05-24-2017, 05:07 PM
Emily inhaled the last sizzling ounces of smoke, offered by their doomed fire made from wet wood. Her eyes fell up and down everyone, sizing them up, speculating on their survival, but the truth was, there was no way to even guess what was out there, beyond these woods. They could find a safe house the second they got moving and be fine. The odds of that however, were slimmer than none.
This was a wasteland, looked like it was just out of a horror movie, dark, dismal, depressing, dank-smelling, deathly. She didn’t know why all “d” adjectives came to mind, but each one seemed to fit better than the last. Now her thoughts streamed the most important information school could never give her, how to live. “Listen, we have to keep going, that thing must have an extraordinary sense of smell.” No amount of deodorant could keep it off their tails for long. No amount of anything if it came back for seconds.
Slowly, one by one, the students gathered in a train, most had a stick to use as a bat and most of the girls followed closely behind a stick-wielding guy. Single-file, it continued, their trek into the unknown, step by step, attempting to make sense of the impossible. Twigs crunching under toe like the breaking of bones. The air stagnant with no breeze, making time feel eternal, when mere minutes had passed.
Unsurprisingly, Emily took the lead, though she didn’t know where she was going any better than Trisha at the back of the line, but she didn’t trust her life to the amateurs behind her either. “Make sure everyone keeps up, this fog is murky and it could get really thick.” Emily looked over her shoulder as she passed on the message. Everyone was there, sweaty, dirty, eyes bulging with nerves but they were alive.
The haunting fog reminded her of untold phantoms lurking from the corners of shadows, it was alive too, pulsating as it sucked in their energy like an omnipresent force, watching as swamps usually seem to do. Watchful, yet without eyes.
The slop of mud glued stickier with every sinking step of their tennis shoes, plunging deeper into the stinking decay, every step shackled them like anchors as they tried to trudge forward. The time was heeding their progress but at this point it didn’t seem like whatever it was that had killed Claire was following them, maybe they were safe, and with that idea, came a much needed relief of the burden that was fighting for their lives. The taste of humid mist fell on Em’s tongue as her nose sniffed it all in. The process was slow, every step she took, she made sure to scan her surroundings. Pale, leafless trees grew all around her, drowning in mud just as her ankles were; in the growing darkness, their branches unfurled into the darkling twilight and appeared as a cross of pirates’ hooks, forgotten animal bones, and the sithe of the Grim Reaper himself.
The eeriness was daunting, Emily’s eyes widened and she realized there was silence. What she should have heard was breathing and groans about how the murk they were venturing through was going to give them gangrene. Shit! she cursed under her breath as she whipped around, what she found wasn’t a surprise to her.
An embankment of fog. Pure and pearly white, seemingly harmless, if you didn’t lose yourself in it. The others, though,shit.
“Mitch? Alex?” Em called to them, she heard only an echo of her voice dissipating in the twilight, engulfed in the white smaug, and then a raven’s grim call. The fact that no one was within even earshot was the worst news yet. They could’ve all been sucked down by the swamp, or taken like the garbage disposal monster in Star Wars. Emily hastened her step, but it would do no good for her to get panicked, nothing good ever came of impulse when it came to survival. She couldn’t keep calling out to her group, not if it would call attention to her.
Emily could feel them. The predators, the carnivorous eyes of those monsters she couldn’t see, behind the ever-shifting wall of white, she felt them all on her beating heart. The flood of red-hot blood in her veins pounding away faster and faster as the fear accelerated within her. She was the prey, and like a scared rabbit, she froze.
Meanwhile…
“Mitch? Mitch? Em?” Alex’s call was met with unnerving silence. “Shit,” Alex said under his breath as he tried to remember the order they’d lined up in. Em first, then Mitch, then Linny, then himself, and the others were behind him. Slowly Linny’s pace had increased, her shoulders fading as though they’d gotten further and further away, he couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact time he’d lost clear sight of her. He had thought the front of the pack would be more safe, as he’d be able to see what was coming at him and prepare, however, it was evident no part of this pack of barely armed college kids were all that threatening to anything that came at them. The only thing they had actually going for them was power in their numbers and they’d just lost it. Everyone had somehow dispersed. Yet they had been right behind him. Right in front of him. Linny’s shoulders, her pastel pink shirt and her soggy swamp-water stained jeans.
The swamp below him was making belching, gurgling noises, alive and craving like a hungry stomach, eager to suck down food faster than it could be digested. Slowly, Alex started to sink and like anyone would, he hastened his pace, sensing the danger and his movements fueled by fear. It seemed rational to run, there was no way to fight a fucking swamp. The mud was thicker, denser, the perfect trapdoor for any creature who depended on feet for transport. “Almighty” humans included. Flesh was food, and whatever monster, he doubted it would discriminate if it was carnivorous, meat was all only a matter of shape and bone.
