You’re at a cabin in the woods and there’s a tal
You’re at a cabin in the woods and there’s a tall, thin, slender humanoid entity hunting you, but the monster disappears in the light. Your lights keep going out, so to survive, you have to go out and fix your generator while defending yourself with a flashlight whose batteries are almost running low.
(A retired logger living in the cabin.
The humanoid entity (furred, long-eared and have sharp teeth) who’s been hunting the logger.)
The generator sputtered, coughed, and died, plunging the cabin into an inky blackness punctuated only by the frantic thump-thump-thump of my own heart. Sixty-seven years I’d lived in these woods, sixty-seven years of quiet solitude. Now, the quiet was a suffocating blanket, woven with the chilling whisper of something… else.
Old Man Hemlock, they called me. Used to be proud of that name, earned it with sweat and calloused hands. Now, it felt like a tombstone. Because out there, in the suffocating dark, something was hunting me.
It started subtly – a snapped branch here, a rustle in the undergrowth there. Then came the shadows, stretching long and thin, impossibly elongated. I saw it once, briefly, in the flickering lamplight before it died – tall, impossibly thin, a furred, grey-brown thing with ears like a fox and teeth like shards of obsidian. It moved with unnatural speed, a blur of motion at the edge of my vision. But the second the light hit it, it vanished. Poof. Gone.
The generator. That was my only hope. The flashlight, weak and sputtering, was my only weapon. Three bars left on the battery indicator, mocking me with their dwindling glow. I had to get to the generator shed, a hundred yards through the trees, before it found me again.
Each step was a gamble. The beam of my flashlight cut through the oppressive darkness, revealing only fleeting glimpses of the gnarled trees and the uneven ground beneath my feet. The silence was worse than any sound; it hung heavy, pregnant with anticipation. Then, a sound. A high-pitched, chittering screech that seemed to claw at my sanity. I spun, the flashlight beam dancing wildly, but found nothing. Only the darkness, deeper and more sinister now.
I pressed on, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. The generator shed was close. I could smell the damp earth, the metallic tang of oil. Then, I saw it. A fleeting glimpse at the edge of my vision, a flicker of grey fur, those impossibly long ears. It was close. Too close.
I stumbled, nearly dropping the flashlight. The beam wavered, catching the creature’s eye. Two points of malevolent intelligence, burning fiercely in the darkness. This time, it didn’t vanish immediately. I saw it clearer, the sharp teeth bared in a silent snarl, its skeletal frame somehow both thin and powerfully muscled. It lunged, and in that moment, the last bar on my flashlight flickered and died.
Absolute darkness. I felt its claws graze my arm, cold and sharp, leaving a searing pain in their wake. I screamed, a raw, desperate sound lost in the night. Then, silence. Only the gentle purr of the generator, back online, its light casting its pale circle around me – and the empty space where the creature had stood moments ago.
The morning light revealed scratches on my arm, a testament to the night’s terror. But the creature was gone, leaving behind only the chilling memory of its shadow and the ever-present fear that it would return when darkness fell again. The generator hummed, a fragile shield against the unseen horrors of the woods. Old Man Hemlock wasn’t so old anymore, and solitude no longer held its appeal. My days of logging were over. My days of survival had only just begun.
