Happy Halloween from me a week too late. ♥
You walk alone. It's late. You forgot to leave a note. Your mother is going to yell at you for it later.
Leaves crunch under your feet. You wave your flashlight around and it finally occurs to you that maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be here. There are rumors, rumors of terrible things that happen to people here in the middle of the night.
You're likely to become the next.
A twig cracks. It wasn't you. This path is clear, has always been clear. Something's out there.
Your flashlight snaps to the right, scans the forest, snaps to the left, scans the forest. You check the path you just walked. There's nothing there. You imagined it.
You walk alone. It's later than before. Your pace picks up. Something doesn't feel right. Your math teacher always tells you to follow your get when you're not sure of the answer on a test.
You wonder if this is a test.
Because, if it is, your gut is telling you to leave.
Now.
You pause, still thinking. Your flashlight whips around and around again. Did something just move in there? Over there--the leaves are rustling! Turn around, it feels like something is creeping toward you.
Look around.
Which way did you come from?
Are you even on the right path anymore?
There. Right there, up ahead. There's a light.
No, wait. That shouldn't be there. Something is wrong. Your gut was right. The light is moving...closer? Is it getting closer? You're going to have to run. Forget which way you came from, get away from the light.
You're still frozen. Why haven't your legs moved yet? Move! You want to scream at them, but you don't want the light to find you.
What if it already knows where you are? Your flashlight--you forgot to turn it off. Your breath hitches as you slap the switch. Darkness. The light gets closer. It's floating. Bobbing up and down and up again. Gliding along. Straight...away from you?
Where is it going? Did it lose sight of you?
You feel like you should be breathing faster, but you're hardly breathing at all.
It stops moving.
You go even stiller. You didn't know that was possible.
There's a noise behind you. You jump. Your heart beats faster. If it doesn't slow down, you're going to die of heart failure instead of whatever is out there.
You sneak a glance behind you. There's another light. You check in front of you. There's still one there.
There's two of them.
The world slows. Everything is moving in slow motion.
That could just be all in your head.
The lights are closer. Your keep turning around in circles to keep them in sight.
What scares you the most is that the lights are shaped like eyes.
Single eyes. Cyclops eyes.
White eyes. Dead eyes.
They're silent. You know that they must have been walking from off of the path earlier because they aren't stepping on anything now.
The real question is, are they actually walking?
Thirty more feet until they could kill you.
Twenty-five.
Twenty.
Fifteen feet left of life.
Ten.
Five.
Stop.
You're facing out past the side of the path. You're looking at the lights. Oh, they're definitely eyes. You notice that they're not really white.
They're a rotted white.
Death white.
You're certainly not breathing now. You think your heart has stopped completely. The lights are frozen, too.
Something twitches.
Tears slip down your face.