Chaos Inside A Pen

  We know our guns are enough only to take down any beast in this forest but something that is way beyond beast nor human is somewhat a suicide for all of us.   Yet we insist to track down the source of the unholy scream since it was actually coming from the direction where our meeting place with the other campers is located. We got a box full of ammo and a 5’7 brawny man in the form of Jonathan whom we need to drag along the way despite his whimpering since we can’t leave him all alone in our campsite.   That’s all we have against whatever we might encounter as we tread the darkness and thickness of this forest that every second we continue going deeper towards its heart, the more we get the feeling that we are plunging ourselves in the entrails of a beast. And at the pit of it lies the doomed that promises the torment that even death will try to evade.   “No! Let’s get out of here! Come on, guys! Please!” Jonathan has reverted into an amalgam of a deranged child as...

  As the night went longer and darker, we thought we lost not only our precious game but even the sanity of Jonathan. After that encounter with the unidentified creature, I and Gilbert decide to camp right in the grove where we saw Jonathan losing all his wits and senses. We didn’t manage to go to the rendezvous point where we will camp together with other groups who unlike us, went to this forest for scholarly purpose of studying the endemic beast that dwells here.   Jonathan is utterly helpless and refuses to move neither an inch from the spot where we found him. He keeps on mumbling gibberish while cowering like a child getting cornered by the monster underneath his bed. The terror that struck has somehow stolen the last of his sensibilities as he began also soiling his pants    It was appalling to look but we can’t leave him like that in such harrowing condition. It took us an hour of consoling and calming him down before we can finally breathe in relief when he ...

  “Target at 12 o’clock, Welkin. It’s a damn fine brute.”   Jonathan’s voice can’t hide the adrenaline that now pulsing in his vein as he spotted first our game for this evening. We are lucky that on our first night in this secluded forest, we can actually relish quickly an easy quarry in the form of a handsome stag deer exhuming a regal presence along with the emerald leaves that surround it as if it is his royal carpet in this verdant kingdom he dwells upon.   “Ok. Take it easy. Let’s approach it silently. Check the forest floor and avoid those dry leaves or twigs.” Gilbert instructed with such a hushed voice that I didn’t manage to catch up with his last few words. Between the 3 of us, Gilbert has only the patience to pore over thick manuals about animal hunting and proper handling of rifles. He serves as our “encyclopedia” that provides essential information when it comes to tracking down our game as well as our go-to guy on how to survive the forest. Jonathan, on the...