Mishaps can be Deadly *Indefinite Hiatus*

Chapter 1

My heart pounded as I ran away from the monstrous man-like creature chasing me through the thicket of brambles and the seemingly never ending maze of trees. My mind raced as I tried to remember how I ever got myself into this nightmare of a situation.
This was just supposed to be a simple camping trip to bring the soccer team I am….was on, closer together, a sort of team bonding if you will. Nothing was supposed to go this far. It wasn’t meant to get this terrifying……deadly even.
My best friend and I had a simple prank planned. It was just some good natured fun….where did it all go wrong?
Perhaps it was at the campfire. Yes, everything seemed to be going according to plan until then.
“Avalon! Get your nose out of that novel before I eat your hotdog myself!” Chelsea, one of the newer members of our team, called in her ever prestigious and annoyingly preppy valley girl voice.
“Alright already, I get it! I’m coming just as soon as I finish this page! Excuse me for trying to get to a decent stopping place before I run out of daylight. Some of us, namely me really, don’t exactly like reading with a head lamp on.” I groaned in a slightly sarcastic tone while carefully moving my bookmark into place and grabbing my dinner from the outstretched hands of my best friend.
“Ava, you truly are a mystery at times. We are in the middle of this beautiful forest with real people that you can talk to all around us, and all you want to do is have your nose buried in a book filled with fictional nonsense!” Caitlyn, my best friend since grade school, taunted, snatching my book from my hands and placing it in the safety of my backpack, since it was close to her anyway. Caiti and I always tease each other like this, and we always have. It’s just how the dynamic of our friendship works.
“Caiti, you’re no better than I am, and you know it! You can be just as antisocial as I can, even more than I am on occasion!” I quipped back, sticking my tongue out at her at the end of my statement to add an essence of humor to my remark.
“Would you all just be quiet and eat your food like civilized human beings! Some of us would like to play some games before it gets too dark! And, clearly, you don’t want to make s’mores later if you won’t shut up!” Taylor screeched, letting her temper get the better of her once again. She has always had a problem with keeping her temper in check.
“Girls, there is no need to argue about this. Taylor, we will have plenty of time to do everything on the schedule for tonight, so can we all calm down or we can all go back to our cabin right now and not get to do anything fun until tomorrow.” Coach Marie threatened in an almost joking manner, and it was extremely apparent, but it still brought silence to the whole team.
“That’s what I thought….now, how about after we all finish eating our food we start the ‘games’ with a few trust exercises.” Our coach exclaimed in her normal cheery voice.
A collective groan rippled through the entire team at that notion. It was a well-known fact at our school that the whole of our team, fourteen girls including myself, had a difficult time with anything involving trust, and that was due to the deep-seated trust issues most of us had with one another. Most notably, Caitlyn and myself.
Caitlyn and I are both outcasts on our team because, unlike the rest of our team, we are ‘bookworms’ and not socialites. Fitting in on this team has always been hard for us, and the fact that the other girls weren’t always that kind towards us didn’t help with the trust problems on the team, but all of that was about to change.
Caitlyn and I had been planning a fun little prank to play on the rest of the team for a few months now. We cooked up a little plot to get the others to trust us, at least a little bit, then we could ever so subtly try and resolve the trust issues on the team.
Our plan was ingenious, Caitlyn would sneak off into the woods and I would tell the team a little fib that I saw a strange person grab her and drag her off into the woods. While I lead the team on a ‘search’ for her, she would be back in our cabin putting on stage makeup to make it look like she was knocked out and making it look like she was tied up.
But, I would have to wait a little bit to enact that part of our plan because while I was participating in the trust exercises, Caitlyn would be setting up little surprises in the woods for me to trigger and then ‘save the team from.’ Of course, it would all be fake. We don’t want to hurt anybody, but we do want to put an end to the endless trust exercises that none of us liked.
“Alright girls, time for some trust exercises!” Coach Marie exclaimed once she saw that everybody had finished their dinner. It was that exclamation that snapped me out of my trance-like state that I go into whenever I get lost in my thoughts. Once I realized that it was time to put the first phase of our plan into motion, I turned towards my partner in crime to signal to her that it was time, but she was already working on an excuse to leave the group.
“Coach Marie!” Caitlyn called, “I’m not feeling too well. May I go lay down in the cabin instead of participating in the activities?”
Caitlyn has always been great at acting, so it was no surprise that our coach immediately agreed to her statement when she heard the groggy, pained tone that was delicately laced into her voice and saw her clutching her temples as if she had some sort of headache.
“Oh you poor thing!” Coach Marie exclaimed, sympathy lacing her now quieter voice. “Of course you can go and lay down if you feel that bad. Does anyone need to walk you there?”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine to walk to the cabin by myself, besides, it’s just around the corner.” Caitlyn said sheepishly as she slowly got to her feet and started to walk, ever so slowly, in the direction of the cabin. As she passed me, she winked in my direction to tell me that she wasn’t really going to the cabin.
“Okay….if you’re sure then go get some rest and hopefully you can join us for drills in the morning. Goodnight Caitlyn! Feel better!” Coach Marie called in a motherly voice after Caitlyn’s retreating figure.
I followed after my friend, trying to paint a concerned look on my face so it would really complete the act.  Once she rounded the corner on the path that lead toward our cabin, her posture immediately straightened and her entire demeanor changed. She glanced around, as if to see if anyone had followed her. Luckily, I’ve had enough experience with this type of behavior to know to hide when it is displayed.
Once she was satisfied that no one had followed her, she relaxed and a sly smirk slithered its way onto her normally kind face as she started to swagger towards the forest. There was a sort of darkness in her that unnerved me slightly. This was a side of my best friend that I had never seen before, and I didn’t like it one bit.
As I stood there, gaping after my friend’s retreating figure, wondering if I ever really knew the girl at all, something caught my attention.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw, or at least thought I saw, an almost animalistic man watching our team, more specifically Caitlyn and, by default, myself, in the way a lion would stalk its prey before going in for the kill.
I gasped out of the pure shock, there wasn’t supposed to be anybody here but our team. However, this action caused Caitlyn to turn around to see if she could pin point where the noise came from. I quickly dashed behind the corner again at the first sign of her movement to look in my direction. I waited a few seconds, trying to get my breathing back under control as I heard her walking towards my general vicinity.
After what felt like an eternity, I finally heard her footsteps retreating once more. I nearly sighed in relief, but I didn’t want to draw her attention to my hiding spot again.
Ever so slowly, I crept back around the corner only to find that Caitlyn was now far enough into the woods to not hear my heavy breathing. That was a relief in itself.
I decided to glance back at where I thought I saw the man only to find nothing there. There wasn’t even any sign that he was ever there, judging from my standpoint. Perhaps it had just been a trick of the light on my eyes. After all, it was almost dark and I only saw the outline of him. Maybe, my eyes were just tired and I only saw the figure because of the poor lighting. Besides, there wasn’t even anybody here but our soccer team, so the poor lighting playing tricks on my eyes made a lot more sense to my frazzled mind at the moment.
So, with a shake of my head, I pushed the ‘irrational’ notion to the back of my mind, convincing myself that it was just a trick of the light, and started to jog back to the others who were already pairing up for trust exercises. Whatever I had just seen was not going to screw up my plan, so I just put on my best fake smile and began to play my part as the distraction.