Warnings From The Woods

It’s dangerous to go into the woods alone. There can be many things that can bring you harm, some bring immediate peril and some you don’t realize are evil until it is too late. “Hah! I’m not scared of anything!” one man proudly exclaimed before entering the woods alone, carelessly stomping on the flower-filled ground. Unfortunately for this man, his fate was sealed the moment he stepped into the forest disrespectfully as he already provoked the wrath of a vile force scattered through the trees.

The man confidently walked for many minutes with nothing but the clothes on his back and a half-drunk bottle of beer. Despite hearing of the many dangers that could come from the deep parts of the woods, the man continued his trek, not believing in the intensity of the stories. He walked for about an hour, and after deciding for himself that the stories he had heard were all dramatized and false, he decided to turn back. “Well that about does it,” he spoke to himself, “all those stories about the trees coming to life and dangerous animals were fake after all… Hah! They all owe me $20 now!”

He walked with even more confidence, bringing the half-finished beer bottle up to his face. However, before he could take a sip, a squirrel jumped down from a tree and knocked the bottle out of his hand, spilling the beer all over the ground. “Ah! You dumb rat! Get back here!” The man yelled and tried to chase the squirrel, further and further into the woods. He chased the squirrel for hours with the squirrel occasionally looking back and waiting, as if it wanted the man to continue to follow it. Eventually, the squirrel ran up a tree and disappeared into the leaves, leaving the angry tired man alone in the middle of the woods. “Dammit…where am I?” he asked himself. As he tried to look for a direction out, a bright light formed in his peripheral vision. He turned to look and a small light was floating some feet away from him. “Eh? What’s that thing?” he asked the light. The light only bobbed up and down and flew in a circular pattern to get his attention before going in a slow steady direction away from him. “Oh? You’re gonna show me the way out? Alright then lead the way.” The man happily followed the floating light which seemed to understand its way through the trees.

The man whistles a cheery tune while he follows the light blindly. The light seemed to dance around to the tune which made the man laugh. “So you like the sound of my whistling eh?” The man continues to whistle louder which makes the light dance around more wildly. The man too began to add a little hop to each step as the two continued for a while before the whistling was immediately halted. As the man jumped around, he failed to notice the downward slope he was approaching, and somehow he ended up getting his foot stuck under an elevated tree root causing him to stumble forward. The man’s whistling turned to a scream as he rolled down the slope, with a grunt every time his face ended up against the ground. After a short fall, he ended up landing in a pile of bright blue flowers that broke most of the fall. The man got up, rubbing his injured head, and looked around at the flowers that surrounded him, then at the ones that broke his fall, now entirely uprooted. “Huh, nothing hurts, weird.” He looks over himself and outside of having quite a few cuts and bruises all over his body, he seemed perfectly fine. “Dumb light bug thing made me fall all the way down here.” He says to himself while he looks up the slope he rolled down from. He tried to climb back up but the dirt was so loose that he would slip back down without even making a foot up. As he tried to come up with a way up he could see a light shining from behind. He turned to see now three floating lights waiting for him.

“Hey! What the hell was that about!? Leading me off a cliff like that!?” The man shouts at the lights as he moves his way through the crowd of mushrooms. The lights begin to frantically fly away with the man giving chase soon after. He chases the lights through the trees, with little care about where he’s going or where he’s stepping. Quite a few times throughout the chase he ends up tripping and falling, crashing into a tree, or getting whacked by a branch leaving him with a few more scratches and bruises when he eventually stops. He finds himself face to face with a large cave with the lights flying deep into it. He feels exhausted, though when he looks up it seems to still be the middle of the day. “It feels like I’ve been running around here for hours but it doesn’t look like that much time changed. Did I pass out when I fell? Guess I check the cave till the sun goes down some,” he says to himself as he stumbles into the cave.

Barely taking a few steps into the cave and it has already become impossible to see much further beyond where he was. Being only able to see a few inches in front of his face he decides to turn back instead of continuing the exploration, however, he quickly found himself a new problem. “What the-” Somehow the entrance of the cave was far off into the distance with the light that was shining in growing dimmer and smaller. “But I barely walked in, that can’t be right.” Fear soon starts to kick in and the man begins to run towards the light as it too continues to run away from him. He stumbles and trips and almost falls quite a few times but after a few long minutes he reaches the light, and it was not what he was hoping to find. Out of breath, he says, “Wait…this isn’t,” The light source turned out not to be the cave entrance, but one of the floating lights that flew in. “Great, you again!” Instead of turning into satisfaction, the man’s fear had turned into anger at this floating light. “I have had enough, of this cave, and these woods, and of all of you bugs!” With a big swing, the man tries to attack the light but the light is easily able to fly out of the way and the man instead ended up hitting something else.

