The nightclub dispersed us to the streets, like spores from a cheap cotton dandelion, and seedily we drifted, off in all directions. I didn't wait for my friends; I had no patience for kebab queues or bickering over split-fare taxis. If I made my own pace, it was only thirty minutes’ walk home.

As usual I took the back streets, avoiding the busier main roads. In my experience, the more people there are around, the more chance there is that one of them will take a disliking to you.

So I was alone when I saw the thing.

I was halfway home, engrossed in my regular weekly review of the night's events - trying to form objective mental pictures of all the girls I hadn't talked to, counting up how much money I'd spent; the same miserable criteria by which I judged (and failed) every Saturday. I became dimly aware that there was something moving in the road up ahead. I could hear the clicking of clawed feet on concrete. Maybe a fox, I thought.

And then I saw it, and it was not a fox.

It was a large animal of some kind, something vaguely resembling a dog. It trotted across the tarmac, not ten feet from where I stood. I pulled up short and swore under my breath. At first, I couldn't understand what I was looking at. It had four legs, and a gloss black pelt stretched over knots of angry muscle, but beyond that its anatomy made no clear sense. Only when the creature stopped and turned towards me did I realise - it was a dog… but a dog with no head. Sans eyes, sans ears, sans muzzle; its neck ended only in a rubbery, bloodless flap, like an old chicken, slaughtered and drained.

The creature stopped and swayed its grotesque non-head in my direction. I was transfixed. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think; somehow all I could do was stare at that neck; that hideous, hypnotic absence. It stepped one paw towards me and I felt myself grow weak and heavy, as if I were lying in the bathtub while the water slowly drained out around me. Another step and my knees gave way, and I slumped to the curb, sat limp with my feet in the gutter.

The beast, having brought me to the ground, turned and slunk off into the night. More than that, I do not remember, until waking in my bed the next morning.

Tales of encounters with devilish black dogs are common, amongst ghost stories. Grims, shucks, barguests - however they’re named, seeing one is always said to be a bad omen. As I lay there, nursing my hangover, I couldn't help but wonder if some awful fate now awaited me.

So far, nothing has happened. I still think about it, every Saturday night when I walk that same route home from the nightclub, counting my change and wasted chances.

But no, nothing's happened so far.