—Travis—

The lonely stretch of road sat in darkness. What seemed like an army of oak tree trunks surrounded Travis on each side. His lack of sleep left him wondering if he'd taken the wrong lane at the juncture and entered some dark fantasy forest world.

The worn, cracked stretch of pavement felt endless if not for the occasional road sign that rose out of the weed-infested graveled shoulder. Or rather, what remained of the sign that nature hadn't covered yet in its slow advance on the land that man had taken from Her and paved over.

Travis always had issues driving on the highways. Even with GPS, he would still somehow get lost. Since turning off at the juncture, his route became many twists and turns. Trees encroached on the road once surrounded by grassy fields. Travis felt as if they were creeping in on him, like a predator closing in on its prey.

His anxiety worsened when his phone entered a perpetual state of recalculating. another headache created from the winding, woodsy detour.

"Fuck, well, eventually I have to get out of this forest." His eyes went to the dashboard. Like his navigation, Spotify had fallen victim to the trees and left him in silence, save for the purr of the engine and the occasional jostle from a rough patch of road. With nothing to lose, he powered on the car's radio to only get a static buzz over the speakers.

A sigh left Travis's lips. Why couldn't he catch a break? The woman he planned to make his fiancée had cheated on him. It all happened so quickly. He had been so excited to see her. The moment he opened the door to her dorm room, his heart crumbled like the cracked asphalt he was driving on.

Her lack of remorse was the worst part.

Travis's thoughts raced. Why didn't he just stop at one of the many hotels posted on the highway signs? Maybe if he hadn't been so distraught, he would have made that decision. There was also the impending storm. Travis wanted to get back home and sulk as he watched the rain, enjoying the soothing sounds as both he and the sky wept a torrent of tears.

His original plan of him and Amy riding out the storm in her dorm was now long gone.

The few signs he had come across were for speed limits and sharp turns. As he continued to turn the knob in the hopes static would give way to music.

He passed a pair of signs, catching a quick glimpse of them.

DEER CROSSING

NEXT 5 MILES

With more fiddling, the radio came alive with a woman's voice before static overtook it. "This... 96.1..." Travis paused, then turned the dial back to the station numbers he had heard. "... Dan sent in a request for the song..." Travis hit a pothole, and as the car slingshot from the rough terrain, he knocked the knob and the static returned.

"Ugh." About to reach his limit, Travis jerked his hand back to the knob and finally got the station to play.

"Enjoy the song, Dan!" the woman said. At the first beats of the song, Travis felt his heart sink. Of all the songs, it was this one.

"Yeah, I'm gonna take my-" A shout filled the car and drowned out the radio.

"Fuck you, Amy! You and whoever was in there with you!"

Travis seethed at the reminder of their relationship and the song she used to play on their road trips together, each line only making him more enraged.

"'Til I can't no-"

His rage hit a peak. "Fuck you too, Dan!"

Travis cursed at everyone he felt wronged by. He focused on the road when a plink sounded in front of him. He stared at the droplet of water on the glass as it went upward in the breeze. A second plink hit the windshield, only to be followed by a barrage of rain plastering his windshield.

"Oh fuck you too, nature."

Defeated, Travis slumped back in his seat as he flipped his wipers on. The rain paired with the early morning darkness had left him unable to see over fifty feet ahead. With a twist of the indicator stalk, his high beams came on and the road regained some visibility and caught another road sign just before he passed it.

ENTERING

RED OAK VALLEY, PA

POP: 427

Travis felt his body relax. He had already been up for twenty hours straight between packing, driving, and stopping for food. Constant taps and drumming soothed him as his eyelids grew heavy.

The rain eased slightly, just enough for the faint whispers of the radio to be heard.

"Cheated on my baby."

The song line had made its way into Travis's ear and burrowed into his head. It mocked him. Of all the parts of the song, it had to be this specific line? This fucking line? The line that summarized exactly what Amy had done to him.

"Dammit." His hand slammed down on the power switch . The display went dark. His lips tensed as he watched the radio as if it would just turn back on and play more of that damn song.

Something came into his periphery, a figure on the road he should have been watching. Panic gripped his heart. Darting his head up, he saw a blur, a pair of deer. Their eyes locked on the headlights, feet frozen to the road they had tried to cross as the car closed the brief gap between them.

He slammed the brakes. The tires screeched, but it was too late.

Yet... The two deer rose to their hind legs, both standing side to side, forming a sort of barricade that wanted to be hit.

Travis jerked forward when the car collided with the animals. Panic turned to terror when he turned the wheel only for the wet road to make the car float. The steering wheel lightened in his hands as his grip tightened on it. The sight outside his windshield was that of the fast approaching trees. He felt a drop as rubber met gravel. It all came to a stop when the slam of metal hitting wood sounded throughout the forest.

