The Mysterious Fatality Of Charm

It was a warm Saturday night under a mid-June sky. Nineteen-year-old Alison was coming back from a late-night party with her college mates.
The party had been going on in a small cottage at the far end of the city, in a well-hiden place, where all the young people had feasted and danced the night away.

Now, Alison was stuck in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of five drunk and bleary-eyed girls. The young women had each of them come to the party with a dance partner. However, the guys had given up on them for other hotter giggling ladies.
But what have they been expecting ?
Alison should have known better than to trust men.

Whatever, the girls didn't have anyone to drive them back home, since their partners were the ones who brought them here with their cars in the first place. Therefore, they were all standing in front of the cottage, at one o'clock in the morning, with nobody to help them out. The only way to return to town, was to go across the unwelcoming, grim woods.

The six of them were awfully tired and couldn't think straight, because of all the alcohol they had had earlier. The only person who was a minimum clear-
minded was Alison. Because she had been too scared to come back home, all drunk and malodorous, and get her mother angry at her, she had been careful enough. The young women were stumbling around the front porch, when Alison spoke up, after a long while reasoning ,

"Um, guys...? ", she began uncertainly. "I really think we have no choice, but to cross the forest to get home."

" What did you just say ? ", shrieked her friend Camila, outraged. " I'm definitely not going through THAT ! "

" She's right. We'd get lost. ", complained Athénaïs.

" C'mon ! Get some nerves ! ", urged Alison. And without wating for the others to follow her, she pushed herself foward into the gloomy forest.

Inside, tall pine trees surrounded the place from either side, so high that they almost completely covered the starry sky. Alison craned her neck to glimpse at the far end of the forest. Nonetheless, she was only able to see tall dark trees, stretching for miles, caught in an ominous sort of mist.

For a moment, she felt distressed and panicky, when she heard the sound of cracking branches and leaves on the ground behind her. She turned and sighed out of relief. It was only her friends who had gathered behind her, into a small compact group.

" Now what do we do ? ", asked Camila, her voice quivering.

" We keep going forward. ", Alison responded, trying to sound as confident as she could.

"What if we used the GPS on our cellphones ? "

" There's no point trying", objected Hayley. "There's absolutely no WiFi signal over here."

Alison was already starting to feel a headache, so if her mates were going to begin an argument... Well she had no time for that nonsense. Therefore she declared, "Let's just try to go straight forward. It's the easiest way to not get too lost.".

The girls stared at each other for a second, then nodded silently in agreement. Alison took the lead, her back held ramrod straight and her shoulders thrown backwards. False bravado to make her and the girls feel more self-assured.

All of a sudden, the place started to chill, although it was supposed to be warm
summer. Goosebumps slowly crept all over Alison's body. The girls had been pursuing their strange journey in a huddled mass, humming well-known tunes from their favorite popstar artists, to feel courageous. Yet, there was no noise at all behind Alison anymore, except for the sound of the wind blowing harder and harder, and which was pushing her hair into her sensitive eyes.