We were on a road trip running through the east coast and all it had to offer. The trip served as a last-ditch effort to preserve nostalgia before our lives began. We planned for months, each with a specific task on what we needed to bring. I handled sandwich provision while the

other two scrambled on a fixed income. We had bags of food on top of each other, masses of cups and plasticware we stuffed Tetris style into my Jeep. Robbie laid out the journey to be as scenic as possible. He hailed from the east Tennessee border in some town I didn't know how to spell. Whenever we went on woodland adventures, he'd make himself disappear amidst the deep tree lines like a blue collar Navy Seal, conjuring himself into our physical realm again after Jack and I tried to leave him stranded by the nearest trail.

His timid nature combated Jack's outlandish antics. Jack grew up in a Midwestern town next to mine. We found each other during Freshman orientation without knowing we were basically neighbors. Although Jack was bigger than most of the other guys, that didn't mean Robbie was small by any means, and let me tell you, they looked ridiculous roaming around with a 4'11" girl that looked more like a baby sister than the one with the important job of having the ride. Our unexpected friendship had such a profound effect on me that I couldn't let them go without doing something special all on our own.

Our road trip led us to a pit stop in a small town that couldn't have been more than a mile long. Rich greenery surrounded compilations of hiking stores and gas stations. A facility for natural, mineral-packed hot springs stood on the edge of the business part of town. Miles of

residential living packed into the woods and along the mountain slopes. Towers of

cumulonimbus clouds hung over the distant horizons.

"So many mountains," Jack said. He gazed from the passenger seat at the endless display of bark and foliage. Robbie searched for signal connection for the GPS. I drove on, passing parking lots until I pulled for a stop at a trail several miles outside of the urban village. There

was a truck but otherwise the lot was deserted.

We made our way down, venturing far enough that no one knew exactly where we were save for Robbie. He knew how to navigate and keep us out of trouble. The sound of a blast came once we made a stop and our joint was on the second rotation. I dropped the green cigarette mid pass and shot a glance to Robbie.

"Sounds like someone's hunting out of season," he said nonchalantly. His fingers reached down to pluck the joint back from the earth floor just as a raindrop fell and soaked it. He froze in his crouched position when we heard the first scream.

"Nice spot ya picked, Molly," Jack said with a tight smile. I dismissed him with a wave and looked around. A second and third scream erupted, the latter trailed further away from us. The forest settled into a new silence. We stared at each other for several minutes.

Jack broke our silence by saying, "Walking in a little bit wouldn't hurt. What if someone got hurt?"

"Or someone's running around with a gun shooting everyone in sight," Robbie replied. I couldn't contribute to the conversation without mental mustering. My thoughts were salmon trying to scale a dam.

"They may have fallen down a cliff. That could explain why we thought we heard a gun," I suggested.

"If it's nothing, then there's no harm in looking," Jack said with a shrug. Robbie and I looked at each other. With a shrug from my shoulders, we strayed. The

manicured path was cut so close I nearly fell in a small groundhog hole as soon as we stepped away from it. With a laugh they helped me up and made a quip about whether Molly had two left feet or if they were on the wrong legs at all. We joked until we saw blood. Drops here and there, then a smear on a rock.

"Looks like a struggle," Robbie said with an uneven giggle. Jack joined in but I couldn't relax enough to add anything.

Deeper still. A sour smell hit us after we crossed a derelict bridge. The wind whipped it up and filled the air with a shout of the leaves. My stomach dropped. "Something's dead," Robbie said.

"How the hell do you know that?" Jack asked.

"You never had a rat die in your house? Or forgot to throw out an old steak and it started rotting? You can't forget smells like that," Robbie replied.

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We gawked at the massive carcass lying in the stream. Tall antlers adorned the head.

Dense muscles outline the top half of the body. The mass transformed into a mass of sinew and organs where the deer's legs should have been. Deep claw impressions trailing away made the rest of the view pleasant. The thickening smell gagged us.

"I don't know what did that," Robbie said quietly. He ran his hands over the deer's neck. He found a fresh gunshot, although the body looked to be decaying too quickly for that to have killed it.

"Mountain lion?" Jack asked, "they're big enough, right?'

"Not to only eat half a 12 point buck," Robbie said. We just stared at him so he sighed and said, "points are how many fractals are on the deer, as in their antlers. This one's got twelve."

"Then just call them antlers, man," Jack said.

"But they're not also called fractals, dumbass. It's what they're doing. Fractals are never ending patterns in nature. You see it in tree branches."

"I didn't know you knew things," Jack said. Robbie smacked him.

