The Forest

A man lost in the Forest finds a surprise

            Traveling through the lightless forest, Brett stumbled, and slammed against the ground, his head ricocheting off a rock. His vision blurred, and his thoughts started swimming, soon darkness overtook him.

            When he finally woke up the sun seared his eyes, and the world was spinning. He painfully rolled to his side, and vomited. The smell was so wicked he recoiled, until his back was against a tree. He let his eye lids fall closed again, and took deep breaths, a vain attempt to calm the spinning in his head.  Eventually he staggered to his feet, and looked around.

            He remembered leaving the bar, and cutting through the woods. There is a bike path that comes out beside his house. The path is normally clean with no debris hanging around. Last night must have been different though, because he remembers getting his foot caught, and falling to the ground. Everything after that is lost, as he strains to remember.

            He looks to the ground, and finds leafs, twigs, and stones. There are Trees on all sides of him and no path visible. He looked around, trying to locate a familiar sight. Nothing he saw looked right.

            “Okay this is no time to panic.” He told himself. “Just head the way you think you came from.”

            He picked a direction, seemingly at random, and started walking. As he moved through the forest it started to thicken, and thorns from brushes were ripping at his arms. Little droplets of blood, formed tear drops on the forest floor. With no water, Brett knew dehydration was bound to set in, so he sat at the base of a tree, and attempted to listen for a stream.

            Leaves rustling behind him, sending chills down his spine. This was irrational for him, but he couldn’t help, but feel that what was behind him was pure evil. He didn’t want to look behind him, but he couldn’t close his eyes, or keep his head from pivoting in that direction.  

            The noise was coming from a raccoon sized beast, but that’s where the similarities stopped. This beast had glowing red slits as eyes, reptile skin, and claws at least a half inch long. As soon as Brett’s eyes, met the beasts, it lunged at him.

            At the last possible second, Brett rolled to the side, avoiding the attack. Then he was on his feet in a full blown sprint through the forest. Looking back over his shoulder, he spotted the beast only a few feet behind him. He vowed not to look back again, and to just keep running.

            Turning forward, he dug his toes into the ground pumping his legs harder; trying to put distance between himself, and the beast. His lungs were burning; sucking air, sweat burning his eyes, and blurring his vision. The ground flying under his feet, he couldn’t even feel his feet pounding the ground.

            Then it happened; his foot got caught in a root. He threw his hands out to stop himself from falling on his face. As his hands hit the ground, he felt a thud on his back, and intense pain quickly followed. Brett rolled onto his back, hoping to crush the beast under his weight. He could feel the blood flowing from his gashes, the leaves, and twigs embedding themselves into his flesh. But there was no squirming of the demonic beast. Then a feeling of claws invaded his chest.

            He grabbed at his chest, trying to get a grip on the beast, but he couldn’t find it. Finally he looked down. The beast was squatting on its hind legs glaring into Brett’s eyes. It’s deadly looking fangs parting its curl lips, and a claw poised to cut his throat wide open. With a flash, the beast started his claw moving, and lunged with his evil teeth.

            Brett snapped awake; the air rushing from his lungs. A scream stifled. As the last bit of air left his lungs, he dropped back, dead.

             

Author's Note

Wrote this to kill writers block, and build motivation. Please let me know what you think, and especailly point out grammar issues. Thanks.

Reviews

[RDOriginal]

As a piece to break out of writers block this obviously worked quite well. You've made good use of shorter sentences and phrasing to generate an impression of speed during the actual chace. The only bit I'd question is the use of the word 'his' when the beast raises it's claw: gender kind of humanises it and makes it less terrifying. If I were you I wouldn't spend to much time concerned with editing and proof reading a piece like this, I'd say it's done its job already.

[Kelley Quinn]

I really liked it. Very intense. Poor brett...must he have died from the rabid raccoon thing? Hopefully this helped with writers block! It's really good for unblocking the blockage, my usual experiments during blocks are pretty bad, but this one is awesome. Keep writing! (:

[♥(heatherawesome..]

this is awesome and i love it

[Griffin Hill]

Kevin, I think if you post your own review, I can respond to it via private email and my grammar edits will show.

[Griffin Hill]

I did grammar edit for you, but can’t seem to get this system to post it with edits in place.

[Jess.]

Well it pulled me in for sure, and you detailed it nicely. I could picture everything perfectly. I liked your word choices again, as well.
Nicely done.