Welp, this is what I did today instead of work on my projects. I guess we'll see where this goes. Writen a little different from my usual writing style.

Warning: Graphic depictions of an attack and a corpse.

"I dunno about this, Dave."

"It's fine man, I come out here looking for dead shit all the time," The blonde assured, venturing deeper into the undergrowth of brush on the trail ahead.

John hesitantly followed, brushing sticks out of his dark hair. Dave let go of a branch and it slapped back, hitting John in the face and obscuring his glasses and scratching his skin. John huffed, scowling.

"Yeah, okay, sure, but at night?"

"Yeah. Bro lets me come out here whenever I want. It's chill. It's chill like Queen Elsa in her slippery ass cerulean ice tower. Like penguins in the arctic. Sliding around on our bellies like the smoothest mother fuckers up in this-"

"Okay, I get it Dave," John cut him off.

"Vulture culture is seriously underrated, man," Dave continued to insist. John wasn't listening anymore.

Dave held the only flashlight, a saber of light jutting out though the pitch blackness of night. John followed, tuning out his friends rambling in favor of the moon.

The moon was full tonight, shadowed behind large, dark clouds that swept across the sky. As soon as one cleared it, lighting the path and bouncing brightness off of the underbrush, a new cloud appeared and obscured the view. The night was cold, and the air smelled like the rain that had fallen earlier that day.

Had John chosen to stay home, it would have felt like any other early October night. Staying home wasn't an option, according to his dad. It was between this and the varsity football game. Football wasn't John's thing though, and Dave was his best friend.

Dave came to an abrupt halt in front of him on the path, and had he been paying attention, John wouldn't have bumped into him. John was busy with his eyes to the sky, and he ran right into his friend.

"Ugh, Dave, what now?" He asked, stepping back into a tree, scowling as more branches stuck him in the back.

"Not to freak you out bro, but I don't know where I'm at," he replied, shoving his hands into his pocket to survey the land.

"Ughh!" John groaned, "I can't believe this! Lost in the woods at ten o'clock at night!"

"I said don't freak out," Dave insisted, pulling his shades up onto his head momentarily.

Dave always wore sunglasses, always. He never took them off for any reason, not in the pool, not for school pictures, never. He always had an excuse, sensitive corneas, allergic to the sun, etcetera, etcetera. Never one straight answer. He shifted them back down, before John could even take a peek at his eyes.

"I think we should go this way," he said finally.

"You think?" John mocked, "you don't know?"

"Hey, relax dude, these trails all loop around, they're deer trails."

John rolled his eyes.

"At least we still have the flash light," Dave offered. As if by some act of higher power, the batteries inside died and the light cut off.

"Great!" John shouted, throwing his hands up into the air. The sleeve of his black sweater caught on a bramble and he screeched a second time as he ripped it out of the bush.

"Hey, chill, I'll call Bro and he'll come find us." John could hear his friend, but he couldn't see him anymore. He couldn't see an inch in front of his nose.

"You got your cell phone on you?" Dave followed up.

"No, I left it at home," John replied, "I don't get service out here."

"Cool, cool," Dave paused and it was silent for a moment before he spoke again. "Mines dead."

"Unbelievable!" John howled, "this is unbelievable! I physically cannot believe this!"

Dave shifted, the leaves under his feet crunching, "sorry."

"It's fine," John huffed, still scowling, "just, just get me out of here."

"A'ight, uh, follow me I guess. You wanna hold hands?"

"No, man," John rejected.

"Fine," Dave's voice carried, and the crunching of the leaves under him resumed, quieting as he walked away. John tramped after him, stepping through the same leaves Dave had.

Each step the boys took was crisp and loud, unable to hear each other's steps over their own. John couldn't even hear himself think over the sound.

John wasn't sure how long he'd been walking, assuming Dave had been only a few steps ahead of him. He walked with his hands out in front of him, pushing weeds and branches out of his way as he strode. He wasn't even sure they were on a path anymore. He could no longer feel the slight indent of the worn down trail.

John had stones in his shoes, sticks in his sweater, pickers run through his pants and burs in his hair. He had leaves down the back of his shirt, and everything, everything itched.

John pushed another branch away from his face, shoving his hand right into a bush of brambles, a wild rose bush with large, big black thorns, running themselves into his flesh and shredding it.

"Ouch! Damn!" He swore, stumbling forward out of the bush and sideways, clutching his hand and bringing it close to his face. It wasn't any use though, it was too dark to see.

"Hey, Dave, thanks for warning me about that branch," John snarked, his feet stilling.

The woods was silent.

"Dave?" John called.

