They say no wild places exist on this green Earth anymore. They say that space, or the depths of the sea, are the final frontier. They say they've mapped it all, that the great northern woods, the low and dusty plains, and the humid southern swamps are explored. Charted and tamed, by human hands. Held in check by the laws and governance of mankind, no matter how foolish such claims may be. In this world, nature is not beholden to Man - it simply humors us, allows us to believe ourselves to be in charge. It beckons us forwards into our own oblivion, greatening our hubris at every step so that we, like Icarus, may plummet to the depths.

There exist those who would save us from ourselves. Often, their guidance is brought on by their own pain - to acknowledge monsters exist generally requires one to encounter them, and to encounter a monster is to court with death. Enter, the hero of our story, one 'Artemis', as she calls herself to all zero of her adoring fans.. An amateur monster huntress, she has all the right qualifiers: headstrong, violent, selfless, durable, fearless, and a little bit crazy. I could tell you more: about her life, her dreams, her strengths, her weaknesses... but instead, I should think it more appropriate that I show you.

Enter, Tabitha Varna.

-

The revving of a chainsaw broke the silence, making the whole house echo with sound. Smoke sputtered out of the metal monstrosity already, trigger pulled once, twice, thrice in anticipation. It was a warning - and a threat. An offer to go peacefully. An offer unacknowledged.

Heavy black combat boots met the frail face of the front door like the fist of god, splintering it at it was ripped hatefully from it's rusted hinges. Metal plating, makeshift armor, click-clacked softly as she stepped forth - not that anyone could hear it beneath her war-machine's roar. She flipped her mask up, the modified welding screen done away with to expose a face of gentle brown with deep mahogany irises and striking ebon eyebrows. She would be pretty, or at least cute, if she had showered in the last week.

She had not.

"Alright, fucker, time's up! If you wanna play hide and fucking seek, let's play!"

Down went the mask. Up went the weapon. Tonight's arena was a three-story house, an old farming estate, located a few dozen miles out from Green Bay. Surrounded by woods and left to rot by time, something foul had moved in, and now it had to be excised. Tabitha had taken the time to stake the place out earlier today, and now that the moon was high, it was time for work. Time to hunt.

She proceeded down the main hall, taking in the scenery around her. It was modestly furnished, a coffee table here and a rug there, side-rooms splitting off in that egg-carton way where they all somehow connected to eachother once again. Dust lingered in the air, caught like stars in her flashlight, kicked up by her movements and shouting. The house creaked from the wintry winds which buffeted it, but otherwise stood soundless. Too quiet.

She waited, eyes closed, trying to see if she could get anything at all - a scent, a sound, a thought, a sensation. Some monsters - technically 'entities', but she preferred to call them what they were - exuded an aura simply by existing, low-level energy oftentimes for the purpose of frightening or cowing human prey. She tried to reach out in her mind's eye, knowing it was nothing but hope and superstition that she might find something... and the chill that ran down her spine in answer was violent. She grinned beneath the mask's own fang-toothed smile, adrenaline rushing in to still her nerves and embolden her.

Second floor. It was standing still, waiting for her - whatever it was.

"Alright, you son of a bitch, let's see what you're made of..."

The whisper was to herself and for her own benefit. Whatever the hell this thing was, there was almost no chance it even understood English - most monsters in these parts that could speak knew French, from long, long ago, during the fur trade. It made Tab's skin crawl whenever some unearthly abomination tried to 'Bonjour' and parley with her.

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Up the stairs, chainsaw still held at the ready, blade facing out to safeguard against any threats. This second floor was more furnished, but less stable - holes in the wood from termites and water damage gave away any sense of comfort that the place may have offered. Old family photos and paintings were nailed to the wall along the stairs, most of them torn to shreds, though one alone sat untouched: a family dog, smiling happily towards the picture-taker as it sat out on the porch. If Tab had more time, she would've smashed that frame, too.

She crept along, the old green bomber jacket she'd gotten from the shelter helping to keep from shivering too much. It was icy-cold up here, frigid in fact - the aura of her quarry setting the air in the house even chillier than it may be outside. She followed this freezing air down the hallway and around a bend, now peering down another hall - one with windows on the left, nothing on the right, and a single door at the end. There was no doubt what lay beyond. Evil. These sorts of things always tended towards the dramatic, even subconsciously.

She approached tentatively, what was once a plain oaken door painted over with white now the only thing standing between her and the supernatural. Her grip on the chainsaw tightened, finger twitching on the trigger, ready to blow... when something else began to fight it to be heard.

A gramophone. Slowly, slowly, it crept to life - words warbling out of that shut door and into the still winter air, the husky tone of a man long dead given new life. She knew the words, every one, but let them play for a few moments - she could respect the hustle to try to scare her off.

