Author’s WARNING: I’m not sure if anyone these days are scared of books, or text… but I will tell you that this is indeed a serious horror story, and there may be some texts that are… well… associated with horror stories… you’ve been warned.


The Dark Forest. No one went into the Dark Forest. It was a mysterious woods, with dark black trees, with dead leaves and limbs, rotting from the core of the very evil that blossomed out of the place.. Dark Forest was known for things that go bump in the night. First of all, it was always night there. Night was welcomed, and nurtured in Dark Forest. The thing was, in youthful terms, that no one, absolutely no one who did not live there, was to go there, anytime, for any reason. The reason was… because messed up shit happened in Dark Forest, and only the darkest creature of darkest night was able to make a home there. If one, unlucky individual were to find themselves in the Dark Forest… God help them they make it out alive… and in one piece… or both. Many years ago, Demien Omen Darkwing experienced a fight for his life, and his sanity, inside the depths of Dark Forest, after becoming lost and captured by the Shadow People, soulless individuals that feed on other people’s fears.

This is the story of that night.

Dark Forest
Witching Hour, 3:00 am.
Old Hallow’s Eve
…

Omen awoke. His vision was a dark blur, an early sign of a slight concussion. His head felt heavy. He realized that his overall field of vision was completely upside down. He was able to move his arms, but strangely enough, not his feet. He looked up, and saw the dark silhouettes, the outlines of his boots. Obviously, his feet were in them. He felt sore. Very sore. At first he didn’t know why, but then he remembered. He had been running, running from something? No wait, he had been driving? Wait, no, he had been fighting?
What the hell had he been doing? Simple scenarios were hard to remember. That was unusual, even for a concussion. Something else had happened, something bad had happened. He reached up with his vampiric, pale gray hands, plucking at the knot of the rope that had tied his feet to the tree. Upon plucking over and over, he found out that the knot was very resilient, and hard to untie. Straining, he couldn’t get himself to untie the knot. His fingers burned with numbness, and he was forced to rest his abdomen, his upper body flinging itself back to where it was, his eyes opening to the view around him. It was dark, very, very dark. He could barely see the bark amongst the trees. Just then, a hostile vision appeared in his field of vision. It looked like a demon straight out of hell, jaws like a bear and spikes like a porcupine. The size of it was just unreal. The saliva, the sharp, oversized teeth. It’s hellish, piercing red eyes that screamed of feral and death. It was not of any world. It barked at him. It sounded like the mix between a dog’s bark and fingernails dragging along a chalkboard. Suddenly then, the ‘vision’ disappeared. Omens hard began racing. His yellow slits for eyes constricted in fear, and he gathered his strength again and lifted up his upper body to reach at the knots again, trying as hard as he could to untie the knot. Upon straining, and cutting his finger in the process, Omen managed to untie the knot, and fell limp, face first onto the ground.

Omen opened his eyes. The face first fall had made him pass out briefly. As the blood went back into his head, he heard the bark again, loud and deafening, demonic and devilish. It caused him to instantly stand up, placing his arms out in front of him and trying to figure out where the sound came from.

It came from nowhere. Omen knew he was in a world of shit.

“I need to get out of here… what is this place… “Omen tried to think, the words quietly escaping his mouth.

He slowly began to take small steps onto the woods, the little twigs and branches snapping underneath his feet. He heard what he thought was a police walkie talkie. Then he didn’t hear it anymore. Why the fuck was he hearing these things anyway. He stopped by a rather large tree, and leaned himself against it, slowly sitting himself down the tree and tending to his finger. Nobody can be risking an open wound in a forest. Diseases could hit you, could crawl into your bloodstream. Dysentery, Syphilis, Parasites…Hydrophobia… Paranoia…

Rabies…that’s what scared him the most, because it gave you all but one of those symptoms that had passed through his mind. Parasites in your brain…hydrophobia... paranoia… absolute lost of control… feralism… then death.

Upon cleaning himself, his vision picked up a small, dark object in the near distance. It made him curious. After cautiously bandaging his finger, he slowly rose himself up to a standing position. He approached the dark object. Upon close inspection, he actually couldn’t see it. It was still a blur to him for some reason. He looked closer.

