Danny was walking through the woods late one night on his way home from a Halloween party. He'd been told these woods were a bad place to be alone at night, but he was late and he didn't want to upset his wife by being any later.

It wasn't too long before he found himself lost and shivering cold. The path he was following seemed to have disappeared, and he couldn't find his way back to it. But worst of all was the noises he heard in the woods surrounding him.

Was that a footstep or just a squirrel running through the brush? Was that a whisper, or just the wind catching a strip of pine needles?

Is that a monster coming towards me? Those clumsy footsteps, that panting breath, getting closer and closer and closer until…Danny's dog Roderick came bounding up to him. How he knew his owner was lost out there in the woods Danny didn’t presume to know, but Roderick would be getting a little extra kibble in his dish the next morning.

And that's when it crept up on him, seemingly from out of nowhere. "My God," Danny thought. "I had so many dreams and hopes for myself when I was a younger man and the way things are going I might never achieve any of them, not a single one!"