First came a sense of disappointment as the man failed to hit the floating light. Then came a wave of confusion as his fist did make contact with something, but that something was warm and soft. “Eh?” Before the man has a chance to gather his thoughts the warm and soft thing moves away from his fist and a ferocious roar comes from right in front of him. He knew what he hit as soon as he heard. He turned tail and ran in the opposite direction. He could hear the creature starting to chase after him. Before he knew it he was right back at the entrance, and although he already knew the beast he had found, he was still shocked to see it, a large grizzly bear.

He continued to run and scream as this large 700-pound bear closed in on him. He tried to lose the bear in the trees but the bear was already too close and managed to hit him hard. The bear hit the man on his arm and caused him to fly into a tree. The air had completely left his lungs as he collapses on the ground, landing on his newly injured arm. The bear had closed in on him and pressed down on him with its paws. If there was anything in his lungs the bear would have known he was alive, but thanks to the initial hit he managed to stay quiet, and after a few moments the bear began to lose interest in the motionless body. The bear retreated to its cave den but not without leaving the man with some much more major injuries.

The man is barely able to get himself back on his feet, clutching onto his chest first then his arm. He stumbles through the woods with a serious limp for what feels like hours. The sun was even more intense than when he first entered and the dehydration from the series of events was getting to him. He walks through the forest, the same scenery everywhere he goes, he can no longer see the cave or the hill anymore. Everything around him was nothing but the same pattern of trees that stretched out seemingly forever. Eventually, he got too tired to continue and decided to sit against a tree to rest. He leans against the tree and his vision begins to fade as he starts to fall into unconsciousness.

A bright light shines in from behind his shut eyes which gives him more strength, at least enough to open his eyes. He finds himself surrounded by multiple small lights, the same ones that he had been following. A small smile formed on his face as he began to think he was safe. He happily watches them dance around him as he believes they were going to guide him once again. The light fades away as the man continues to feel more of his strength returning to him. Once the lights finally faded, a look of absolute horror came across the man’s face.

The creatures are all small in size with skin-like torn wings. The bodies are thin and boney with talons and a round skull head without eyes. The creatures’ mouths all opened wide with tiny sharp teeth and began to close in on the man. He tried to look for a way out, but as he scanned the surrounding area the world began to change. The trees began to rot, and the flowers wilted away, even the sun vanished and was replaced by a full moon. The entire world around him had decayed and all that was left was a graveyard of dead plants. He then realized that he was no longer able to move or speak, his entire body was paralyzed and all he could do is watch as his entire body was slowly being covered by these creatures.

The creatures slowly began to sink their teeth into the man’s skin. Their sharp teeth effortlessly pierced through the man’s skin, taking out small chunk by small chunk. Other creatures would skill hover slightly away and make efforts to give off more light. This would not only make his body start to regenerate and rejuvenate but more importantly, keep the man fully conscious during the entire process. He felt every set of sharp teeth, every bite being taken out, and the sensation of his body trying to grow back what was lost, which ended up being an arguably more painful process. The man could do nothing but sit there and wait for himself to be eaten. After many hours of slow and painful feeding, the creatures separated from the pile of bones that remained. A skeleton of the man now rests against a rotted tree, with a lone glass bottle no more than a few feet away.

“I can’t believe I agreed to this.” A young boy says as he walks into the woods, “This has got to be the worst dare ever. I really don’t want to do this. Especially not after that man disappeared a couple of months back.” He walks cautiously with a shiver in his step, “It’s ok, this is ok. Doesn’t seem that bad.” As he walks something strange catches his eye. He walks over to what he saw and begins to question it. “What the, a bottle? What’s this doing here?” He begins to turn one way but he is quickly stopped by something in the distance. He turns to see a small bright light some trees away, floating about in an alluring way. All the boy’s fears disappear at the sight of the light. “No way!” He calls out, “That’s like a fairy or something right!? Those guide people in forests right?” He then goes to chase after it, following it deeper into the woods.