What he saw, was a severed arm. It had been decaying for about one or two weeks, judging by how much meat had rotted off of the bone… the fingers were in a position of rapid extension, the same movements one would gesture if someone was suddenly scared, frightened, or in pain…

Omen nearly threw up. He was already disgusted at the things he had seen so far… that god damn monster… but now, this… this… who was this… why was the arm there… who the fuck bit it off…

Omen had no choice but to expect it. Pulling his long, luscious gray hair backwards into a loose ponytail, he slowly lowered himself to the arm. The smell was nearly unbearable. He used a twig he picked to gently prod the arm, trying to get somewhat under the skin when suddenly, scores after scores of corpse eating maggots crawled out of the arm. Omen backed up in reflex, but then remember that it was perfectly natural for maggots to feast on corpses, and got back on investigating. He noticed, that underneath all the muck, the arm had a watch on. The watch itself was fucked, but that was a good thing for the vampire bat. Because when a watch fucks up, it usually stops. The watch had stopped. Now he could figure out what time the.. well, what time the watch broke. He looked at the watch. The damn thing was broken, but he could still see the spokes of where the hands were ripped off the watch. He looked at the spokes, and it told him. The time was stuck on 2:33 am, September 16.

Omen realized that the arm had been severed and rotting for over a month. Upon looking down, he, for the first time, tried to focus on the stub part of the arm, which obviously bled out and created permenant blood stains onto the ground. Being an expert on blood himself, he sniffed it. It smelt like liquid tin, like most blood, but it also smelt…odd… like sour milk. He took a very close look at the blood, trying to ignore the horrible stench of decaying, black skin and rotten, yellow bone marrow that had hardened itself still and went dry. He saw very tiny, little moving things inside the blood…

“Aw shit!” He exclaimed, taking a firm step back from it. He now realized why the blood smelt so sour. Testing his theory, he slowly licked his hand, and fanned it out, waiting for it to dry on his hand, and then took another sniff… and realization hit him in the face.

It was saliva. Dry saliva. Someone had bitten that arm off.

Omen sensed someone behind him, and instantly turned around, seeing what appeared to be a moving shadow cast it’s darkness over him as if to suffocate him. He felt like he couldn’t breath, and a few moments later found himself choking. His stomach, so upset with fear, began to react and rebel, causing him to throw up, all over the dirty grass before him. When he Opened his eyes again, he could breath, and nothing was around him…

The arm wasn’t there anymore. The arm was MISSING.

Omen had heard nothing, sensed nothing. Nothing had moved, he was sure of it. Omen did not like this. He didn’t want to be here anymore. He hopped over the place where the dry blood was from the arm, and started to make his way through the forest at a faster pace, pushing the dead branches aside, which mostly fell to pieces.

What he saw beneath the big tree in a center of a dirt circle, would scar him for months.

It was the body of a small, green hedgehog. He appeared to be male, and he appeared to be around 14 years old. He was dead, siting up against the tree, completely naked. The entire side of the tree, and the dirt around it, was covered in his blood. His legs were still intact, although huge chunks of flesh had been bitten out of his skin. His jaw was broken, doomed to hang helplessly, showing his bare white teeth, which had blackened with rot over the past month. Half of his eyelid and most of his left eye was completely missing, and his right eye was staring up at the sky, as if it was sliding it’s way to the back of his head, but never made the entire trip there. One hear was half bitten off, and the warm blood had hardened cold against his cheek. Some toes, and fingers were severed, but there were two things about him that was just … fucked up.

His left arm had been completely severed. Omen knew it now, it was his arm. That arm was HIS arm. The cut didn’t exactly looked clean, like an amputation, rather, it looked like it was violently bitten off by a rapid creature… the stump of his arm, his shoulder, and half of his rib cage was bitten off, all at once... because he could see the even crescent shape of the bite marks on his body… the reason why his body was not helplessly limp on the floor… was because his throat was nailed to the tree... the rusty nail went straight through his atom’s apple, and out the other end, attaching him to the tree, and making room for little insects to climb their way inside…

Omen did not know how to react. The image just horrified him. It filled him with fear. He didn’t know what to do, to feel sorry for the kid, or to get the holy hell out of there. He decided to at least check some things out. He peaked inside one of the flesh holes in his legs. Something unusual he noticed again. The damage was far too great for just a simple bite and chew. If someone, even if this size, would bite into his leg, it would make smooth cut, not a tearing, pulling back and forth type of…
“Wait a minute…” He murmured, checking the bruise inhis arm. It was in the same way, the rib cage was gone, but it didn’t NEED to be gone. There was no reason, the bites didn’t even hit his ribcage…same with the size of the hole in his throat…and he noticed that the wounds bled out a lot more then it should…unless…unless…

Unless the kid was alive… during all of it.