I dug my nails into my palms and with a forced sigh I said, "I don't want to meet whatever did this. Let's go." We only had each other out here. No signs of the screams' owner or the gunman. Not even footfalls from this mysterious creature.

We looked around and realized not even Robbie knew where the trail began again now. Rain started in steady droplets as we wandered in the direction we thought we had come from. A bellow of thunder reverberated off of the trees. Carpets of mist fell over the forest. Not too far from the stream where we had found the deer we heard panting and dirt pounding. Jack followed the sound like an amateur bloodhound. He caught a glimpse of a man bolting through the forest and immediately took a sharp turn after him.

"We can't lose him," Robbie said and turned. I had no choice. If we lost each other now, none of us may find a way back to the trail. Mist turned in pounding rain. The thunder grew closer as the sky lit up in white. The man seemed to vanish but as we rushed through blankets of uneven moss and overturned trees we heard his pants and cries for help.

Jack yelled back. We were ghosts to him. They stayed ahead of me, kicked leaves and mushrooms into my face. My shoes tacked into the mud with each step. Pulling them out began to feel impossible. I had to slow my pace to a crawl. The bots endured. I called for them but now I may as well have been screaming to a lost loved one. I kept yanking my feet out of the thickening mud. Squishy sloshes accompanied every moment. The rain became a downpour, intensifying in strength until I couldn't see the next cluster of trees. My next step pulled me face first into the mud. I felt solid land with outstretched fingers but my legs were useless. I caught a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. I chocked it up to the warping rain.

More movement on my other side, joined by a sound I would describe as a powerful nasally hiccup. My eyes darted to follow it. Instead, I saw the worst of the downpour rushing forward. The storm moved so quickly along with the shadow, leaving my mouth agape in a light drizzle. I worked my leg loose with the loss of my shoes. Through the increased visibility I saw a small opening between the trees where two figures stood. I rushed on them, socks and skin ripped open by jagged rocks and fallen branches. Jack and Robbie didn't notice me even when I smacked into them. They stared at the mouth of the riverbank. Rain shrieked down. The torrents of thunder kept me from speaking quieter than a yell but I couldn't make a noise. They had found the gunman here scrambling for life with a

malformed rifle. An impossibly tall, humanoid figure loomed over him with a peach tone and no features to determine the sex. Its hands ended with claws made of bone poking out of shredded flesh. Resistant remnants of crusted blood and gelatinous substances washed away in the rain, leaving the creature shiny like a newborn. Two antlers a total of twelve ends jutted from the skull.

Jack made a decision I will never understand and rushed forward to help the man. The creature pawed into him. It hooked the claws into his flesh and hurled him into the river. Even through the gales we heard the crack of his skull splitting into two on a rock. We screamed for him, my cries uttered through sobs. The creature focused back on the man and gave him a similar treatment. Strips of hunting gear and skin fluttered into the violent act of nature.

Robbie yanked me back through the trees. We ran back the way we prayed we had come. With a deafening scream the weather came worse than before. A hard shove from the wind knocked me down. Robbie turned back for me and froze. I looked up, put a hand over my forehead to visor against the rain. The creature had found us and now there was a clear shot of its face. It looked famished: hollow cheeks, cracked lips, eyes akin to the void, interconnected by an unseen, foreign brain. Its stomach was swollen, by starvation or the fresh men for dinner.

It crouched to meet my eyes. Bloody, flat teeth poked out when it opened its mouth and screamed at me with the nasal hiccup sound. Then, it stood and did the same to Robbie. He threw his hands up and didn't move until it smelled him and darted away with a nearly invisible speed. The rain went with it and the sun returned. The soaked ground was the only evidence that we hadn't completely lost our minds.

We could hear cars and birds again. I didn't realize I was crying until Robbie hugged me.

"They've never been this far south," he muttered.

"What?" I asked.

"It was a mountain lion," he said, " a mountain lion killed that man, and Jack."

"Robbie, I-"

"Jack will get no peace if everyone thinks we did something to him and blamed it on a monster running through the woods," he tightened his grip, "we don't know what we saw." He was shaking.

"Must be the weed," I muttered. We walked back to the trail, found so easily that it couldn't have been there before. My car waited for us. Robbie took the passenger seat. The idling vehicle warmed us as we waited for the police. The truck had disappeared but I spotted it on the other end of the parking lot, overturned and crushed to half its size. A fallen tree covered most of the rips in the metal. I looked back to the forest through puffy eyes, feet and chest aching. A fawn stared back with its mother.