There was no reply.

"Dave?!" He called again, urgent and loud. "If you're trying to freak me out, it's working!"

John stumbled forward again, and tripped. Over what, he wasn't sure, but it was solid and hard. John fell, ass over apple cart, tumbling down a steep embankment, down a hill and into a shallow pit of mud. Everything felt gooey, and it squished under his body, dampening his clothing.

Groaning, John pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. Something stuck in to his already injured hand, and he hissed in pain.

Just as he drew his hand up to his face once more, the clouds parted and the light of the moon shown through.

Stuck in to John's still bleeding hand was a bone. A large, yellowed vertebrae broken in the middle and still covered in a crusting brown layer of blood. John looked down. He realized this was not a mud puddle, no, he was sitting in a gut pile.

He was surrounded by brown fur, intestines and organs scattered around the pile. His left hand was laying on top of a rib cage, and his knee was stuck in what he was pretty sure was a lung. A few feet in front of him sat the head, severed from the rest of the body. Flesh still clung to the skull of a spike horned buck, it's eyes still open and white. It's tongue hung out, still red and wet, though blood was drying on its blackened nose.

"Shit, gross," he gasped, hauling himself out of the blood and squishing guts to stand on his feet again.

It was deer season, it was okay. This was normal. People hunted deer.

By the moonlight, as John gazed at it longer, he couldn't help but feel something was off.

Deer hunters harvested meat, didn't they? Why.. Why would somebody dismember something they shot and leave it to waste?

It's body was a mess, legs scrambles and it's torso ripped open, it's innards scattered. Blood coated the grass around the body. It hadn't even been dead long enough to smell. John threw the vertebrae bone back down into the pile.

John surveyed his surroundings. The moon still shone, but clouds threatened to overtake it once more. He was in a clearing, with tall brown grass up to his knees that faded into another tree line. Everything was still and quiet, the breeze was gone.

"Dave?" John called again. His voice shook. His mouth was dry. His hands quaked.

Fear.

He felt fear.

Something on the other side of the clearing shook, a small tree moving.

Panic seized him. His knees locked.

Something large and dark emerged from the trees. Long, nimble appendages traversed the grass as it stepped out, raising its skinny legs with an animal like gait. It's body was lithe and thin. John couldn't tell if the creature was a quadruped or biped, or whether the pear shape of the creature was its chest or hips. It's head turned, and John saw antlers, tall but stout, with unnatural shape to them.

A deer, it had to be. Nothing else could look that way.

It's face though, was flat, and it's ears short and pointed where they should have been long and oval.

John could feel goosebumps dance across his skin. His teeth chattered. His palms felt clammy. He cleared his throat.

"Dave?" John tried again.

The creature stopped, it's legs halting in place.

Before his eyes it's body shifted, its pear shape becoming more hour glass, and arms moving away from it's body. When the creature turned to face him, John could see the faint outline of a human nose.

"Hi there," a woman's voice came, raspy, like she'd just been smoking. She drew out her vowels, dramatic and exaggerated. "Who are you?"

"I- I'm John," he stammered, "my name is John. Do, do you know how to get back to the road? Or the trail?"

"Now why would you want to do that, huh? I'm pretty great company, if I do say so myself." John could hear her smirk.

"Who," his voice cracked, "who are you?"

"I'm Vriska. It's nice to meet you, John," she drawled, emphasizing the O in his name.

John nodded, swallowing hard.

"So you wanna go back to the trail huh?" Vriska spoke. When she began walking again, her gait was very clearly human. She stopped short of him, but enough to see a few of the features in her face. Her hair was long and thick, her smile bright and sharp, showing too long teeth inside her mouth. Her eyes glowed a dark cobalt blue, with pupils too large to be human.

Shivers quaked down John's spine.

Vriska was relaxed and loose, but John was so tense it hurt.

"Yeah," John managed, "if you, if you could. I'm lost."

"I see!" She exclaimed, "oh, so you don't want to find the trail, you just want to be found. I can help you do that John, I just need a little something in return, if you wouldn't mind?"

"I don't have any money on me," John mumbled.

Vriska sneered, and it was quiet in the clearing.

The moon drifted behind a cloud again, darkening the grassland.

Vriska was going to jump him. John knew it. He could see it in the grow of her eyes.

He was paralyzed. His brain screamed at him. Begging him to move, pleading with the muscles in his legs to give, but he couldn't. Vriska stared at him. John stared back at her.

A throaty giggle broke the silence, girly and sharp. Vriska was laughing, at what John didn't know. Her laughter grew louder, sharper, shriller, until she was cackling back at him though the darkness.

