My instinct was to play off the incident as casually as possible, as if there was even a chance that anyone happened to be around. “Watch out for that last step,” I chuckled awkwardly to no one in particular. How far off the trail did I get? There aren’t any buildings near the park. I touched the wall and it felt craggy and uneven; definitely not man-made. As if revealing a secret, the fog seemed to fade out a bit… but in its absence was only darkness. I pulled out my phone to use its flashlight, and was confused to see a rock wall in front of me. Knowing full well that it couldn’t lead to any good surprises, I slowly turned around.

I wasn’t anywhere near the park. I wasn’t even outside. I was in some kind of cave.

It’s happened. Shit. I’ve finally gone from zoning out to full-on disassociation.

The overwhelming silence of this place hit me all at once, and I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a single drop of water hit the ground. The ceiling barely exceeded my own six-foot height. Seriously… where the fuck am I?

I moved the phone’s flashlight slowly from one side of the cave to the other, fully expecting to find something that would proceed to attack me. The reality was almost worse: at one point, I thought I saw a tiny bit of movement right at the edge of the light that was gone in an instant. Just like when you spot a spider on the wall and then lose track of it, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and my body was in a heightened state of alertness.

I checked the room from side-to-side again just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Sure enough, on my first sweep, I hadn’t spotted what appeared to be a way out from this relatively small chamber while I was busy thinking about the movement I thought I saw. Next, I shined the light at the ground to make sure there weren’t any animals or even just something I could trip over.

Good thing I did, because I definitely would have tripped over the body that lay several feet ahead of me. It seemed to be wearing a black cloak that was stained with dirt, so I only noticed that something was there because the light reflected off of something metallic. The body was laying on its front, with just one hand barely sticking out from under the dark cloak. In its grasp was a small dagger.

Seeing the cloak made me realize just how cold I was - a different sort of cold than the weather outside of my apartment. I only considered the pros and cons of taking a dead person’s cloak before deciding it was better than having two corpses in this cave. Are they actually dead, though? Maybe they’re… unconscious. Or sleeping awkwardly in the worst place ever.

Taking a closer look, the body appeared to be that of a young man - maybe even in his late teens. He didn’t appear to be breathing, and once I got the light onto his face, I could see that his skin was had turned blue and his eyes were wide open (at least, the one eye I could see from this angle). I had to turn the body over just slightly to reach the cloak’s clasp, and gasped when I saw that the young man’s neck had been torn open. The blood was smeared around the lower half of his face and all over his chest, and stained the ground beneath him.

The blood hadn’t dried out yet. He definitely hadn’t been dead for long.

My first instinct was to avoid touching the body again. With each passing moment in the cave, however, the cloak seemed like more of a necessity. I muttered a quiet apology as I cautiously removed the cloak from the corpse. Clasping the cloak around my neck instantly made me feel a little better. The material was unfamiliar to me (not that I could easily tell one sort of material from another), but felt a bit coarse and heavy.

I could now see that he was wearing of set of simple leather armor. Part of me wished I could “borrow” that armor, too, just to cover up the bare parts of my legs and arms, but I didn’t feel comfortable enough trying to remove it from a corpse. The cloak would have to be enough for now.

My eyes moved back to the dagger, and soon I crouched down to gently remove it from the corpse’s hand. As long as I’m cosplaying to save my life, I may as well go all the way. Expecting the skin to be cold, I was kinda freaked out to find that it was still a little warm.

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Wearing an old t-shirt, pair of shorts, and a dirty black cloak, I felt like the world’s worst trick-or-treater in his homemade Dracula costume. Actually, with the dagger, I was more like a mall ninja on a severe budget. I turned it around, inspecting it from all angles. It didn’t seem to be exceptional in any way, but definitely sturdier than something you’d find in a mall, and not nearly as flashy. Alright, what’s the safest way to carry th– “FUCK!”

My curse was drowned out by snarls that echoed through the small chamber. Pain, increasing with each passing second, shot through my left leg. I fumbled with my phone while thrashing my leg to remove whatever it was that had latched on. Even with the flashlight, it was hard to get a good look because of all the movement.