"My girl, my girl, don't lie to me... Tell me, where did you sleep, last night...?"

The handle to the door began to turn, creaking inwards. The music came louder through the open space, invited through by the absence of else. The gleam of a single claw, long and ebony, was caught in the ring of Tab's flashlight, curling around the doorframe. Something else shifted in the shadow, something unnatural.

"...in the pines, in the pines, where the sun don't ever shine... I was shiverin', the whole night through..."

One claw came to two, then four, then six. Fingers, or what one could approximate to be fingers, crested the edge of the wooden slab. The barest edges of a muzzle, mishappen and canine, poked around the corner - it awkwardly mouthed the words, rotten fangs and loose-hanging flesh yellowed and grey in the light.

"My husband was a hard-working man... About a mile from here..."

This time Tabitha answered, whole body taut like a drum, ready for whatever this thing might throw at her. Initial thoughts: werewolf. However, something was wrong... Bone was exposed, teeth looked too bad, and werewolves hated holing up in houses. No, this was something different. Something even less human. Werewolves at least were people when the sun was up - this... thing had never known humanity. She could feel a tinge of disgust and unease in her gut.

"His head was found in a driving wheel... But his body was never found..."

And like that, the bulb of her flashlight snapped out.

Technology was proven to fail when nearing supernatural influence - the more unnatural the entity or the more complex the tech, the more likely it was. Combustion-driven contraptions were more reliable, and a pointy stick was best, but even a razorblade could dull before eldritch horror.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Outside, lightning flashed. The beast leapt. Artemis screamed with rage and terror in equal measure, her mask reflecting malformed limbs and asymmetrical features in it's inky glass.

The chainsaw roared, meeting her prey mid-air just as its claws met her. The hallway was painted with blood as she tore into the rotten, shambling husk of its torso, stinking meat and porous bone giving way beneath gas-powered steel. It howled in her ear as it strove to bite down on her, body caught on the box of her saw, claws of its many arms swinging wildly to catch her flesh but finding naught but metal plating. One slipped through and took her by the right arm, causing pain to ripple down to her trigger finger. The whirring metal stopped immediately as she wailed in pain, falling back onto the floor in a vain attempt to get away.

Lightning flashed again, the horror's multi-jawed maw open wide to engulf her, the molars of a deer and fangs of a wolf scratching upon the steel and glass of her mask. She could feel saliva drip down into her shaggy black hair, its very touch stinging her like acid; in her nostrils, the humid aroma of decay and old blood fought to nauseate her. On her back, blade caught in the creature's torso, she was trapped. Pinned. Fucked.

It was time for her backup plan.

Painfully, straining against even moving, her pointer finger slipped to an alternate trigger. She could barely fight the agony as the nightmare atop her flailed and screeched in different voices - a man's, a child's, a woman's, an elder's, all past prey to the slaughter. And then, feeling the smooth, well-worn iron of the second trigger, she put all her effort into this final pull...

BOOM!

Gore splattered the ceiling and stray buckshot peppered around it. Her quarry screamed as a hole punched into the center of its body, its claw coming free from her arm and taking a chunk of muscle with it. She screamed again, tears of suffering streaming down her cheeks as she forced herself to pull again, a few centimeters further forwards. BANG! The second barrel struck even truer than the first, bone splinters and unused viscera blown out like a t-shirt cannon.

Her attacker reeled back, its many limbs flailing in pain and rage, dead cattle's eyes incongruent as they became frantic. It was grievously injured, it knew that much - whatever she had done had weakened it far more than any hunter before, those others in its belly easy prey to its fear and speed. As it reeled it readied to lunge again, to try for her midsection - but Tabitha, emboldened by her own success, pushed back with her heels. Black rubber scraped along creaking wood as its head plunged down through the timber where her stomach had been moments before, now lodged into the unstable woodwork like the cork of a wine bottle.

Tabitha scooched back to the far wall while the monstrosity flailed, its arms and legs tearing apart the very house around it - plaster was rent free, floorboards were punched and dented, windows were smashed to let the rain in. Lightning flashed again, and Tab finally got a good look at her current nemesis.

Limbs seemed to sprout at random from its body, which in itself was a horrid mockery of an elk's torso. The head was like a cruel collection of jawbones from various beasts, with cow horns set at an angle no natural creature would ever consider, and eyes lining a cornucopia of dry sockets. Pieces of God's many creatures could be found in abundance across its abhorrent carcass without rhyme or reason - the patchwork quilt of a disturbed child, sewn together with the limbs of their favorite dolls. There was only one option.

"Skinwalker. Fucking... fuckers." That was all the eloquence Tab could muster as she reached for the shells tucked into her bandolier-harness, drawing up two shells painted with blue X's on the end. The break of the shotgun was inward-facing, making loading possible without removing the duct-tape, but difficult - she struggled to slot the pair of marked shells in, but finished with a satisfying click just as the skinwalker's head was torn free of the wood. She raised her weapon.