As the clouds parted again, the moonlight glinted off of her teeth. Her teeth were so long, and so sharp, yellowed with age. There was blood dried in the corner of her mouth.

She moved faster than John thought possible.

Suddenly he was on the ground, Vriska's too long legs on either side of his hips and her hands on his chest. Her finger nails were like claws, digging into the meat of him. Her teeth, her fucking teeth, snapped in his face. He felt them clasp on his glasses, graze his chin and sink into the flesh of his cheek.

John tried to scream, but it caught in his throat.

Something was shoving its way into his mouth, her wrist, he realized, and something cold and coppery was filling his mouth.

The woman's teeth pulled at his skin, drawing away before shoving back, stripping his skin away from his muscle, away from his bones. He could feel her teeth on his teeth.

John gasped, forcing him to swallow whatever liquid it was in his mouth. It was thin and made his throat raw, like swallowing cold fire.

Her opposite hand ripped his glasses off of his face, covering his eyes already obscured by her hair. He felt light headed, like he'd stood up too fast or.. Like he was losing blood. She was sucking his blood, he realized, swallowing it down like… Like a fucking vampire.

She reeled his head back and smashed it into the ground once again, forcing him to swallow more of the liquid fire. He choked, sputtering and thrashing, but she didn't seem to care.

He couldn't get away, he couldn't call for help.

John Egbert was going to die right here and now and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

Vriska pulled her fangs from the side of his face, hissing her praise to him though words in a language he had never head.

"Well, John," she spoke, her voice loud, and ringing in his head like a bell.

Something wet and warm fell on his neck.

"Well," she began again, her voice wet and silky, "John. I'll send help your way, alright? It was a pleasure doing business with you."

Her weight lifted off of him, and her foot falls lead away from him.

He kept his eyes shut, and curled in on himself, a hand rising to cover what was left of his face. He was mangled, shredded to ribbons. Pieces of his skin fell off into his mouth, hot and meaty on his tongue. Something metallic flooded his nose, wet and rapidly drying. Warm blood. His own warm blood.

John didn't dare open his eyes.

It felt like an eternity, laying on the damp, cold ground. His face was cooling, his blood drying hard and crusting over his skin. His legs cramped. It felt like two eternities before another sound registered to John's senses.

Feet treading down the long grass.

Vriska was back. She was back with those too long teeth to finish him off. She-

"John?"

That was Dave's voice.

"John, is that you? Jesus dude."

John's eyes snapped open.

Above him stood Dave. He had on an orange flannel jacket, one he wasn't wearing when they'd gotten separated. Next to him stood his other brother, Dirk, who was dressed in his work uniform. That explained the flannel.

Dirk was a police officer, and he looked the part, all except for a backwards SnapBack cap, which made him look a little more his real age. He was twenty something, not much older than John himself. Dirk held up his standard issue flashlight, heavy and bright, shining it over John.

John squinted back.

"You look like you seen a ghost," Dirk interjected.

John hadn't been aware he was holding his breath until it was forced out of him. "Something like that."

Hesitantly, John rose a hand to his face, and his fingers grazed smooth skin.

Like it never happened.

Like it never fucking happened. His hand was healed, his face was back together, hell, even his ruined clothes felt alright. Had he dreamt it?

"Hey, check that out."

Dirk shinned the flashlight behind John, onto the corpse of what used to be a deer. John did a double take.

It was the same deer he'd fallen on, the same one who's lung he'd crushed under his knee. It's body was in the same position, but it's flesh was mostly gone. What exposed bone it had was bleach white where they lay. Dave ambled over to it, grabbing up the skull by its spike horns and held it up.

"I told you we'd find something good," Dave grinned, holding it in his hands like a prize.

John was mortified.

"Dave, put that shit down. You're not putting that in my truck," Dirk argued.

"I'll put it in the truck bed, calm your tits. In fact, I might put it in your actual bed, go all godfather and shit," Dave defied, still grasping the skull.

"Yeah whatever, let's get the fuck outta here," Dirk sighed, rolling his eyes. "You two are damn lucky I just got off work, or your sorry asses would be stranded out here."

John picked himself up off the ground and followed the Strider brothers across the clearing. Dave lead the way, still clutching his find, and the woods seemed to part in a real, landscaped trail. It was short, with just one bend, and suddenly they were on the road.

The pavement was wet, as if it had just rained, and a small breeze rattled through the trees.

Dirk's beat up orange pickup truck was parked a small ways away, and the walk to it was short. They made John sit cramped in the middle, on the hump.

After the night John had, he didn't complain.

