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Run! Run! It’s the only thing she could do. She didn’t have time to think. She was lost, disoriented, and terrorized. But, she had been running for what seemed an eternity. She thought, “If only I could lie down for a few moments to catch my breath, maybe the answers would come to me.” All she could ask herself was, “How could such a creature exist, and more importantly, was I, in some way, responsible for it being alive.”
She tried to erase the image of its face, but the increased effort only brought forth the vision of its dead eyes and sockets...sockets that oozed what could only be described as glowing red blood.
Maybe she could rest now. Perhaps she had run far away from where she last encountered the Creature? For now, she had no choice but to stop and rest.
The brush was thick and dense. She thought, “If I immerse myself far enough inside the foliage, maybe I would be able to hide well enough not to be seen?” Then, she spotted the hulking menace some 30 meters away. Even at that distance, it was incredibly tall, over seven feet, maybe even eight. She could see its skin, if that what you could call it that, skin that was once living flesh, looking more like living petrified stone. It was rough and cracked. Everything about its body repulsed her, but more so by its grotesquely disfigured face.
She hid in the foliage, and her hands trembled as they moved around to find anything that could be used as a weapon. She felt something protruding from the earth. It was a large, partially buried stone lying half in the ground. She pulled upward until it was dislodged. She picked it up and held it tightly in her right hand. She wasn’t sure how she might do it, but she was poised to use it to defend herself.
As the monstrosity grew closer, an inner voice told her to throw it as far as she could in the opposite direction from her hiding place.
She threw it as hard as she could. She knew the stone was large enough to cause several branches to break and scatter as it traveled through the air. It was so large when it came down; it did so with a giant thud.
She thought to herself, “That should do the trick! That’ll make him go in the wrong direction!” She struggled to maintain her composure so as not to reveal her position.
The Creature reacted to the sound of the rock as it crashed down. It stopped its advancement and stood there motionless. Then, it took one step towards it but suddenly stopped.
It’s head slowly turned in a clock-ward movement until it stopped, its red eyes focused on exactly where she was hiding. It started to move once again in her direction.
“No, no. No, no. Go the other way!” she thought to herself. “Go the other way!”
She knew it was for naught. Her relentless pursuer was coming for her. She knew her only chance was to remove herself from the dense foliage and run.
She stood and began to move away, but she felt her ankle being held back. The more she tried to move away, the more the pull on her ankle became. “What the....? It couldn’t be the Creature. It’s not that close.”
She turned her head around and could still see it was moving and had not reached her location.
She reached towards her ankle and realized it had been caught in the foliage. Her first impulse was to pull on it frantically, which only served to tighten the grip and make things worse.
As she continued to free herself, a cold chill ran across her body. She knew she had to turn around but also knew it would not be a pleasant sight. She had no choice and slowly looked over her right shoulder. When she did, she saw the monster standing over her.
The first thing that came to mind was, “How the Hell did I get myself in this situation?”
It’s said that a person’s life flashes before them in the moments before their death. But in her case, the events that flashed before her were those that had led up to her being where she was now - the events that took place months earlier raced through her mind at incredible speed...