How Not To Be A Vampire

One

"Ready or not, here I come!" I hear the voice of my friend, Jared, echo through the trees and send a chill up my spine.

That, and the light breeze in the air. Fall was here so it wouldn't be long until it would be too cold to play hide and seek in the middle of the night. But it was tradition between my group of friends and I that we play hide and seek at night in the forest, on the first day of October, and the last day of October. Don't ask why this is our tradition, it just is.

I sat happily on the thick branch of the tree I had climbed, resting my back against the tree as I waited patiently to be found. They most likely won't find me though, I am the absolute best at hide and seek and it's too dark out for Jared, or anyone else, to see me smugly perched in this tree.

"Got ya!" Jared's voice echoed a few trees away from me.

"I always get found first! This game is rigged." Timothy's voice yelled out and I could hear him angrily stomp towards the end of the woods, where you were supposed to wait after being found.

"Paris, Riley, what are you doing?! You're supposed to be hiding." I hear Jared say, this time closer to the tree I was in but not close enough that I could see them in the darkness below me.

"We heard something!" Paris says, and by the tone of her voice I can tell she's scared.

"Someone else is in these woods so we need to go, you know my mom will kill me if she finds me out in these woods, man!" Riley says to Jared and I hear Jared let out an annoyed sigh.

"You guys always do this, there is nothing-"

A few bushes rustled loudly in the distance and something that sounded like coyotes howling, echoed throughout the forest and made the hair on my arms stand up in fear.

"Do you believe there's something out there now?!" Paris shrieked.

"Let's get out of here." Jared said and soon I heard the three sets of footsteps run off towards the way we came in.

"Guys, wait!" I yell out, grabbing on to the branch underneath me and swinging down onto the branch below me. There was no answer because they were long gone.

"I can't believe those assholes ditched me." I mumble in disbelief. I shake my head, more angry than scared at this point as I continue to make my way down the large tree.

I was about two branches up from the ground when I heard footsteps, fast footsteps. I was so caught off guard by the sudden noise that my foot slipped off of the branch I was standing on and I started to fall. I somehow managed to catch myself on another branch, but my knee scraped against the bark of the tree and I bit my lip at the stinging pain as I felt small trickles of blood start to ooze from the fresh wound.

Great. Just great.

The footsteps grew louder as they got closer and the closer they got the more I realized it wasn't one pair of footsteps I was hearing. It was multiple.

Suddenly the footsteps came to a halt right below the tree I was currently hanging from and I closed my eyes, praying that whoever - or whatever - it was on the ground would continue on its way. My prayers however were not answered, and whatever was below me started to speak.

"Why are we stopped? Did you forget we are running for our lives? Or do you want to die?" the voice spoke and I relaxed a little knowing it was just another person and not coyotes that would eat me alive.

"Again." a different voice spoke.

"What?" the first voice spoke.

"It would be, do you want to die again." the second voice spoke and my body tensed again.