**A/N hey guys!! if some of you have read one of my other stories i thank you :) but i will have to say that this short story here is not mine. it is a friend of mines so i take no credit! He doesn't have an account but i offered to post it on mine so you guys can read how amazing this story is! he cant wait to see the feedback! neither can i, so enjoy! and please don't forget to feedback, we appreciate it :D
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No one ever has the perfect life. The life you live is vastly different from the life you want, but most people are happy with that. Only the supernatural forces of our world can grant your wishes, of power and wealth. But there is always a price to pay for this supposed fulfillment. I was one of the few that were given a chance to live their dream, to have that perfect life, and it was a dark path I choose to achieve it. For whatever reason it was that drove me down that road, I now I understand I could never have foreseen the pain that it would lead me to. If I had known what lay beyond my mortal self, I would have run like fire had beset my heels. My story, though it is short, holds a warning that I hope will reach the eyes of men who might follow in my footsteps.
My father was a career military man, during my life in his household we moved seven times before I was sixteen years old. The last place we moved to was Richmond Hill, Georgia, a prosperous city for the upper-middle class. It always had an air of being new and classy, and yet some of the foulest people I have ever met took up residence here. In this way it resembled a gilded toilet and I doubt few who have traveled through there would argue with this. Many of its neighborhoods had just been built in the last ten years, all of cheap construction on the swampiest land, and we had little choice in the quality of house we lived in. Our particular neighborhood was made to look pleasant and inviting to anyone passing by, but the houses themselves had constant issues that almost never got repaired. New houses were springing up every day and the noise from their construction would disrupt everything you did for weeks. The land was roughly shaped to look decent, but the rains made everything into a soggy mess for days.
Misery knew no better company than me those first months. I had no friends to confide in and the ones I had left seemed to forget of my existence. School passed slowly and painfully, as if every second had been stretched into an hour. I had little to do after school or on the weekends other than stare at the TV and wonder what I was going to do with my life. My life went in this fashion for several weeks before a feeling began to grow in me. It was a dark and terrible thing, a mix of anger, frustration, and despair. I tried everything I could to make it go away, writing pages of poems and stories filled with the twisted thoughts that were sprouting in my head. I walked for hours hoping the exercise would push the feeling from my body. It was all in vain, for the thoughts and feeling still persisted, until one day I decided to take a walk through the forest.
Bordering our neighborhood on the south and west was an immense forest. Tall pine trees and underbrush of varying thickness, filled with thorny bushes and tangled vines, gave it the appearance of a foreboding, nightmarish jungle. The ground was always damp and seemed to suck your feet in if you stood long enough. And after it rained, the whole wood became a bog that seemed to want to sink deep into the ground and take as many souls with it as it could. The heat that often followed the rain would make the air inside it thick and heavy, as if you were pushing through a wall of water as you walked, and made it nearly impossible to breathe. It was on one of these days that I choose to venture into this terrible landscape. The feeling in me had grown almost impossible to live with and the ominous depths seemed to be the perfect place to go.
I was drawn into it, pulled by an irresistible force that seemed to guide me down the paths. The world seemed to get darker as I went farther, the thorns growing sharper and trees taller. Unseen creatures could be heard lurking just beyond the edge of the path I followed, and I knew if I ever strayed from it, they would make quick work of devouring me. I trudged on through the murk and the farther I went, the more powerful the feeling inside me became. It pushed me deeper and deeper, and I started running along the path, enraged by some unknown cause.
