The night was cold, empty, almost if time itself had frozen. We were out in a forest in Oregon to go camping for the week. I will not disclose the exact location for the fear that someone will go out there searching. My friend and I just wanted to have some fun, away from everyday life, but that is not what we got. We got something so much worse, something not even my nightmares can comprehend.
It was the third night of our week-long trip. Everything was fun, time was flying, but that night, time had seemed to slow just to torment us with boredom. We had nothing to do so we sat by the campfire to talk. The light of the fire lit up a small portion of our camp, we felt warm and safe. I was talking to my friend Barry about the time where I ran away from home, but that is beside the point. We were having so much fun that we didn’t even notice what was in the dark abyss of the night. I went on rambling about my story. A motion in the darkness caught my attention and Barry and I both stopped what we were doing to look closer. I saw a dark silhouette on all four legs, It looked harmless and I assumed it was a deer.
“It’s getting late, i’m going to hit the hay” Barry tells me
“Okay, im going to stay out a bit longer” i responded
I should have gone to bed too, but I didn’t. Not much happened for a while, I remember thinking about how great the view of the stars was. I finally decided to put out the fire and head to sleep. I poured water onto our campfire and it let out a quiet hisssss as the flames began to quickly die. I looked to my side and saw a small glint, a reflection of the sparks off of two dark spheres attached to a large silhouette. The eyes were completely black and empty as they stared directly at me. Its limbs were long and skinny. One of its front legs reached forward and wrapped around my shoulders. It was cold, like it had no life within it. The creature made no noise, even when it walked, its steps were silent. It stared into my eyes without emotion or feeling. It saw every bit of fear in me. Its blank expression slowly shifted to a crooked smile. It enjoyed seeing my terror.
I struggled to escape it’s grip but its arm only tightened around my chest, bringing me to silent tears of pain. I realized that I was helpless to the sheer power of the thing. It slowly leaned in towards me. As its head grew closer to me, I struggled even more to escape but there wasn’t any hope. Its smile opened and its blank eyes showed nothing but hunger. I felt its cool arm tighten around me to the point where I could hardly breathe. At that point I realized that my friend was still sleeping in the tent nearby. I tried to scream out to him but all the air was being squeezed out of my lungs so I couldn’t make a noise.
As the last sparks from the campfire went out, I fell to the ground gasping for breath and the beast was gone. On my chest where the arm had been was red and sensitive to the touch. This thing would have killed me. My survival was based on chance alone. From there, I woke Barry up, told him what happened and we left for home.