He jumpstarted his body into a tumbling run, the suction from the mud stuck to both his feet, and Splat! his face fell plunging into the very thing he was running from. The swamp itself, and the very mud he had tread on.
Meanwhile…
“Like, is anyone there?” Trisha called out, if there had been any live crickets, now would’ve been the cue for the chirping to begin.
A swampland is the decomposing skeletal carcass of a forest that was once in bloom, a flower with all its petals plucked and now its stem was withering to death, leaving the seeds to starve until next spring. It was ominous, and you could feel the shift, the lack of thriving life and the suffering struggle of the unexplained parasitic life, sucking up the last of what was left and spitting back up the undigested bone.
There was something about this place, it reminded her vaguely of a graveyard in the same sense. Or rather, a nursing home, a place where people and creatures, came to die. Or dared to cross, if they thought they were worthy enough. Now was the true test.
Trisha’s soggy socks squished with every muddy step, causing her to cringe every time she felt like it. Her eyes swept the fog, she was alone, the fog was suffocating, swamping over her and coating her mind with the unknown fears. Somehow, she’d lost those who were in the lead, but she’d got stuck as the caboose of their people train. As she frequently Tweeted from her phone: Shit happens.
In her pocket she felt its familiarity and pulled it out, reaching for comfort and solace. Her thumbs tapped the keys while the glow illuminated her face with a message saying:
No Service.
Read in the upper left-hand corner of the screen and affirming the truth were the empty bars. She really was alone. Her blue eyes sought answers in all directions, the fog was everywhere, there wasn’t even a tree around and it was getting dark.
“Helloo?” her voice rang while she wiped the stray blonde hairs itching her face back behind her ear and out of sight. “Ugh, it smells disgusting, I couldn’t have been lost on some deserted island or something?”
No, instead she was helpless, clueless, and entirely alone. The most terrifying mixture imaginable. Trisha didn’t even know where to begin. Tears started flooding down her face as she walked forward, she could’ve been walking to her death, off a plank, or a cliff. The unknown terrors were real in her mind, cultivated by fear. She knew it wasn’t a joke or prank now, she knew in her heart of hearts, her fear was too real, too tangible, too consuming. This could very well be the end. And so far, just what had she even been living for?
This was a wasteland, looked like it was just out of a horror movie, dark, dismal, depressing, dank-smelling, deathly. She didn’t know why all “d” adjectives came to mind, but each one seemed to fit better than the last. Now her thoughts streamed the most important information school could never give her, how to live. “Listen, we have to keep going, that thing must have an extraordinary sense of smell.” No amount of deodorant could keep it off their tails for long. No amount of anything if it came back for seconds.
Slowly, one by one, the students gathered in a train, most had a stick to use as a bat and most of the girls followed closely behind a stick-wielding guy. Single-file, it continued, their trek into the unknown, step by step, attempting to make sense of the impossible. Twigs crunching under toe like the breaking of bones. The air stagnant with no breeze, making time feel eternal, when mere minutes had passed.
Unsurprisingly, Emily took the lead, though she didn’t know where she was going any better than Trisha at the back of the line, but she didn’t trust her life to the amateurs behind her either. “Make sure everyone keeps up, this fog is murky and it could get really thick.” Emily looked over her shoulder as she passed on the message. Everyone was there, sweaty, dirty, eyes bulging with nerves but they were alive.
The haunting fog reminded her of untold phantoms lurking from the corners of shadows, it was alive too, pulsating as it sucked in their energy like an omnipresent force, watching as swamps usually seem to do. Watchful, yet without eyes.
The slop of mud glued stickier with every sinking step of their tennis shoes, plunging deeper into the stinking decay, every step shackled them like anchors as they tried to trudge forward. The time was heeding their progress but at this point it didn’t seem like whatever it was that had killed Claire was following them, maybe they were safe, and with that idea, came a much needed relief of the burden that was fighting for their lives. The taste of humid mist fell on Em’s tongue as her nose sniffed it all in. The process was slow, every step she took, she made sure to scan her surroundings. Pale, leafless trees grew all around her, drowning in mud just as her ankles were; in the growing darkness, their branches unfurled into the darkling twilight and appeared as a cross of pirates’ hooks, forgotten animal bones, and the sithe of the Grim Reaper himself.
The eeriness was daunting, Emily’s eyes widened and she realized there was silence. What she should have heard was breathing and groans about how the murk they were venturing through was going to give them gangrene. Shit! she cursed under her breath as she whipped around, what she found wasn’t a surprise to her.
