lost.

#1 Woods

/wʊdz/

Seungmin

I looked around me, searching for something that could explain this agitated feeling, my eyes nervously twitching as I sat down my camera. "C'mon Seungmin. You've been going to these stupid woods since you were like five, so you're not going to get scared now", I told myself, stroking my hair, which has gotten a little bit too long for my liking, out of my face. Something felt off. My head was hurting a bit, and my gut felt strangely hot. Also, had the woods always been that cold? I shook my head and picked up my camera again, bringing it to my face. I spun around, trying to find the best spot to capture in a photo for eternity.

There! An old tree, looking like it had come straight out of a fairy tale, stood with its twisted branches not too far away in the distance. I took only a few steps in its direction, then leaned forward and scrunched up my face to see better. "Man, I really need to buy new glasses when I have time", I murmured, zooming in and out to find the best perspective. And then, when the photo sharpened, I clicked, and it made that strange but so familiar click sound, I've become so used to hearing. I checked the image. Perfect. I forced myself to look around again, taking in the weird atmosphere. The dark trees were standing exactly where they did when I was a kid, but I could swear that they were moving. Every time I turned, they had moved slightly closer, making my heart pound so loud, I could hear it in my ears. I didn't know why exactly I got so agitated; I just did.

Unintentionally, I had started going backwards and bumped into the exact same tree I had just taken a picture of, sending a shudder down my spine. (I might have squealed) "Okay, enough nature for today", I said while stepping away from the tree, into the middle of the little space of nothing I had found in the woods. Suddenly I started to feel ashamed. I had no idea what had gotten into me to come here again, and I felt stupid for not only being scared, but also even coming. Coming to this forest, to this city, shit, even to this goddamn country again. I should have stayed in LA, where my whole life was built with carefully placed bricks, every single one placed with thought and care. Back then, when I still lived here, I was too young to even know how to place those bricks without breaking them. They broke, or I misplaced them, leaving me with nothing. No really good friends. No good memories. Only a little house on the side of the city and my parents. I knew I sounded like an old man whining about how unfair the world was, but I didn't care. That was until a shrill scream tore me out of my pitying thoughts.

The funny thing about fear is that it takes you a good while before you can even react. So I just stood there, my mind blank. I was close to deciding that I had just imagined the screaming when I heard the second one. A piercing scream full of nothing but pure terror. Finally, my body started to work again. My eyes widened, and my heart, first, dropped and then started racing faster and faster, so fast I worried I might die right there in the woods out of pure fear. Sometimes I wish I did. Sadly, I did not.

Other people would have acted differently, no doubt. Brave people would have immediately rushed to help. Logical people would have called for help. But me, my throat so dry it hurt to swallow and my body shivering so much I thought I couldn't move — I didn't even think of anything like that. My camera dropped to the earthy ground when the third scream hit. I weakly looked down before I picked it up again and tightened my grip on my camera. I was sure the person — or people— screaming were in horrible danger they couldn't escape from, and I surely couldn't rescue them from. So I stumbled down the path I had come from, away from these haunted woods I should have never visited.

The moment I broke out of the forest into the darkness of the night, I dropped to the ground, right there on the blunt concrete of the bumpy road. I was shivering and staring into nothing for no idea how long, only illuminated by a single streetlight a few meters away. I breathed heavily and thought about old stories my childhood friends used to tell me. "Don't go too deep into the Hollow Woods", they used to say. "You will never return"

For a few moments, everything was alright, but then the fear hit again. That clawing feeling — I'm sure not many people have really ever felt. That feeling in your stomach that makes you want to vomit, the breathlessness, the invisible clock ticking right beside your ear, counting your days left. I shot up, so fast that my body refused to cooperate, and I almost slumped back on the cement. But one thing only fear does to you that way is the determination you get because of it. You would do anything to get away from the cause of it. Anything. So I forced myself into a somehow standing position, squeezed my camera against my chest, so hard I was sure I would either break the lens or my ribs, and raced down the road to nowhere.

I ran for what felt like hours, but probably were only 15 minutes. When I finally arrived in front of the blunt and boring beige-colored house I was expected to call home, a new wave of panic spilled over me. My parents weren't home for a few days. Where was my key? I almost ripped my jeans while searching for my keys, and almost fainted out of relief when I found them in my back pocket. I swung the door open, almost ripping it out of the handles, and immediately threw it shut. Another thing you learn only when you experience true fear is the constant threat you feel. Everything is dangerous. Everything is a trap. Everyone is trying to hurt you. That's why so many people keep themselves locked in their own places. Nothing and nobody means no threat or worries.

I fell to my knees and started coughing like a madman. I don't know how, but I somehow managed to get to the bathroom and into the shower before I actually started to vomit. My mom had always praised me for not being a crybaby and being good at hiding what I truly felt, but that night I wept and cried in the shower like a little child, with no shame or regret. At some point, sleep hit me hard, dizzy like a cloud of insects buzzing in my head, obscuring all my thoughts.

***

The first thing I did after waking up was to first, wash up and then go look for my camera. Not because I wanted that damn picture of that fucking tree, but because I could swear that when I dropped the camera, it had shot photos. And even though I was still terrified to my bones, curiosity started to creep through my body. That was something my parents had always disliked. My curiosity. But I still couldn't help it. What was my camera able to capture, my mind couldn't?

It turned out the camera was lying only a few meters away from the front door, almost completely intact. I heaved a sigh of disbelief and hurried up the stairs into my almost empty room. I haven't had time nor interest in decorating it, so it still looked like it had looked in the catalog my parents had shown me when telling me their idiotic plans. I threw the camera on the desk and sat on the old squeaking chair I had not made friends with during my time here and started scrolling through my camera. A few cheesy photos of flowers, blah, blah, blah, the tree and...

Whatever feeling of curiosity and relief had slowly started to spread over the house, it disappeared as quickly as it had come. Instead, the terror, mixed with a feeling I hadn't quite understood yet, came crashing down at me like sour rain.

You could only see a bit of my left shoe slightly tilted in the picture frame, but the rest of the picture was just wood. A creepy but boring forest. Well, except for the two figures, one slightly smaller than the other running through the picture, too fast to get captured sharply by my old camera. The only thing that I could make out were their faces. Their faces, full of horror—the kind of horror I had experienced as well. I couldn't help but feel a little relieved that there actually was someone in the woods, and I hadn't imagined the whole scenario. That was until I saw that creature hanging in the crown of the trees over the two strangers. You could easily overlook it, but once you noticed it, you couldn't look anywhere else. Dark and spiderlike, with at least ten long, thin legs, its face twisted into something so ugly I refused to believe it could be called a grin. But it was. That thing was directly smiling at the camera, the disturbingly clear white eyes burning something in my mind I would never forget.

I screamed.