A Walk in the Woods

3 - Figure

We walked back in an awkward silence, unsure of what to say to one another. We reached the familiar oak tree we had sheltered under previously. That's when I noticed it... a hand. A human hand, peeking out from the auburn leaves.

"D-Damon," I stuttered, not taking my eyes off the picture in front of me.

"Yeah, what," he said, facing back toward me.

He followed my gaze until his eyes met the brown-orange patch of leaves before us. It took him a second to process what exactly he was looking directly at. The snake-like fingers curled beneath themselves in a way that seemed almost in-human, alien like. Damon let out an inaudible shriek. My mind had now taken over my body as I unwillingly moved closer, revealing more of whatever monstrosity was laying composedly amongst the vegetation. The monstrosity were the remains of Jacob Harris, dispersed carelessly over the dirt.

All of the colour drained from my face and I wanted to disappear right then and there. However, I was unable to look away. Jacob's face was contorted in a torturous fashion looking as if it had been dissected in half and then reconstructed using a dark red putty. There were two chunks of flesh missing from his attire, a large one removed from his right thigh and a second smaller one from his left forearm. I wanted to throw up just looking at the terrible state the body was in. I turned to Damon, hands sprawled across my face in disbelief. He was pale as a sheet of paper, a disgusted expression painted over his face, one that I had never seen from him before.

This is all a nightmare, I was sure of it. These are all just some messed up thoughts I had lingering in the back of my brain for the last year waiting to be let out, and this was it. All those thoughts, twisted into one gruesome dream.

In that moment I saw my life flash before my eyes as a shadowy black mass loomed over us. It was a figure, at least seven feet tall in height, eerily standing before the deceased Jacob Harris. It was relatively impossible to make out the face of the figure. All I knew for certain was that this was no human, it was an unnatural being with the physique of creatures I had only ever witnessed in horror films. At that point I became aware that Damon had been grasping my arm tightly in his possession, holding on for dear life. The creature devilishly raised one of its dark ebony hands consisting of five elongated claw-like fingers. With a single outwards scoop of its arm it picked up the corpse like a child with a bowl of ice-cream and raised it high above reach over its monstrous black hole of a mouth, which I had just perceived was even there. Jacob dangled lifelessly upside down in mid air, his bruised wounded limbs crooked down above his head and greasy blond strands of hair hung like noodles from his scalp. Within half a second he descended from the height he was being clutched at and plummeted straight into the cannibalistic beast's mouth. Damon and I watched this in horror, glued to each other's side, our limbs tangled together. Beads of sweat were plunging from my temples as the vile filth-smelling beast took a step towards us then vanished without a single sound nor trace, leaving nothing more behind aside from a crimson-red puddle of vital fluid.

My eyes were flooding with salty liquids, every hair on my body was standing vertically and I was covered head to toe in goose bumps. I clinged onto Damon, tightly wrapped in my arms and tried reassuring myself that everything was going to be alright.

This isn't real

This isn't real

This isn't real,

I thought to myself.

However, I knew buried deep within myself that that wasn't true. 

***

Thank you for reading!! Thats the end lol, it kinda ends on cliffhanger however I don't think I'll be making a second book any time soon. I would love your feedback on this!