Joel Miller

You are stupid. So stupid. That’s what Joel thinks as he watches you and your friends get plastered in the middle of nowhere, your phones all dead, your tents shoddy and moth bitten, your campfire roaring and flickering far too much. The spiralling smoke curls in the forest air, creating a beacon that paints you and your friends as targets to Joel.

Huddled around the crackling fire, you and your friends are roasting marshmallows, sandwiching the charred mallows between graham crackers and cheap chocolate, stickiness coating your fingers.

Fuck , you drank way too much soda... and maybe a beer, or two, but who’s counting? You slide your crocs on and trudge through the muddy forest, waving halfheartedly to your friends as leave to you find somewhere to pee, shivering slightly in the cold air, your pyjamas doing little to keep you warm.

You’ve done your business, and you’re pulling your bottoms up when you hear a scream. Not a ‘there’s a bug crawling on me!’ scream from your best friend, or a ‘I burnt my toe on the fire again!’ scream from your friend group’s resident dumbass, no. Something’s wrong.

Shit. Was someone hurt? Did something happen? Is there a psycho murderer in the forest coming to kill you? No, that’s stupid, this isn’t the Scream franchise. Maybe camping in a forest not regulated for camping was a bad idea. Just maybe.

You stumble back to the campsite, it’s far too dark to see anything. The darkness, it’s thick. Absolute. The campfire has dwindled down to sparks, an abandoned, flickering flashlight left on the ground being your only guiding beacon back to camp.

The scent hits you before you see it. Coppery, slightly sweet and metallic. Your foot hits something. A pack of matches. You’re opening it up and counting the number of matches inside, walking around the tents in search of someone when you hear a groan, a sort of gurgling noise.

Your friends. On the ground, barely alive. Your mouth opens in a silent scream as you take in the sights of them, their faces being illuminated by the crappy flashlight. There lies your best friend, her head smashed in with a rusty crowbar, her temple grotesquely caved in, the metal embedded into her skull, gore splattered across her face. You don’t even have time to look at the rest of them before you’re turning around, hightailing it out of there.

You’ve never known darkness like this.

There was no moon, no stars, no relief from the smothering, blinding darkness. It was just...black. The kind that makes your head swim, makes your ears strain for sounds that aren’t there. Or ones that are. You don’t know what’s worse.

---

You’ve been running for what feels like forever. You don’t know how long it has been. Seconds, minutes, hours? The distant emptiness in your stomach makes you guess it’s been days.

Your lungs burn, your legs are lead, each step feeling heavier than the last. The underbrush fights against you like mangled hands—branches clawing at the flesh of your arms, brambles catching on the exposed skin of your thighs. The uneven ground is a cruel thing, tripping you up again and again, sending you crashing into tree trunks, the bark scraping into your palms as you barely catch yourself before hitting the dirt.

But you don’t stop, not once. Someone or something is behind you. You don’t know how close, or how far. But their footsteps are heavy, dull, incessant. Thudding just out of reach, just close enough to drive you insane. You pull out a match, feel for the strip, and strike it fast.

The spark flares bright, too bright, your pupils contracting hard. The flame wavers between your fingers, small and flickering, but enough to push the dark back. Enough to let you see—

A reflection.

You squint, trying to make sense of it. Not water, but almost like glass—warped, uneven. Then you see it. A round, fogged-over lens, slightly misshapen, reflecting the weak glow of the match. Another next to it. Not eyes, but something meant to mimic them. And metal. A hard, curved surface, dark but slick enough to catch the light, the shape of it unmistakable now.

A gas mask.

The figure doesn’t move. Your match goes out. Four left.

You fumble for another one, strike it fast. You see nothing. But then—

You hear him before you see him.

“Gotcha, kiddo.”

Something presses against your face before you can scream. Cloth, warm from body heat. Your hands shoot up too late, fingers grasping uselessly at a grip too strong. The scent floods in fast, thick and sickly sweet, curling through your lungs as you gasp.

The match drops from your fingers, the light immediately snuffing out as it hits the dirt. Your limbs go weak, your thoughts stutter, tilt, and a numbness spreads through you like ink in water.

And then, like the night around you, your vision goes black.