WOOF!

Once upon a time, not so very many moons ago in the great scheme of things, a young Misty went out for the day with some friends. They were in their early teens and incredibly bored as being a Sunday, the youth club was closed as was school (hurrah!) and although Misty could get into the local pubs, the rest of the crowd looked far too young.
They were generally good 'young adults', especially Misty, but teens being teens, some of the boys gathered together as much money as they could scrounge and with the aid of an older brother managed to get six cans of lager and a bottle of cider from an offie so that maybe after it was all gone, they wouldn't be feeling so bored.
Although Misty felt totally indifferent after her can of lager and couple of swigs of cider, the boys managed (or so they said) to get drunk and in their heightened sense of stupidity they decided to go to break into the local scrap yard.
This scrap yard was a place of mystery with a history of tales both scary and macabre. Such incidents that had 'occurred there over the years'*, included a visit from the Krays who had left the remains of a body in a car that had gone into the crusher while the body was still alive, the murder of a young pikey gypsy girl who'd sadly been raped and left to die there by her father, and it was also haunted by the ghost of a murderer who plied his trade along the nearby canal and found the tools for killing his victims at the yard when he worked there part time.
All very exciting to the minds of 'drunk' young chaps with nothing to do on an early Sunday evening in winter.
We wandered along the lane to the yard as the last of the daylight was pushed away by the shadows of night and as the steady hum of traffic faded we reached the yard.
It was a big place surrounded entirely by tall corrugated metal sheets about twenty feet high at its peak, and the only way in was via some heavily locked and extremely sturdy gates.
The boys tried the gate by kicking at it as Misty and the other couple of girls watched and began to feel very bored and also a bit cold.
After some discussion they realized that kicking the gate wasn't going to make the locks fall off and so they sauntered around to the far end of the yard to look for a chink in the sheet metal wall** and eventually they found a rusty patch with some loose bolts in it.
The boys began to kick at the panels, presumably to make it open, but after a short while decided that maybe pulling at it would be more conducive to opening it.
After another ten minutes or so of tugging and swearing at the sheet, they had managed to make a gap just wide enough for the smallest chap to get his head and shoulders through, and although he stated quite clearly that he didn't want to have his head and shoulders stuck through the gap, he was out voted and man-handled (or should that be boy-handled?) into the gap and told to keep pushing.
And so he pushed and the boys pushed some more and after a while they decided that it was no good, he wouldn't go in any further and he was informed he could get back out again.
Only he couldn't. He was as stuck as a very sticky thing held in a small sticky place by superglue and he told us loudly and in no uncertain terms that he wanted to get back out, PDQ.
So the rest of the boys tried pulling him.
When he'd finished screaming out in pain, they kindly decided to help him by getting the biggest, and therefore the strongest chap, to lie on the ground with his back to a handy concrete bollard and push against the metal sheet with his legs.
Once they were all in position, he pushed with all his might as the rest of the boys pulled with all their might, and after a couple more ear piercing screams, the boy finally popped back out of the gap.
The lads were delighted, not because their friend was now free, but because the joint efforts at pulling and pushing at the metal had left a gap which was just big enough for them to get through and so without any further ado, in they went.
The smallest boy went in without any problems, as did the next smallest and the medium sized chaps, but then it was the turn of the last and biggest of the boys who was obviously the strongest.
But he didn't get through the gap.
He managed to get as stuck as the poor smallest boy had, only this time they were all on the inside without a clue as to how to get back out again.
They called at Misty and the other two girls to try giving him a push and so they shoved with all their might, and for a moment it seemed as though he would budge, but then for some strange reason the boys began to shout 'Pull!' instead.
They all seemed very keen of the change of plan including the biggest boy who had also for some reason began to shake and whimper a bit, and so we pulled at his legs for all we were worth.
We'd managed to move him back about an inch when it sounded like all Hell broke loose on the other side of the fence. All the boys were yelling and screaming out things like 'Climb it, NOW!' and 'Quick, the fu*ker's foing to get us!' and 'Mummeeeeee!'
The biggest boy urged us to keep pulling and his efforts to break free became even more frantic as he whimpered in fear and prayed.
At last he came free and the four of us fell back in a heap before he got up and ran as if the very devil himself was hot on his heals.
We could still hear pandemonium on the other side of the fence and the reason why became clear as with a very loud

WOOF!

a rather large Alsatian poked his nose through the gap in the fence.
The girls legged it leaving Misty standing there facing the cause of the chaos and brown trouser stains inside the scrap yard.
Once more the dog said

WOOF!

and glared at Misty as if to say 'Why aren't you running as well?'
Misty glared back at the dog and there were was no 'ifs' about it as she stood her ground and refused to budge.
Again the dog said

WOOF!

and the boys inside cowered and cried, but Misty was cold, bored and had also just been fallen on by three other people including one rather large boy and was in no mood for taking and crap nonsense from a dog, Alsatian or otherwise.

"WOOF!"

shouted Misty as she moved towards the dog.

"WOOFWOOFWOOFBloodyWOOF, get back in there you, I'm not having it, alright? WOOF!" she went on as she carried on walking towards the dog, which backed back through the gap in the fence as quick as it could reverse on four paws.
The dog had a last try at standing it's ground as Misty stuck her head through the gap but buggered off ASAP when she picked up a nearby stone and lobbed it just past its nose.

"woof" said the dog as it ran back to the safety of where ever its lair in the scrap yard was.
'meep' said the boys as they slowly climbed down from the relative safety of their piles of cars or insides of fridges where they'd hidden.
Not a word was spoken as they climbed through the gap in the fence and began to walk back up to the main road and the warmth and comfort of the streetlights and other humans once more.
As we got to the top of the road they huddled together for a moment, and then turned towards me.
The smallest boy handed me the last of the bottle of cider and mumbled a 'thank you' as the others also muttered their gratitude.
And not a word has been spoken of the incident since.
Well, not until now anyway.

*Although no-one ever knew exactly when they happened, or the real name(s) of the person(s) involved.
**If it was sheet metal, why did they buy it?