused, firstly because I had an erection after such a shocking dream, and secondly because I felt almost culpable for the terrorizing of the fox at the hands of the hunters. I was horrified to compare what I did with a piece of wood to the brutal murder of a miraculously large vulpine creature, but for some reason I couldn’t separate the two crimes. I felt guilt running through my veins and vowed to be a better person before tossing myself off back to sleep.

The next day at work I had to deal with the usual drivel that goes around the store when its quiet, one of my supervisors was telling everybody about his latest sexual antics and naturally, all the lads joined in, pelvic thrusts and fingers in their mouths. The female staff stood back quietly, trying to blend into the walls, in fear of the sexual furore breaking out into a sleazy CCTV pizza porno film. I was stood back with the girls, thinking about the fox and what I should do; should I go back to the trailer park with some superglue and try to fix him back in place; should I order a fake pizza to the real fox’s house and ask him what’s going on; or should I chuck the fox’s head in the river and be done with it.

But I didn’t have a choice in the matter because 36 Starcross Street was on the computer screen and the pizza was out of the oven and ready to be dispatched. I jumped into the car and threw the pizza in the back and set off. To begin with I was jumping red lights and revving my engine like a boy racer, eager to talk to the fox like a schoolgirl meeting a pop star. But like a schoolgirl, I got nervous and starting stalling. I took a few wrong turns and looked at myself repeatedly in the mirror, as if the structure of my quiff would determine the quality of my meeting with the fox.

When I got to number 36 Starcross Street I still had no idea what I was going to say. The fox came to the door while I was still getting out of the car, he was staring straight past me and I swear he saw the fox’s head, his head, but he didn’t say anything about it. I gave him the pizza and took the twenty-pound note from his furry paw. ‘I know this is going to sound completely weird… but do you know of a great big house, sorta like a mansion with high gates, and its surrounded by woods?’ I said.

The fox looked me up and down for a few seconds. ‘It’s only becau-‘

The fox interrupted me this time: ‘Yeah I know a place like that’.

‘What do you know about it’ I asked.

‘It’s a long story’ the fox said. ‘If you let me ride around the town with you I‘ll tell you some more about it’ he added.

So it was arranged. It was as easy as that, but it still made no sense to me. How could he know of the old country home, it was from a dream, an imaginary place? I had only said it out of panic.

The fox rode shotgun while I drove back to the store to collect another pizza. We exchanged formalities but I was still too stunned by the situation to really ask what was going on: as if by drawing attention to the weirdness I would then cause the fox to evaporate or something. We drove passed a KFC joint and the fox got really excited: ‘Fuck me! I could do with a KFC’

‘Do foxes like KFC?’ I said taken aback.

‘Why wouldn’t foxes like KFC’ he said.

‘No reason. I suppose the colonel does a good job with his seasoning’ I said.

‘It’s the top fast food outlet in my opinion. Fuck Ronald McDonald and that big burger, who even is the ‘Burger King’ he said.

‘I don’t even know’ I said laughing.

‘Are you stopping for a KFC or what!?’ he demanded.

‘But you left half of that pizza I delivered to you at home’ I said.

‘Yeah, but, we foxes are never sure of our next meal’ he said.

‘Sounds that way, what with your outspoken views on all the major fast food restaurants’ I said.

‘I take it we are not going to KFC then’ he said stroppily.

It dawned on me that although he was some kind of magical animorphic fox; he was just a normal guy beneath that.

We spent another hour and a half in the car together in which time I learned that; he loved gangster films and only gangster films ‘for the way the mobsters always get what they want and live their own life regardless of the laws of society’; he hated CCTV because it is ‘an unnatural phenomena to be recorded doing what you do’; and his favorite animal was a duck-billed-platypus although he was ‘disappointed to have never seen one in the woods’. I wandered if he was the only life-size animal around and he told me that he wasn’t but I wasn’t ready to know about all that yet. I got the same kind of evasive response when I asked about the cream-coloured country home from my dream: ‘You’re not ready yet’. I was intrigued but at the same time frustrated, I didn’t want to ruin it though. Like when you realise something is too good to be true in a dream, but you try your hardest not to question it incase your bubble of subconscious bursts and you wake up sweating with an unwanted erection.

The next day I picked the fox up from 36 Starcross Street as we had arranged and we embarked upon another night of mystery. I just couldn’t get anything out of him unless it was to do with something on the tele, or a band or a football team – I was very surprised to find that he wasn’t a Leicester City fan, but in fact hated Gary Lineker with a passion: ‘But their mascot ‘Filbert the fox’ is the most similar looking thing to you that I have ever seen!’ I reasoned.

‘I don’t care, I hate that Gary Lineker and his big FA cup ears, and I hate those boring crisps he eats too’ he said.

‘What’s so bad about Lineker anyway’ I couldn’t help but crack up when he came out with these ridiculous statements.

‘Him and Stan Collymore had a fall out’ he said.