An embankment of fog. Pure and pearly white, seemingly harmless, if you didn’t lose yourself in it. The others, though,shit.
“Mitch? Alex?” Em called to them, she heard only an echo of her voice dissipating in the twilight, engulfed in the white smaug, and then a raven’s grim call. The fact that no one was within even earshot was the worst news yet. They could’ve all been sucked down by the swamp, or taken like the garbage disposal monster in Star Wars. Emily hastened her step, but it would do no good for her to get panicked, nothing good ever came of impulse when it came to survival. She couldn’t keep calling out to her group, not if it would call attention to her.
Emily could feel them. The predators, the carnivorous eyes of those monsters she couldn’t see, behind the ever-shifting wall of white, she felt them all on her beating heart. The flood of red-hot blood in her veins pounding away faster and faster as the fear accelerated within her. She was the prey, and like a scared rabbit, she froze.
Meanwhile…
“Mitch? Mitch? Em?” Alex’s call was met with unnerving silence. “Shit,” Alex said under his breath as he tried to remember the order they’d lined up in. Em first, then Mitch, then Linny, then himself, and the others were behind him. Slowly Linny’s pace had increased, her shoulders fading as though they’d gotten further and further away, he couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact time he’d lost clear sight of her. He had thought the front of the pack would be more safe, as he’d be able to see what was coming at him and prepare, however, it was evident no part of this pack of barely armed college kids were all that threatening to anything that came at them. The only thing they had actually going for them was power in their numbers and they’d just lost it. Everyone had somehow dispersed. Yet they had been right behind him. Right in front of him. Linny’s shoulders, her pastel pink shirt and her soggy swamp-water stained jeans.
The swamp below him was making belching, gurgling noises, alive and craving like a hungry stomach, eager to suck down food faster than it could be digested. Slowly, Alex started to sink and like anyone would, he hastened his pace, sensing the danger and his movements fueled by fear. It seemed rational to run, there was no way to fight a fucking swamp. The mud was thicker, denser, the perfect trapdoor for any creature who depended on feet for transport. “Almighty” humans included. Flesh was food, and whatever monster, he doubted it would discriminate if it was carnivorous, meat was all only a matter of shape and bone.
He jumpstarted his body into a tumbling run, the suction from the mud stuck to both his feet, and Splat! his face fell plunging into the very thing he was running from. The swamp itself, and the very mud he had tread on.
Meanwhile…
“Like, is anyone there?” Trisha called out, if there had been any live crickets, now would’ve been the cue for the chirping to begin.
A swampland is the decomposing skeletal carcass of a forest that was once in bloom, a flower with all its petals plucked and now its stem was withering to death, leaving the seeds to starve until next spring. It was ominous, and you could feel the shift, the lack of thriving life and the suffering struggle of the unexplained parasitic life, sucking up the last of what was left and spitting back up the undigested bone.
There was something about this place, it reminded her vaguely of a graveyard in the same sense. Or rather, a nursing home, a place where people and creatures, came to die. Or dared to cross, if they thought they were worthy enough. Now was the true test.
Trisha’s soggy socks squished with every muddy step, causing her to cringe every time she felt like it. Her eyes swept the fog, she was alone, the fog was suffocating, swamping over her and coating her mind with the unknown fears. Somehow, she’d lost those who were in the lead, but she’d got stuck as the caboose of their people train. As she frequently Tweeted from her phone: Shit happens.
In her pocket she felt its familiarity and pulled it out, reaching for comfort and solace. Her thumbs tapped the keys while the glow illuminated her face with a message saying:
No Service.
Read in the upper left-hand corner of the screen and affirming the truth were the empty bars. She really was alone. Her blue eyes sought answers in all directions, the fog was everywhere, there wasn’t even a tree around and it was getting dark.
“Helloo?” her voice rang while she wiped the stray blonde hairs itching her face back behind her ear and out of sight. “Ugh, it smells disgusting, I couldn’t have been lost on some deserted island or something?”
No, instead she was helpless, clueless, and entirely alone. The most terrifying mixture imaginable. Trisha didn’t even know where to begin. Tears started flooding down her face as she walked forward, she could’ve been walking to her death, off a plank, or a cliff. The unknown terrors were real in her mind, cultivated by fear. She knew it wasn’t a joke or prank now, she knew in her heart of hearts, her fear was too real, too tangible, too consuming. This could very well be the end. And so far, just what had she even been living for?
![[Image: -Gildarts-fairy-tail-35651033-300-180.gif]](http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/35600000/-Gildarts-fairy-tail-35651033-300-180.gif)
"I have never met a strong person with an easy past." -Atticus