WOODS

chapter one: the entering

I opened my eyes but it took a while for them to adjust to the darkness. Eventually I started to recognize the shapes of trees; I was in a forest. But apparently I wasn't alone, there was someone, or something, rustling on the other side of the tree my back was leaned against. I tried to get up to see what it was but I suddenlyrealized that I was tied to the tree with a rope, I couldn't move an inch.

"Hello?", an utterly familiar voice asked. "Is somebody there?" "Mallory? Is that you?" To say I was confused would be a huge understatement. "God Felix, what the fuck are you doing here?" It sounded like she chose to be here, tied to a tree, at night, in the middle of the woods. Because that wasn't strange at all. "I could ask you the same thing", I replied while trying to loosen up the rope and failing miserably. "Okay, well give me a second." Curious what she was talking about I tried to glimpse around the corner. "What are you doing?" She sighed. "I'm gonna get us out of here, dumbass."

I didn't even bother responding, I was used to her insulting me by now. It was just a thing best friends did and it was never serious anyway. Even when she was grumpy and had a bad day she would never say anything to truly hurt me. We had known each other since we were toddlers after all.

I gazed into the distance for a while until I suddenly saw a shadow run by in the corner of my eye. But just as I was about to tell her, Mallory walked around the tree. "Need some help?", she asked, holding up her trusty knife while crouching down in front of me. I nodded and she immediately began to cut through the rope.

A few minutes later I was finally free and able to move again. She helped me up and even though my legs still felt kind of numb, we started to look around. "Where the hell are we?" "I'm not entirely sure but if I had to bet I'd say we're in a forest." I let out a deep sigh. "Mallory, this really isn't the time to be sassy. We need to figure out how we got here and who did this to us." "I know!", she exclaimed and looked at me with a mysterious expression on her face. "It was the black eyed." "You and your conspiracy theories", I laughed before rolling my eyes at her. "But this is serious. We got kidnapped!"

Now she was the one rolling her eyes. "Relax, it was probably just a stupid prank. No big deal." "No big deal?", I asked, looking at her with my mouth wide open. "We got tied to a tree in the middle of the woods without having a single clue what happened before we got knocked out! It could be god knows how late." "Okay", she sighed. "Maybe a big deal."

We started exploring but there was nothing around, only trees and darkness. However we didn't have much of a choice. The only thing we could do was aimlessly wander through the woods, hoping we'd find a way out.