PREY

The Night

The snaps of twigs in the near distance left her sitting upright, halfway inside of her sleeping bag. A few more noises came with it but they too grew further away from her tent. Still she sat there for what must have been fifteen minutes, but what felt like an eternity to her.

Every moment she braced herself for some axe wielding psycho to bust into her tent and chop her to pieces but no such maniac came.

Finally she collected herself and assured herself that it was just a deer running amidst the woods. This was in part as she needed to pee, either way it got her out of the tent and walking down the long dirt path to the outhouse. As she walked, the flashlight's beam ripped through the darkness in front of her as she slowly began to recognize where she was going.

As she approached the outhouse, she picked up on a foul smell coming from someplace near. She was pleasantly surprised to find that the outhouse itself was not holding this stench.

When she left the outhouse, she thought to herself that she wouldn't go and investigate where the smell was originating as that would be risking losing where she was. However as she began to walk back to her tent she realized that she was already past the thought of going back to sleep. She then figured if she was already awake that she might as well go check it where the smell was coming from. She couldn't trace it off of the smell but after finding that some of the bushes had seemed to be forcefully pushed aside to make room for a path behind the outhouse she followed reasoned that whatever held this rotten smell must be down this path and so she followed it.

She could almost immediately tell that the horrid, rotten stench was getting stronger and that it must have originated nearby. Finally the path stopped and led into a slight opening where she saw what appeared to be the carcass of a medium sized animal, possibly a deer hunched over she thought. She walked closer and leaned in to see what it was, and suddenly the lantern fell from her hands as she froze in her steps.

What she saw there laying lifelessly on the ground was the body of the old man ripped open. She saw the ripped shirt now held blood behind it as well as a couple more rips on the back side. She threw herself away from the body, she stood up straight and her hands began to shake, she was panicking she looked down at her hands to try and see how bad they were shaking and all she could see was the blood that covered them. Her breaths came in bursts and they shot out rapidly, she didn't know what to do. She just stood there in what felt like slow motion standing above the body, she was in a state of complete pandemonium. Her head was pounding and she couldn't think, it was all too loud for her, she tried to slow her breathes down but nothing could work, she tried to take her eyes off of the mutilated corpse, but couldn't keep her glaze off of it.

She wanted to let out a scream to get somebody's attention so it could all be over but she couldn't get it out of herself. She sat there and she thought if anyone else were to find her they would think she was as lifeless as he. Finally she was able to calm herself down and step away from the body. She backed up into nearby brush. A warm droplet pierced her cold hand and as she looked towards it she saw that all of the brush were covered in the same red substance that crashed onto her hand.

All of the fallen leaves drenched in red.

There was a soft crack of a branch nearby and then silence. If she wasn't already panicking she would never have noticed the almost inaudible crunch. Even when she did hear it she never noticed anything, she only felt something was up. She looked around for what could've made this noise, but all she could think about was what was left of the old man.

Goosebumps arose over her skin and she felt the hairs on her neck rise up, it was almost as if somebody was watching her. But that was impossible, because it was in the middle of the woods and nobody else had been back here besides the old man and her. Still she insisted something was out there watching and she had a bad feeling that whatever snapped that twig was not only stalking her, but close by as well.