Wood splintered as the monster tore through the trees, its fused limbs smashing against trunks, ripping bark away in long wet strips. Blood and something darker sprayed across leaves as it dragged its swollen mass forward, the many faces embedded in its flesh twisting and stretching as if trying to crawl free. It was an abomination of mangled bloody flesh with the faces of all our dead friends placed on various places on it's grotesque body

  Not one but many voices surrounded us. Not speaking

  Laughing

  Wood splintered as the monster tore through the trees, its fused limbs smashing against trunks, ripping bark away in long wet strips. Blood and something darker sprayed across leaves as it dragged its swollen mass forward, the many faces embedded in its flesh twisting and stretching as if trying to crawl free

  ''Run, run faster!'', it shrieked

  ''That's worked out for the rest of your friends hasn't hahaha now they all join me but don't worry I'll let you meet them as well, but I'll wait and wait until you get tastier more savoury hehehe''

  'It's right day after day we have just done the same thing and expected a different outcome. Just running with no direction. Trapped here hopeless. Arghh I hate it so much. We don't have a plan, we don't even have a direction, we just panic and move and hope it picks someone else, and I hate that part of me that hopes that, I hate that I think like that, but I don't want to die, I don't, I don't care if that makes me selfish or disgusting, I just don't want to be the one it catches, I don't want to hear it laughing behind me and know it's my turn, I'm not ready, I'm not ready, I'm not ready. Why can't any of them just die so I can live! I might have to do what I did to Lukas again'

  Soren glances back just for a second

  Adrian is slightly ahead but not by much, his shoulders slumped, his steps uneven, he is tiring and he is trying not to show it, his head snapping back every few strides to check the distance between us and the thing crashing through the trees

  Vera is right beside him. Not behind him. Not ahead. Beside

  Close enough that their arms almost brush every few steps, her hand hovering near his sleeve like she is ready to grab him at any second. She is not even pretending anymore

  She knows

  She keeps him within reach, keeps herself angled so I cannot slip between them, cannot fall in behind him the way I did with Lukas

  She is guarding him not from the monster but me. My eyes measure the distance anyway. If Adrian stumbles and she does not see it fast enough. If the ground dips. If I accelerate. If I clip his heel just slightly. My gaze drifts lower, to his feet, to the rhythm of his stride, calculating without meaning to

  Then Vera looks at me. Just for a second. Our eyes lock. There is no confusion there. No doubt. She knows exactly what I am thinking. Her jaw tightens and she shifts closer to Adrian, almost shoving him forward, placing herself half a step behind him now, daring me to try

  The message is clear. Not again I won't let you. I look away first and not because I feel guilty, but because there is no opening. Not with her watching me like that

  'But do I feel guilty though. Am I really thinking of sending my childhood friend to death? I could do it to Lukas even though it seemed quick in the moment it was still weighs me down too much, but Adrian that will break me, I can't make up any bullshit justifications for that'

  My chest tightens and I look forward again, forcing my legs to keep pace, forcing my breathing to stay steady even though my thoughts are anything but

  She thinks I'm a monster

  Maybe I am

  Sofia flashes into my mind before I can stop it. The way she sat there those last few days, hollow and shaking, asking for help without ever actually saying the words. I saw it. I knew. I could have sat beside her. Could have talked to her. Could have done something

  I didn't

  Because a part of me had already decided she was next

  I told myself she was too far gone. Too broken. That helping her would just drain me. That it wouldn't change anything. That the monster would take her anyway and when she died, when we found her hanging there, I felt horror. But I also felt relief. The memory makes bile rise in my throat

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  Then Lukas

  The sound of his foot catching mine. The shock in his face. The split second where he understood. I still see it sometimes when I close my eyes. I didn't hesitate I told myself it was instinct. Survival. That anyone would have done the same if they were about to die. Would they? I clench my fists as I run. What was I supposed to do? Let it take me? Let myself be ripped apart just so I could die with clean hands? That's stupid. That's pointless. Dead is dead. Morals don't matter when you're meat

  That's what I keep telling myself

  If I hadn't tripped Lukas I would be the one buried in that thing's flesh. If I had wasted energy saving Sofia maybe I would have been weaker when it came for us. Maybe I wouldn't have been fast enough

  Every choice I made kept me alive

  That has to mean something

  Right?

