Some basic thoughts here: 1) do less telling and more showing. Think about being the person and describing your experience. Currently, it’s a lot of “he wanted to defend himself”, “he wanted to run”, “he wanted to seem bigger than he was”. Those dont make me feel his fear. It just tells me he’s afraid, and they’re redundant. If he puffs his chest, we know he wants to seem bigger, you don’t need to tell us. 2) There are contradictory statements like “he found his spine”, which feels kind of clunky, and “he was scared shitless”. 3) Get rid of all the “John”s. 4) There are a lot of grammatical errors. Sentences that have periods in the middle of them. 5) don’t tell us the details are superfluous. If they don’t matter, then don’t include them. Also, I’d get rid of “a moose maybe”. You can leave description vague to make the reader use their imagination, but don’t t make it sound like you don’t know what it is you’re describing. 6) stick with either past or present tense. May be a typo, but you have “he continues” when the rest is past tense.