NOTE: This work contains material not suitable for anyone under eighteen (18) or those of a delicate nature. This is a story and contains descriptive scenes of a graphic, sexual nature. This tale is a work of pure fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously—any resemblance to actual persons, whether living, deceased, real events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

The woods were in the middle of a park on the outskirts of the city. A jogging path wound through the woods. At any time of the day or night, all shapes and sizes of joggers would be on the path. Here and there, on either side of the track, were benches.

Harold and Andrew were older men who enjoyed sitting on a bench near the center of the woods. They loved watching the joggers, especially the women joggers. Several times in the warmer season, they’d stay until late at night, waiting for their opportunity.

The two men would tie a cord around the base of a tree and stretch it across the pea gravel of the path, covering it with the pebbles. Then they sit and wait. Oftentimes, they would act on their urges.

Sometimes, they would.

It was the middle of May, on a clear moonless night, the men took nips from their flasks waiting.

“That little bitch isn’t a jogger. She’s a runner. If she comes around again, we should do it,” Harold said.

“Yeah, she’s been around twice now, and no one in between,” Andrew said as he reached down and picked up the cord. “She’s a small one. It’ll be easy to take her and control the bitch.”

“I’d say she might be 19 to 22 years old. Andy, we haven’t had one that young in two years.”

The darkness clung to the world like a second skin, the moon’s absence lending an extra layer of secrecy to Harold and Andrew’s grim vigil beside the jogging track. The two seniors sat motionless on the bench, their eyes fixed on the stretch of gravel that hid their malicious snare.

“Here she comes again,” Harold said, his voice a raspy thrill in the night.

Andrew nodded, the glint in his eyes as dangerous as the tripwire they had laid. They had chosen this spot carefully, away from the lampposts’ glow, where shadows were thickest. There was something predatory in their patience, an eagerness for the trap to spring.

“Last one out tonight, looks like,” Andrew replied, his hand inching toward the cord.

As the girl’s rhythmic footfalls grew nearer, there was an intense tension between the old men. Harold’s fingers tightened around the gnarled handle of his cane, a relic that belied its potential for harm. Andrew’s grip on the cord was steady, belying his age with the promise of a swift, cruel motion.

The girl appeared again, her form a blur of determination and energy, her short blonde hair flickering like a pale flame in the night. She was close now, so very close that the men could almost hear her steady breathing.

“Now,” Andrew said. With a vicious yank, Andrew pulled the cord taut across the track. The girl’s silhouette pitched forward as her feet caught, her momentum hurling her to the ground with a sickening crunch of gravel against bone.

Without missing a beat, Harold surged from the bench, his body driven by a dark intent as he closed the distance between himself and the fallen runner. The heavy hardwood cane, gripped like a weapon of vengeance, came down hard on the back of her head with a dull thud.

She crumpled utterly, a minuscule figure in the vastness of the night. Her plight was as silent as the graveled track beneath her.

“Quickly now,” grunted Harold, panting from the exertion as he gestured toward the woods. Together, the two men hoisted the girl’s limp form, their actions methodical and rehearsed as they carried her off the track, away from any prying eyes that might have been watching.

Hidden within the forest’s embrace lay their sinister preparation: a mattress, incongruous in its domesticity, awaited its unwilling guest. They lay her down upon it as if setting a precious object upon an altar. The astral sky of the moonless night bore witness, in unjudgemental silence, to the darkness of human deeds.

Harold flicked open the blade of his pocketknife, its metallic song a harsh melody to the gentle rustle of leaves. With swift, practiced strokes, he cut away her clothes, peeling them off like the layers of her humanity. Beneath, her nakedness glowed like alabaster in the filtered light that permeated the canopy above.

“Fuck, she’s a runner, alright,” Andrew said, leering as he ran a rough hand over her short blonde hair, his other hand groping her breast. “Firm as a damn springboard.”

Harold grunted in agreement, his eyes ravenous as they roamed over her lithe form.

“A prize indeed. Just like the last one this young.”

The girl stirred, her eyes fluttered open to the nightmarish scene before her.

“Oh, look who’s finally awake,” Harold said, his voice dripped with his malevolence. “Time to play, little runner.”