Her enemy, however, simply stood there. It stared at her, its blood dripping down, its guts hanging out; it was nearly completely still, pantomiming breathing, loose lids going to blink over eyeballs which didn't quite fit. The creature began to lean down, lowering its head, many arms going to its rear; it stared up at Tab, humid breath rolling from its mouth, giving an impression of calm. It slowly opened its mouth so as not to startle her, and when it spoke, it was in a voice that struck Tab cold.

A woman's voice, soft and pleading, carried through the space between them. It was wracked with strained emotion, fear and sorrow and despair and futility, death throes for a human. Four words rattled from the beast's fetid esophagus, a voicebox which shouldn't even function drawing Tabitha to a distant place and time for but a moment.

"Please, d-don't kill me..."

Silence reigned for a moment. Only the dim light of the moon shone through, barely parting the clouds overhead. It was a cruel blanket to house the sadistic nightmare in this abandoned house, Tabitha's eyes wide and tears welling at the edges. Peace lasted one further moment. Good things never last.

Screaming in agony, in fear, in the helpless impotency of a human-turned-prey, the skinwalker leapt. Its limbs, all positioned behind it save two, propelled it with enough speed to rival a cannonball. Its mouth opened wide, hoping to finally make a meal of the hunter. Its voice warbled and was torn as it re-enacted the previous owner's fate, more like an audio recording than an impression.

Tabitha was ready. With help from her middle finger to generate the force necessary, she yanked back on both triggers. The sawn-off's barrels flared with light as flame erupted from them, the scent of makeshift napalm and gunpowder blocking out the stink of rot for only a second before it, too, was replaced by the reek of burning trash and fur. Buckshot and volatile gel splattered into the skinwalker's face and torso like a gout of draconic rage, the force of it sending its lunge wide and blowing many of its jaws to smithereens; they became flaming shrapnel to clatter to the ground around the pair of them as it hit the wall only a foot away from Tabitha, still screaming in indescribable suffering.

The thing writhed and screeched through its ruined throat as it died, Tab using her chainsaw to prop herself up - her head already felt light from bloodloss, and the creature's voice remained as that horrid fascimile of a woman years dead, pleading for her life even as it was snuffed so violently. Tabitha staggered away, pulling herself from the skinwalker's dread aura before she could finally think with real coherence. That's when it hit her - the consequences of her actions, once more rearing their ugly head.

This whole fucking place was about to burn down. Her little last-resorts, home-made napalm rounds (hand-pressed in the back of her van, made using a recipe she found online), were so illegal it was almost comedic. This was why. She turned back at the top of the stairs to see smoke already starting to pour from the hallway amidst the thudding and the screaming and the crying. Down the stairs she went, combat boots raising ruckus for the second time tonight, and into the main hall.

She made it out moments later, eyes now streaming with tears, heart a raging turmoil to match the house's blaze. Every superhero had a weakness, and while Tabitha may not wear a cape, monsters that played with the mind found it easy to pry hers from her. Some creatures had a way of knowing you better than you knew yourself, clawing their way into your brain and never letting go of whatever juicy tidbits they found inside. Humanity liked to explore this effect with their horror-movie antagonists; they never truly knew how on-the-nose they were.

She put it from her mind, trudging through the snow and towards her noble steed: a white utility van she had painted the words 'FUCK TRUCK' on the side of in an attempt to ward off any would-be thieves. Throwing the side-door open she surveyed her chariot's interior before clambering in and out from the snow. Her clothes were cast aside save for her pants once the doors were locked and the overhead light was clicked on, her little workshop and domain offering momentary solace. Some people said that a person's home was their castle - Tabitha Varna's castle had wheels and a gas tank, it seemed.

A self-made workbench was welded into the back on one side, a sleeping bag set atop some plywood planks directly opposite it. Beside the workbench, a home-made welder sat for quick-use; beside that, on the left door that she had welded shut, she riveted in a gun rack. A minifridge connected to its own jury-rigged car battery power source occupied the last bit of open space, with a first aid kit just laying on top of it beside her 3BS. She popped it open (the first aid kit) and started work.

Tonight she'd have to sleep in the woods. It was almost poetic, really - now it was her turn to sleep in the pines, just like the song had said. And, just like the song, she had lost someone close to her - but they'd found more than just her head. Barely.

It would be a hard night's sleep. But she'd make it through. She always did. But when she closed her eyes, she could only hear screams... Screams, and that damn song. She fell asleep humming along.

"My girl, my girl, where will you go

I'm going where the cold wind blows

In the pines, in the pines

Where the sun, never shines

I will shiver the whole night through".