That realization scared him to death. He heard that bark again. It caught him so off guard that he yelled out in terror, looking behind him and seeing that beast again… that hellish, demon beast… THAT BEAST! It could be no one else but that beast!

Coming to that conclusion, Omen watched as the beast focused its red, hellish eyes upon him. It quickly burst into a run after him, charging like a mindless killing machine. Omen burst out into a run, as fast as he could through the forest. The beast broke through trees like it was nothing, rapidly gaining on him. While he was running, Omen went through a desperate process of thought. No beast could organize something this complicated. No matter how violent, the beast couldn’t nail a kid’s throat to a tree a-
Suddenly he was tackled to the floor by what appeared to be an essence of darkness, a suffocating feeling filling his throat again and causing him to gasp in agony. He was shoved upon a tree by another shadow, and gasped in silient screams of pain. One of the shadows rose up a rusty nail, and the others restrained Omen to the tree. He opened his eyes and saw the dull tip of the needle in the shadow’s hand.

“Please! NO! NOO!!”


“And that was the worst nightmare I’ve ever had in my life. “ Omen murmured, quietly first, but then boasted with a bit of pride, sitting in a comfort chair. Bain was sitting on the couch with Geof, watching tv, while Pecha was delightfully assisted by cooking the boy’s delicious Halloween dinner, with fried buffalo wings, beef stew, sweet potatoes, steak and sweet rolls. They were all dressed up in PJ’s, settling down for the night nd watching scary ghost shows on television. Bain took another bite out of Geof’s popcorn bag and looked at Omen with a bit of concern. “How long did it take you to get over it?”

“It took me about six months to fully get over it…” Omen admitted, with a bit of sadness as he took a sip of his hot chocolate. “I had to get counseling for sleep… I had to sleep away from my coffin… I just, I couldn’t get the image…of that boy and that beast out of my mind…”

“I understand…” Bain replied, staring back at the tv screen and leaning back against the couch. “Damn.” Pecha simply stated, smelling the hot wings in the deep frier and nearly killing her nose because of it. “Yeah, what she said.” Geof replied, shoving some more popcorn into his mouth as Bain popped a jawbreaker in his.

A few minutes later, Dani the angel queen walked in through the front door, seeming a bit exhausted.She had an interesting looking bag with a shoulder strap on her shoulder, with runistic angelic designs. Followed by her son, an adolescent kid by the name of Jacen, dressed up as Darth Vader, swinging his plastic lightsaber around and accidently hitting the door with it. A chrome saber hung from the belt he had on. Bain would never tell him that was a real one. It had the battery removed so it was as harmless as a chrom handle can be. “Whoops.” Jacen stammered. “Hi dad! Hi Unc! Hi Mr. Darkwing! Hi Pecha!” He immediately ran back to the car Obsidian had pulled up the driveway, it was a huge, gas guzzling white truck, with big overhead lights and a powerful engine. Pecha threw some fire ontot he fireplace as everyone stared outside through the chilling October air.
“How much candy did he get?” Geof prodded at Dani, munching on some more popcorn.
“Umm… “ Dani tapped  her fingers together and smiled a little nervously as Obsidian backed the gigantic truck up, Jacen pumping out a piece sign as Obsidian pulled a lever and dumped the cargo, boxes and boxes of candy fell onto the wall of Geof’s gun shelter.
Bain rubbed the back of his head and sweatdropped, and looked surprised, but Geof simply shrugged. “He is a Striker… “

“Don’t worry about putting away the candy.” Dani suggested, taking the angelic-like ag off of her shoulder and placing it onto the kitchen table. Omen blinked. “Whatcha got there, Dani?”

“It’s for your testosterone raging boys to shut you up.” Dani teased, unzipping the bag. It was two large bottles of authentic, angelic wine. The name ‘authentic’ was to be taken lightly. The bottles were well worth hundreds of dollars. Bain whistled and Geof snickered, immediately grabbing one and popping the cap open as Omen and Bain went to the counter to grab some wine glasses.

“Happy Freakin’ Holloween!” Bain exclaimed minutes later, wine filled in his glass as he toasted with everyone. Bain, Omen, geof, Dani, and Pecha downed the glasses and sighed in relaxation of another holiday shot down.

What they didn’t realize was a dark shadow that crept in the darkest corner of the yard, seeming to snicker to itself as it crawled out of the property, and back to where it belonged… waiting for the next victim… to get lost… in the midst…

OF DARK FOREST.


Fin.