Dirk insisted on country music, and as much as Dave complained, they still had to listen to Blake Shelton all the way back to Dave's house.

The Strider brothers lived nestled back in a wooded glen, accompanied by their mother, Roxy, and their sister, Rose.

Roxy was some sort of drunk scientist. Not in the sense she studied alcohol, but in the sense she studied with alcohol. In fact, she did most things drunk. She had a good job though, and she was good at it, able to afford a house that was bigger than two of John's.

Rose was nice, John liked her, as much as somebody could like their best friends little sister. There was only one year difference between Dave and Rose, almost down to the day. She was different from him though. Where Dave preferred to go out, Rose would rather stay in. When John arrived, she was shut up in her bedroom.

"Good evening boys!" Roxy slurred from her spot on the couch, greeting them as they stepped through the foyer.

"Hi, mom," her sons greeted, almost in unison. Dirk climbed the vast staircase the home hosted, headed to his room, but Dave went to the living room, to his mother, to show her his prize.

"Hi, Mrs. Strider," John greeted.

"Call me Roxy, baby," the blonde woman smiled, turning her attention to her middle child. "Oh, that's so nice sweetie, but would you get that nasty, filthy thing out of mummies house, please? Thank you, baby."

"Sure," Dave was pretty much beaming, nodding to his mother and motioning John to follow him, out to the garage where Roxy let Dave keep his collection of dead and decaying.

Dave flipped on the light, illuminating his minature taxidermy studio. The bright yellow fluorescent lit his wall of tanning furs and shelves of preserved organs and small animals. Chemicals assulted John's nose, formaldehyde and death, mixed with laundry soap. It was dry though, and warm. Roxy parked her car in the garage too, so it was a bit cramped.

Dave pulled up a couple of bar stools, and set the deer skull down on his workbench, motioning John to sit as he went for a knife. John moved his stool, positioning himself so he could stare at the wall rather than his best friend fleshing a skull.

John couldn't watch Dave when he worked on his… projects. It grossed him out, to be frank. Dave worked quietly, the knife never scraped bone, and it was almost easy to pretend he wasn't pulling skin off what used to be an animal. Almost. Almost easy to pretend he hadn't been attacked too.

Something wet hit the floor with a loud plop, attracting John's attention. A single piece of meat had missed the trash can.

John couldn't help but fixate on it, laying in a brown pool of mush on the concrete.

It was gross. Half rotten and mostly dry, but John found his mouth watering. Raw meat. It was so, so gross, and the smell of this place made him nauseous. But it was raw and it probably tasted like blood still. John liked his steak rare.

"So what happened Egbert?" Dave's voice drew him back to his senses.

"What?" John asked.

"I asked what happened," Dave looked behind him, making eye contact.

"When?" John furrowed his eyebrows, confused.

"In the woods? Duh," Dave frowned, putting his knife down to swivel the stool so he faced his friend. "You were there and then you weren't."

"Oh, I dunno," John shrugged, trying to laugh it off. "I guess I just got confused."

"You sure man? You feeling alright?" Dave should probably have gloves on, John realized. "Wouldn't want my best bro up puking sick on best friends night. You'd end up like a fire hose hooked to a septic tank of puke, like the nozzle on a fuckin' the soft serve machine, but the soft serve is bad, just fuckin' spewing chunks all over the place and gettin' us a health code violation."

"That's gross man! I feel fine!" John rolled his eyes. Old fucking raw meat wasn't as gross as that metaphor.

Dave just shrugged and turned back around. He worked another moment longer, throwing another piece of meat, missing the trash can once again.

"You see anything out there?" He asked, quietly. John almost hadn't heard him. His eyes were on the venison.

"Like what?"

Dave shrugged again.

John thought about lying to him. The story John had to tell was a fantastical pile of crap. John highly doubted he'd believe him. It was insanity. Nuts. Crazy. Unbelievable. It wouldn't make sense to tell him. Dave would think he was a loon.

"I know you saw something," Dave muttered. He didn't pause his work. "You were scared shitless. What was it?"

John swallowed hard. "A deer. I think."

"John," Dave spun around again, his knife resting on his leg and some sort of grime covering his hands. Slowly, Dave's free hand went to his sunglasses, gripping the bow of them in his thin fingers, and lifted.

Dave's eyes were the same shape as Roxy's, bright and pretty, and red. Red. Roxy's eyes weren't red, they were… Well, John didn't know what color they were, but they weren't red. His jaw dropped.

That… That just didn't happen. People didn't have red eyes.

"Whatever you want to tell me," Dave spoke, "I'll believe it. Try me."