  But then why does it feel like something inside me is rotting

  Why does every step feel heavier

  Vera runs ahead, still shielding Adrian, and I feel anger spike again because she's making me the villain in her head, she's forcing me into that role, as if I'm the only one thinking about survival, as if she wouldn't choose herself if it came down to it

  Would she?

  Or would she just stand there and die for him?

  My thoughts twist over themselves. I'm not evil. I'm just trying to live. That's all. That's all this has ever been and if that means making choices other people are too weak to make, then so be it. I'd rather live and be a villain than die and be a hero

  One moment it is trees and roots and branches clawing at our faces, and the next there is open stone ahead, dark and jagged like a wound split through the earth. I see it first. A gap in the rock face to the left, half-hidden behind hanging vines and shadow. Black inside. Deep. A mouth waiting to swallow

  "There," I gasp, my voice cracking, "Left. There's a cave!"

  Adrian turns his head sharply, eyes wide and unfocused from exhaustion. He almost misses the dip in the ground in front of him and stumbles, catching himself at the last second

  Behind us the monster crashes forward, closer than it has ever been. I can hear the wet drag of it now. The way its mass shifts and slaps against the forest floor. The overlapping breaths. The laughing

  "So eager," it croons, "Run to your little hole. Run"

  Vera doesn't look at the cave immediately. She looks at the monster. It bursts through the last line of trees in a spray of splinters and blood. In the faint moonlight I see it fully. Limbs fused together at wrong angles. Faces stretched across swollen flesh. Sofia's eyes embedded near what might have once been a shoulder. Lukas' jaw hanging open from a patch of skin that should not be a face at all. They are all there. Twisted. Screaming without sound

  "Join us," it howls, voices layering into one

  Adrian falters. His foot catches on a root buried just beneath the soil and he goes down hard, the air punching out of him. He scrambles immediately, panic overriding pain, but he is too slow. The monster lunges. Time fractures

  Vera doesn't even shout and without thinking grabs Adrian by the collar and yanks him sideways with a strength I didn't know she had, dragging him out of the direct path of that descending mass. Its limb slams into the ground where his head had been, cracking earth, sending dirt spraying into the air

  "Get up!" she screams at him

  I am already moving toward the cave

  I hate myself for that. Adrian staggers upright and I seize his wrist, pulling him toward the dark opening in the rock

  "Move!" I shout

  Vera is still behind us. Still between us and it. She backs away step by step, never turning her back fully, forcing the monster to adjust, to angle itself around her. She is buying us seconds. Just seconds. The cave mouth looms closer. Ten meters. Eight. The monster shifts its weight and something in its structure snaps into place with a sickening crack. It rears higher than before, towering, then slams downward with terrifying speed. Vera shoves Adrian forward again, the impact catches her mid-motion. A limb like a mass of fused arms wraps around her torso and another catches her leg. There is a sharp, wet sound that does not belong in the world

  She doesn't scream at first. Her eyes find mine and for a single suspended second, we lock gazes. There is no accusation now. No anger. Just something tired, something that almost looks like understanding. Then the monster tightens and the scream comes then, ripped from her throat, cut short as her body is yanked backward into the heaving flesh. I hear bone snap. Hear the grotesque grinding as she is pulled up and in, swallowed into that shifting wall of skin and faces

  Adrian tries to turn

  He actually tries to go back

  "No!" he shouts, voice breaking

  I drag him.

  I drag him so hard he nearly falls again

  "She's gone!" I yell, though I don't know if I'm saying it for him or for myself

  Behind us the monster's sounds change. The frantic chase dissolves into something slower. Wet. Satisfied. It always stops after it takes one. We reach the cave and stumble inside, the sudden darkness blinding. The air is colder here, damp and stale. Our footsteps echo too loudly against the stone. Adrian is sobbing now, broken, half-choking on her name. I don't look back. I don't want to see if there is anything left of her on the forest floor. We move deeper, desperate for distance, for safety that probably does not exist

  'We finally found something different in this forest that's not just an endless forest of the same thing. Maybe here we can find something, anything to escape'

  As I walk I do not notice how unstable it is until it shifts beneath my weight. Stones cracks and Adrian slips. I grab him, fingers digging into his arm, but the earth beneath us gives way entirely. The cave floor collapses with a roar and for a split second we are suspended in nothing, the entrance behind us fracturing as rock crashes down, sealing off the faint strip of moonlight.

  Then we fall

  Down into the dark

  The forest, and Vera, disappear above us as we begin our unfortunate descent