“Stay on the trail and don’t talk to anyone,” Mommy says. “And for god’s sake,
Elizabeth, take off that stupid red hoodie! It’s one hundred degrees today!”
Mommy’s always talking, always worrying, always pestering me.
“I can take care of myself!” I’d scream.
I wasn’t some dumb little girl who could fall for tricks. I knew better than that. I wouldn’t
take candy from a stranger or get into an unknown man’s car.
Our apartment, aptly named Trailpoint, was built in the middle of a forest, with trails that
fan out from the ten buildings in the complex, like octopus tentacles leading you into a
labyrinth of woods. Each trail has signs from the leasing office marking where it begins
and where it ends. I found a trail right outside my apartment, where the leasing office
hadn’t put up a sign.
Must be a shortcut.
I parted the low-hanging branches and broken tree limbs. I could now understand why
there was no sign to its entrance; this trail was primitive, and it wasn’t even paved—just
dirt and rocks creating the appearance of a clearing. The morning fog hung low,
wrapping itself around the dark trees. The smell of death and damp earth filled the air.
I put my headphones on, pulled my red hoodie down, and began my walk down the trail
to school, clinching the straps on my backpack. There were no flowers, birds, or
squirrels that I would typically hear scurrying up trees, or the rustling of leaves as the
animals ran through them. In the distance, there was a hollow tree trunk covered in
dead pine needles with bell and cone-shaped mushrooms, and bones scattered around
its trunk. Animal bones, I think, I hope.
No wind blew, and there was no movement in the forest as if life never existed there.
But I was there, and had been walking for what seemed like hours, but the sun never
rose, and the time on my phone never changed.
I was lost.
Just then, I saw someone ahead of me, a girl, far off in the distance—backpack, red
hoodie, just like mine.
“Hey! Can you help me? I think I’m lost!”
But she couldn’t hear me, and just when I started to run towards her, she ran to hide
behind a tree, looking out ahead of her. I can see her mouth opening wide with what
looks like a scream, but no noise comes from her mouth. Her eyes are wide with fear.
Out of the hollow tree stump crawls a creature bigger than a dog and larger than a wolf.
She never had a second to run. The creature’s mouth distends to an unnatural size and
swallows the girl headfirst, her legs waving left and right as the beast takes big gulps,
getting her body down its ever-expanding throat.
I ran and hid behind the tree, looking out.
Behind me, a noise rustles from the hollow tree stump.
Darkness.
Fangs piercing my neck.