‘So…’

‘Collymore is famous for bringing dogging into the mainstream, and to carry on with a career in the media after a revelation like that is admirable in my opinion’ he said.

‘He used to beat up Ulrika Johnson is that admirable?’ I asked. He didn’t reply.

‘And anyway what has a fox like you got to do with dogging? I said.

‘Oh, nothing I just... saw a program on tele about it and it sounded quite exciting’ he said.

‘Whenever I’ve been dogging its just been a load of old guys in expensive cars waiting in a car park and driving off when they see a gang of lads in the car’ I said.

The fox went silent for about half an hour after that little exchange, I figured that I must have hit a sore spot mentioning Gary Lineker. I just carried on delivering the pizzas, even if he wasn’t saying anything, it still felt cool to have a massive talking fox sat next to me as I went.

Over the next few weeks I had the pleasure of the fox’s company for most of my shifts at work, he couldn’t make Wednesdays or Fridays and asked to be dropped off early on the posh side of town ‘to visit a friend’ every once in a while, but on the whole my life felt a lot more purposeful. I didn’t know what the purpose was exactly, but I knew the fox had something to do with it. He allowed me to open up. I told him about Mary and the guilt I felt, I told him how I just wanted to show her I was sorry and maybe even be friends with her if she would let me. He told me that I was better off without bonds and ties, and to let the past stay in the past. He asked me what she looked like and I was shocked to find I didn’t have any pictures on my phone so I waited until I had a delivery on that side of the river and drove outside her house. I knew she used to leave the curtain open after she had a shower but I couldn’t believe my luck when she was stood by her window bare breasted looking in the mirror and brushing her hair. She looked angelic. ‘Who needs her as a girlfriend when you can gaze on her from afar?’ suggested the fox. I didn’t really feel that way, but seeing as she wouldn’t reply to my calls I decided to settle for the fox’s company and Mary’s tits.

The fox also got me talking about my aspirations to be a writer again. He encouraged me to tell him my ideas but remained ominously voiceless with regards to his own life. I told him about my plan for a screenplay involving a mix-up in the hospital with two babies going home with the wrong parents. The plan was for the families to be reunited with their true offspring through a freak coincidence on the Jeremy Kyle show. The fox ripped the idea apart, criticizing my lack of character motives and condemning the plot as ‘shit-cold’. I didn’t take it well at first, and I think the fox noticed this because he told me the real reason for his disapproval was that he hated northern accents and explained how he couldn’t stand anything to do with Jeremy Kyle since they employed ‘Foxy Bingo’ as their sponsor with that ‘cocky northern fox’.

************************************************

‘Do you wana come out with me tonight, y’know, after you finish work, out of the car’ asked the fox. He struggled to get his words out as if he was asking a girl out on a date for the first time.

‘Yeah sure mate, what you thinking?’ I said.

‘There’s a few of us all heading out somewhere, we haven’t decided where yet though’ he said.

‘Sounds like a plan, I guess Mary’s driveway will be lonely tonight then’ I said.

I assumed we wouldn’t be going to the ‘Fox and Hound’.

It was my last delivery of the night when everything changed. We were driving around the rich end of town looking for a house simply entitled ‘Majesty’. I was suspicious of such a lavish name for an address but the customer had paid by card already so I assumed it must be a legit order – I mean the jokes on you if you try playing a prank by actually paying for the pizza. These streets weren’t paved in gold, but I swear that some of the gates had diamond sparkles on their peaks. The fox was getting a bit fidgety. ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Don’t like rich people’ he replied.

‘Oh come on, I think their quite funny with their outrageous elitism and funny accents… Jolly-good job old boy’ I impersonated poorly.

‘It’s not so funny when you’re me’ he said.

I wondered what he meant by this.

‘I reckon we just go back, this place is a ma-’ he began.

“HERE IT IS… Majesty!’ I interrupted.

The fox shuddered.

The gate opened as soon as I maneuvered the car in front of it.

‘That’s funny’ I said.

‘Some of these posh houses just have sensors, they’re just for ornament really, not really to do with security’ he told me.

I drove slowly down the driveway crackling the clean white gravel beneath us. As I approached the house the lights turned on and illuminated everything to me: this was the cream-coloured mansion from my dream. It was all there, the tall arching doorway, the woods behind the house and the humbling sense of grandeur. It was so much more lucid in real life. A polyphonic ringtone beeped twice, the fox had a text message. I looked down at his phone: ‘Majesty woods’. I was so confused, was that a warning, had he planned this or what the fuck was going on? The fox started acting panicky and urged me to turn around and drive off. ‘Lets go. Lets just go back now. Come on lets go back. I’ll pay you for the pizza’. But I was intrigued: this fictional place from my dream had come to life and I was here with a magical talking fox, I had to find out what it meant. Curiosity killed the cat.