A double team of the crash and seatbelt locking to keep him in place knocked the wind from Travis' lungs.The airbags finished the assault, deploying to create a soft but hard kick to the face. It left him dazed and with ears ringing as he sat in the darkness.

"God... dammit." He cried.

Still processing the wreck, Travis watched as the air bags sagged and deflated, his sense of feeling trapped eased. He reached out to the car's dash and felt relief that his phone had stayed in the holder.

Something good had finally happened.

His phone burned his eyes a moment as the screen became his only light in the void of darkness. The full battery in the top corner relieved him. Even with no signal, it could still be useful. With a few swipes, his phone's flashlight lit up the inside of the car as it bounced off the white fabric of the airbags.

In the last twelve hours, Travis had lost his girlfriend of three years, his car was now total, and the money to repair it paired with the ring he had bought for a dead relationship would take what remained of his savings he had worked so hard for.

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With each passing second, his view of the scene outside his windshield became clearer. Despite the crack running along the glass, the canopy of trees had lessened the rain above, sparing the windshield from the rain and keeping the view outside clear. The airbag had finally sunk enough to reveal what had been leaning on the glass.

Travis jerked back at the sight.

A deer's head, a severed head, was leaning against the windshield. "Oh God," he said as he took in the sight before him. "Something about this isn't right." The more he looked at it, the less sense it made.

Travis had just hit the pair of deer in the road. Yet its corneas had clouded already and the milky circles had taken on a deep purple tinge. All his years of working as an embalmer in his family's funeral home had been gnawing at his brain. In that time helping to prepare the dead, he had never seen death settle in this quickly.

Clouding took about two hours to onset.

His curiosity grew as he noticed other details on the head. Around the agape mouth of the creature, blood had seeped out onto the white hood of his car but instead of light red, it had taken on hues of purple, like that of a body in lividity, another event that took more time to set in than what had passed.

Nothing was adding up.

"They were..." Travis paused as he doubted the image in his mind of what he saw before the crash, how the two deer moved in a way Travis never thought was possible. "Standing up in the road when I hit them... Deer do that?" He shifted about in his seat as he moved the light from his phone away from the head, onto the car hood splattered with more blood and towards the trees that had stopped his car.

Deer blood had splattered the gray trunks of the oak trees as well. The upper bodies of both deer splayed on the hood of the car. Comparing the two bodies, the left one was in much better shape than its counterpart on the right that had lost a limb and its head, leaving its discolored sinew exposed on the carcass.

"Poor things, I hope–" Travis fell silent as he noticed another detail that defied logic. The end of a black, wire-like strand dangled from between the touching sides of the two deer.

The bulk of it was just out of view from Travis as he sat in the driver's seat. He watched as a dark red liquid ran down it and dripped onto the hood.

"What the hell is that?" Travis knew what intestines looked like. He had removed and prepared enough of them. These were much too thin.

He had to get a better look.

Travis unclipped his seatbelt. Bringing his leg up triggered a sharp pain that spread across his back. Had he broken something?

The crash had been anything but gentle.

He gritted his teeth in a quick motion devoid of any grace. He raised his right leg over the center console and planted his foot on the passenger side floor. With a heave, he stood up. The pain returned worse than before. Unable to bear it, he fell onto the console and let out a groan as he steadied himself upright.

He pointed the light at the bodies and froze again.

The sides of the deer had a mass of wires sticking out from their sides, sewn together. The force of the crash had snapped some of the binding and created a small gap between the two.

"Jesus," It was the only word Travis could find. Seconds ticked by when he spoke aloud. "How were they alive?"

The deer were like something out of a cursed image. The longer he looked at them, the worse it got.

Travis's eyes raced over the two animals. He started at the source and directed his light to follow along. As he scanned them over, he saw the wires had gone in and out of their pelts, and seemed to spread across their body.

Like someone had frantically stitched them together and all over their bodies.

He stared, lost for words. What was he even looking at? Who or what could even do something like this? Travis had seen enough, too much. He needed to get away from this. Find help and get away from it.

He pointed his phone to the driver's window, then the passenger's window. The driver's door had a bush pressing against the glass while the passenger window looked clear.

With his exit pathway set, Travis turned his back to the passenger door. The movement was too swift. He winced as the ache in his back returned. "Ok, let's just-" He breathed deep and clenched his jaw like ripping off a bandaid. He moved quickly and refused to stop as he leaned over. A grunt filled the car as his core burned. The car swayed as he landed on the passenger seat.

With each labored breath, he felt as if a knife were twisting through his muscles and lungs. Travis crossed his arms and held his ribs in hopes it would relieve the pain. As the pain ebbed away, something fell onto the hood of the car. His head darted. It resulted in a fresh twist of pain shooting through his body.

"What was that?" Travis blurted when he brought the phone back up to the windshield.

