Natures great. Even If its just a local park next to the highway. I love going into more desolate places in parks. Places surrounded by trees and tucked away into nowhere. I liked to drag my friends in on it aswell, as much as they hated it. There are always these two specific friends I’d drag, they wouldn’t bother resisting anyways.
Only went to parks and forests in the day, since the dark always freaked me out a bit. Gradually though I would start going out later and later for the fun of it- but never too late, maybe right before sunset. We always wanted to drag a few more friends along but most of them live a town over, or would just not be bothered.
Don’t blame them but I’ve always loved going out to these parks and forests, and me and my trio haven’t stopped either. Its always great to feel some fresh cold air as you wonder if a druggies going to jump out at you, or if a fox is going to swipe past your feet, or if you’ll misstep and tumble down a hill. The adrenaline is what makes it fun, right?
Well not always apparently.
Nothing was really different on this day. It was just an average day in April. Nice weather, weak winds, good day, good vibes. The park was as still as ever, people would usually come here to feed the ducks and thats about it, maybe go for a light jog. That’s only in the park area though, the forest bit is usually untouched, but not by me.
“Come on guys, it’ll be fun! I’m sure nobody is there” I’d say to my friends. They’d get scared easily, so I always had my fair share of pranks and today was no different. I’d just pull a prank, come out, see them scared shitless and we’d laugh it off.
We went down a side path into a deeper part into the forest, I went last as of course I needed to be the first one out, and it was time for my prank. I screamed at the top of my Lungs and bolted out, making sure neither saw me before I lunged into a Bush and sat there waiting, waiting for them to come around so I could jump out and scare them. But they never did. This confused me as there were only three paths, the whole thing went around in a circle, there was a forest entrance and parking lot you could exit from- but we were nowhere near that.
There were three paths they could have taken, an upper path near the highway, a middle path I’m between bushes and trees, and a bottom path that connected the entrance and parking lot. Sitting in a Bush got annoying so I got up and went up a small hill in between the middle and top path and sat on a bench there.
I sat on the benches there for a while, it got darker and darker. I sat there for about 5 minutes, just soaking in the sun and waiting for the other two to pop out- maybe they’ve finally turned the tables on ms.
My phone pings. ‘Hey are you wearing a pink shirt?’.
I sat there staring at the message. What a random thing to ask- especially since you’ve just had the life scared out of you! I was wearing a purple shirt- but that wasn’t visible either as I wore a grey fleece over it.
‘No, why?’
I waited about a minute for the response, and when I got it- it was as if the whole world has frozen.
‘There was someone crawling in the bushes with a pink shirt, we don’t know if it was a guy or what, he didn’t move like a person’
What? A guy in the bushes? At this time in the evening? As the sun was setting?? ‘Where was he?’
‘Somewhere in between the top and middle path, are you there?’
Absolutely not, time has completely stopped now. Everything’s gone quiet. The cars, the birds, the trees. It was like they were waiting for someone to speak.
Rustle. Heavy rustling. Almost like a person was struggling in the bushes beside me.
I didn’t know what that was, it could’ve been a fox or bird or maybe even an apple that fell but I wasn’t going to hang around to figure it out. I ran for it, practically throwing myself off the hill, barrelling through bushes and ending up flat on the grass beside the entrance. Soon running back to grab my friends who were frozen in place and beelining it out of the parking lot.
We still don’t know what it was, no face was seen, it had freakishly strong looking hands, long legs, it crawled around how you’d expect a spidermonkey to crawl, and of course its pink scruffed shirt. It seems like maybe I should keep to forests in the bright day.