I parked as close to ‘Majesty’ as I could. I got out with the pizza, locked the door and started towards the door but before I had the chance to knock it opened briskly and powerfully. The man from my dream in hunting gear walked out. He was much less intimidating than I remembered. His eyes were big and droopy and his grey hair was swept behind his ears revealing his ruby red cheeks. He was shorter than me and rather stout. ‘Who are you’ he requested walking straight passed me’

‘Pizza?’ I gestured the box towards him.

‘Oh yes! Fair play chappy. Have you heard any signs of foul play whilst in the grounds? Seen anything unusual?’ he asked.

‘Urm not while I’ve been here today… I had a dream about this place’ I said.

Ignoring me: ‘Is that your motorcar!?’ he exclaimed. ‘What is that perverted buffoon doing in your front seat?’

‘The fox?’ I asked.

‘Yes the bloody fox. PERCY, PERCIVALD’ he shouted. ‘BRING ME MY SHOTGUN’

Almost instantly as if on queue, another man with hunting gear came running through the door with two shotguns in his hand.

‘WHAT THE FUCK. No you can’t hunt him you mental poshos’ my dream was coming true. I had to stop them.

‘We are not hunting him’ the main posho said. ‘We are going to murder him’

‘Murder?’ I said.

‘Yes and I don’t think the police will have a lot to say about it. Not after what his despicable friends and he have been doing in my woods’ he said.

‘What are you going on about? You’ve seen the fox before? I asked.

‘I’ve seen a whole gang of these furry fiends before. They come into my woods at night dressed up as cuddly toys and fornicate wildly with a complete disregard for the sanctity of my grounds’ he told me.

‘And we’ve had enough’ the other posho added.

I shouted to the fox ‘Is this true’

He began gesticulating innocence but I couldn’t hear what he was saying through the window. I walked over to the car. ‘Hand him over and you will be rewarded chappy’ the main posho said to me. I opened the door.

‘HAND HIM OVER’ the other posho ordered.

‘I thought you’d be into it’ the fox said regretfully as he jumped out of the car and burst into a sprint towards the woods.

I was waiting for one of the mental poshos to shout ‘RELEASE THE HOUNDS’ but instead they loaded their shotguns and ran after the fox. I followed them. We ran through the thick layers of forest and jumped over a few logs. I was eager to overtake the hunters and find the fox, and it wouldn’t have been hard at the inebriated rate they were going, but I was weary of their loaded shotguns so restrained myself to waiting behind them. Eventually we found ourselves at a clearing and to my dismay the hunters were telling the truth: a melee of sexual perversion lay before us. There were great-big furry wolves banging smaller furry squirrels against the trunks of sycamore trees; there were furry monkeys sucking off furry bulldogs like they were licking on the tips of bananas; there were furry black and white cows mixing with furry brown cows performing the 69’er with their udders; there were furry pink rabbits being drilled in the ass by panting furry tigers yelling ‘Its GRRRRRRRRRRREAT’; and there was even a furry Care Bear riding a furry Scooby Doo in the reverse cowgirl.

The hunters opened fire. It was a massacre. A few of the furries got away – God knows where they went or what they did – but most of them were mauled down by the poshos’ callous spray of bullets. They must have had a field day, I bet hunting had never been such fun. ‘Good show Percy, shame a few of them got away, but some of the little blighters always do’. Credit to the furries, they stayed in role even when they lay dying on the floor: as I fled the scene back to my car I heard a cacophony of tragic swansongs; a howling wolf; a mooing cow and a wailing bulldog.

When I was back in my car and safely parked outside the pizza store I called the police and told them what I saw. The pizza company were understanding and gave me two weeks paid leave to reconcile my emotions, although they did ask me why I didn’t return the pizza if the customer neglected to take it from me. On my way home I phoned the fox to find out if he got away okay. He told me that he ran to a different clearing, but did one when he heard the gunshots. He said the first day that I delivered him a pizza he was about to go out ‘furring’ – that’s what they call it apparently – and that’s why he was dressed up like that, he saw the fox’s head in the back of my car and recognized the mansion I spoke of and assumed I knew about the activity. He later realised that I was ignorant to his designs but decided to groom me anyway. He told me he had a lion’s costume waiting for me at home and was planning on initiating me that night. I hung up on him and never saw him again.

The story was a big media hit, all over the local and national news, The Sun even ran an article ‘Furrociosly Funny’ with cartoon images of the horrific scene in the woods complete with speech bubbles. The two hunters were arrested and both given life sentences. I couldn’t go back to the delivery job after the media exposure so I handed them my notice. Mary had seen me on the news and contacted me, to tell me to ‘never wait on her driveway again or she would get the police involved, and that she wanted nothing to do with me regardless of my trauma’.

Sony bought the rights to the story for ten grand, and I threw in the wooden fox’s head for authenticity. The bastardized filmic version has just been released: I’m played by Keanu Reeves and Sean Connery stars as the fox. In a steamy sex scene that makes me feel weak inside: Scarlet Johannson, as Mary, smashes a chandelier as she explodes out of control in her third screaming orgasm.