The mass of dark, sinewy wires had fallen onto the hood of the car. His heart rose to his throat as they stirred.

"What?" The wires slithered along the stained hood of the car. A chill ran down his spine. "What the fuck?" His brain buffered at the monstrosity inching towards him. As they were about to reach the glass, the wires undulated until they retracted back into the deer.

All went still like Travis, yet the raindrops tapping onto the car were a constant reminder; Time was still moving.

The deer head that remained attached to its body was another source to cite as it began to sway.

The head rattled about. The deer's mouth had hung agape since Travis had first set his eyes on the poor creature he had killed.

Something gleamed in the deer's mouth for a moment. A black wire ran over its tongue before slithering towards the gums of the carcass. The jaw of the deer convulsed when the reflective item Travis glimpsed revealed itself.

A sharp needle-like object had punctured through the deer's hide, the wire followed as if it were being guided by the needle at the tip. Again, it vanished as it weaved its way back into the head.

The process repeated. Despite his pounding heart, Travis could hear the flesh of the animal being pierced and the black fiber entwining the skull continued to form its revolting pattern.

Travis could only watch, despite being shielded from the storm outside. A fear-induced sweat drenched him and his clothes. His body vibrated for warmth.

The needle and its thread finally stopped, and the black strings tensed.

The deer's head rose and locked its glassy eyes with Travis's.

A groan escaped the deer. Agony filled the cry as its mouth opened wider and the groan became a wail of rage. The wide-open maw of the creature made the strings around the commissures of its mouth taut.

The buck's body twitched. Travis had been so transfixed on the needlework done to the head he didn't even notice the stitching that had covered the body and limbs of the deer. With each movement, it became more erratic, as if the strings were learning to control its new puppet.

The beast slammed its hooves onto the hood of the car. It grunted and made the car shake as it tried to pull itself free, to no avail. The trees and car had pinned it.

At least for now.

Roaring again, the threads woven into the deer's body convulsed as needles pierced through its chest. The sharp barbs rose out of it as black wires emerged and frantically waved about. The needles and wires paired up and formed what looked like crude scissors. It sunk the blades into the other deer, attacking it and tearing apart the strings that bound them.

Confusion mixed with Travis's overwhelming fear. "It's attacking itself?" The onslaught continued until the last string that joined the pair had been severed. The second body fell onto the hood. Scissors stabbed into the body and threw it towards the windshield.

With his now obstructed view, Travis could only watch the deer carcass rustle and thrash about as frantic snips and squelches of the rotting meat being torn asunder.

He had to escape. But fear kept him in place.

Another roar sounded when the scissors stabbed into the remains of the deer and flung it off the car. With the deer gone, Travis could see the creature before him.

Black wires had held up four limbs. Three had come from the other deer and the last one had once been the left leg of the creature. The scissors split apart back into needles when it turned the legs backwards, then sewed a two legs onto each side of its body.

The needles stabbed into the deer, rising and falling below its flesh as it weaved its threads in and out. The black threads secured the legs in place until it was complete.

If Travis had to describe what the horror was that stood before him, it would be; like someone trying to combine a deer and spider into an unholy abomination.

The legs moved. They had come alive. The monster bent the legs until they wrapped around the tree trunk. It pulled itself back when the crude, blood-stained scissors returned.

It stabbed into its lower abdomen.

With each self inflicted stab, dark red liquid leaked from the creature. It continued to heave and pull until, finally, its upper body separated from what kept it trapped.

Organs and intestines spilled from the beast. With a few more snips, the dangling bits fell to the ground. Its new limbs eased as it fell onto the hood of the car.

It was now unfettered, free from its prison of bark and metal.

The creature alternated its new legs as it moved towards Travis. Each movement made a thump on the car hood as it closed the gap between the two. With only a sheet of glass between them, the creature rose on its new legs, then slammed the glass with its only limb left in its original position. It raised its hoof again and continued to hit the windshield as the crack in the glass spread.

Travis needed to move. He should have used the time it was freeing itself to do so, yet fear had stopped him. Now it only told him to do one thing.

Run. His brain finally processed the demand.

He had to time his escape just right. There was no room for error.

Only death or survival.

The cracks in the glass grew. It would soon shatter and the creature would descend upon Travis. He gripped his phone tight. To lose his only light would doom him. The sunrise was still a short while away, and the weather did nothing to help him see.

With a final slam, glass shattered and fell onto him. The creature crouched back on its new legs. Travis flung open the car door. He threw his body out of the seat and onto the forest floor just as the abomination pounced on his seat.

Despite the fresh surge of pain worse than any of the others, he needed to buy himself time.

Rolling to his back he kicked the car door shut, just as the creature thrashed against it. With no time to waste, Travis picked himself off the ground and made a mad dash down the road.

How long would he have until the creature was out of the car and back after him?

He had no desire to look back and find out.