It was a filthy creature, with large clumps of its matted fur missing, revealing scabby skin. About the size of a corgi - an especially well-fed corgi - its jagged teeth were clamped shut on my flesh. Shaking and kicking my leg seemed futile, and only made it start scratching wildly with its thin claws.

“Get the hell off me!” I dropped my phone so I could move the dagger to my left hand, but the creature was still out of reach. In the moment, it seemed that my only choice was to bend my knee, moving the leg closer to the blade. The creature made a gurgling squeal as I flailed the dagger around wildly, cutting its skin, but not particularly deep. In retaliation, it swiped its claws at me, tearing part of my shirt as well as some of my skin beneath.

Gritting my teeth, I turned the dagger slightly in my hand and stabbed it down onto the creature’s back as hard as I could. It stopped clawing at my waist in shock. I pulled the dagger out and thrust it back in, then started repeating the motion faster. Finally, after several more strikes, the disgusting thing stopped making noise, and I felt the grip of its jaws loosen slightly. I growled in pain and continued stabbing it again and again just to make completely sure it was dead.

I pulled its teeth off of my leg, then turned enough to kick the beast away with my other foot. Panting and shaking, I retrieved my phone and took a good look at my leg. Its teeth had really dug into me, and I needed to do something about the bleeding. On the plus side, its claws hadn’t managed to cut into me that much. My waist was bleeding, but it was minor in comparison to my leg.

Unsure exactly how to deal with the wounds, I settled on tearing off some of the cloak before giving my brain a chance to overthink the situation. I tied it around my leg, but I knew it wouldn’t do much for me in the long run. Thinking back to first aid classes I had taken as a teenager, all I knew was that tourniquets could be used as a last-ditch effort to stop bleeding, but that it came with different drawbacks. Let’s see how bad it gets first. I just need to get the fuck out of here.

I took a deep breath. There were times when it was wisest to stay where you were if you got lost, but ending up in a mystery cave when I should have been ten minutes from my apartment felt like a rare exception.

I pointed my flashlight at the dead creature to get a good look at it. With its bulging eyes and long, hairless, tail, it looked like a deformed cross between an opossum and a rat, but much bigger.

Rising shakily to my feet, the pain in my leg increased, but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t move. Just gonna have to deal with it for now. The cave had returned to its previous eerie silence, broken only by my slow steps. I made my way to the exit I spotted earlier. The chamber I was in appeared to be connected to a long passage that led… well, I wasn’t sure, but it definitely didn’t lead directly outside, as I’d hoped. I sighed. That would have been too easy. So long as it doesn’t lead me deeper into wherever-this-is.

You know that feeling you get in-between turning off a light and fully exiting the room? I was feeling that times ten; worried that there was something right behind me in the dark. My hands clutched my phone and the dagger tightly, my body tensed up, and I made short-but-speedy steps into the passage. The adrenaline had the bonus effect of distracting me from the pain, so things were looking up!

The narrow passage twisted and turned often, and I kept getting my hopes up that I’d see a way out around each bend. I was careful about shining the flashlight ahead of me for too long. There was no need to alert anything to my presence if it could be avoided, but I made sure to check the ground ahead of me every so often.

My breathing quickened when the ceiling - already too short for my comfort - got lower, and I had to crouch down uncomfortably to proceed. Shit… is it going to be like this the rest of the way? What if it gets even tighter? I began to relax as the ceiling rose up again a few minutes later, until I realized the passage had opened up into another chamber. Anything could be in here. Gotta stay cautious.

As I was wondering what would be the best way to get a feel for the chamber’s layout, inspiration hit me. With my flashlight turned off, I opened up my phone’s camera, turned it to landscape orientation, and snapped a photo. The flash lit up the room momentarily, and now I could refer to the photo instead of constantly shining the light around… or trying to rely on my memory.

While I was proud of my idea, I still tried to keep my expectations in check. I’d seen enough horror movies to know that this would be the moment in which something even worse than the rat-thing would be revealed. What I actually saw in the photo, however, was worse.