As darkness swallowed the forest, Jack was beginning to regret his napping habits.

Six hours earlier.

Jack had been perched on the hunting platform for two hours now. The small wooden platform, attached to a large fir tree and overlooking a game trail buried deep in the forest, was constructed 3 meters off the ground and was currently home to a young man He sat in his roost, alone with his thoughts, only the sound of birds chattering breaking the calm of the afternoon. Hours could pass without any sign of sentient life at all, not that Jack minded though, he generally didn't like people very much. That's what he liked about Canada, acres of wilderness with only a handful of people in it to bother him.

Ever since he was a little kid, Jack had been fascinated by the wild, he loved camping and hiking and as soon as he had gotten his drivers license, he would drive his old used car as far as it would go up old logging roads, strap on his pack and hike into the woods, sometimes not emerging for days on end. He taught himself how to survive by reading and watching anything he could get his hands on about the wilderness, before venturing out and trying everything he had learned. He made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, even a few brushes with death at one point or another, but he now considered himself an expert on the wild. As much as an expert that a 19-year-old could be anyway.

He had created his hunting platform two years ago after a deer had nearly run him over when he was investigating the nearby game trail. Vowing revenge and with fresh venison on his mind, Jack soon returned and built his little lookout. No deer had passed under that tree since. After months of waiting for game to no avail, Jack started to use hunting as an excuse just to sit and relax. Like now. Unzipping his backpack and peering inside, he pulled out a sandwich and a tupperware container full of cookies. gazing into the woods while munching on chocolate chip cookies, he started to regret that he hadn't gotten a good sleep last night, mostly due to playing video games. He had told himself that he wouldn't stay up later than midnight again, but the questline had just been wrapping up! He couldn't just abandon it midway!

As Jack considered what he was going to cook for dinner that night, he began to have to fight to keep his eyelids open as his lack of sleep caught up with him. Deciding to take a quick power nap to replenish his energy, he leaned up against the large fir tree supporting his platform, placing his hunting rifle, a sturdy old Lee Enfield across his lap, closing his eyes for a short, refreshing nap.

When Jack woke up in mid-air, he knew something was seriously wrong. Panic flooded his mind as he fell through the air, frantically twisting his body to avoid smashing his head into the ground before landing on some kind of soft moss carpeting the forest floor. He lay on the ground for a minute to catch his breath and feel sorry for himself before he picked himself up off the ground and surveyed his surroundings. The first thing that was apparent was that Jack had slept much longer than he had intended to.

He had closed his eyes early in the afternoon, the sun still beating down from high in the sky. The sun was nowhere to be seen now, the last few dregs of daylight sinking far beneath the horizon. The second thing that was immediately apparent was that he wasn't in the same forest that he had fallen asleep in. It was fairly dark but he was pretty sure that no trees he'd seen were that big. The trees in the forest that he had been hunting in were at most, two feet in diameter, however, the behemoths standing around him were at least seven feet across, towering far into the sky to the point that Jack couldn't even see the tops of the canopies.

Jack turned in a circle, astonished. At a glance, the world around him resembled the old redwood forests he had seen pictures of online, giant ferns and ancient titans of trees dwarfing him, the calls of unseen birds, and the rustle of wind through the foliage. He stood in wonder for a moment before he realized his situation. He had somehow woken up from his nap in an unknown part of the world. This was concerning.

First things first, he had to take inventory. He walked over to his rifle that had stuck straight up in the ground and pulled it out of the moss floor, brushing it with his hands to clean the loose dirt off before leaning it against a nearby tree. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and tried to turn it on. Broken. Cursing into the air, he tossed it on the ground and swung his backpack off to inspect the contents. One water bottle, dented. One sandwich, squashed. A bag of former cookies now crumbs. A large hunting knife. Binoculars, surprisingly unharmed. One lighter.

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He sighed and repacked his backpack, only keeping the knife out to attach to his belt. Standing up and putting his hands on the back of his head, Jack stared into the rapidly increasing darkness all around him and began to regret his napping habit.

“Might as well make a shelter”

Jack exclaimed to no one in particular, slinging his pack on and starting to search for fallen branches and ferns large enough to use as makeshift walls, cursing himself for forgetting to pack a flashlight. Unseen owls began to hoot from the darkness as if mocking him for his situation as he blundered around the forest floor, tripping over roots and swearing as he wondered what the hell could have happened during his nap.

Having gathered a respectable amount of dead branches and shrubbery he set to leaning the larger limbs against a nearby tree and covering them with ferns to act as a bedroom for the night before breaking the smaller dry branches into kindling to start a campfire with. After ten minutes of attempting to coax the flame from his lighter to ignite the small pile of collected branches, he stood up and scowled at the nearest looming tree.

“Nothing dry in this damn place.”

He growled before abandoning his attempt at a fire and zipping his lighter back into his pack. By the time he had decided to go without a fire for the evening, the night had fully encroached, making it difficult for Jack to see even a few meters in front of himself, the only light being provided by the moon, its rays sporadically breaking through the forest canopy.

Walking over to his makeshift shelter, he adjusted the fern wall he had made and propped his rifle and pack beside his construction before squatting down to slip undercover, glancing up to take one last look into the darkness before laying down to spend the night on the mossy ground. Jack thought for a moment and then stood up again. He was pretty sure he had just seen a shadow move. Grabbing his rifle, he shakily took a deep breath to calm himself and noticed something that made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The forest had gone completely silent. The solemn call of owls and the chatter of various birds had permeated the air ever since Jack had woken up, but now, even the sound of the giant ferns swaying in the wind had suddenly stopped, leaving the woods in an unnatural eerie silence.

Jack started to feel beads of sweat forming on his body as his heart pounded in his chest. He heard something rustle slightly in the forest behind him and he whipped around, unlocking the safety on his rifle as he raised it to his eye, aiming into the shadows. Nothing there. A chill ran down his spine. A sinister feeling began to press into him from back behind him. Spinning around as fast as he could, he eyed the darkness, finger on the trigger of his rifle, his heart threatening to beat out of his chest. Peering into the blackness he started to yell.

“I know there's someone out there! You're not gonna take me by surprise!”

“C'mon! I'll decorate these fucking trees with you!”

His only answer was a sudden burst of rustling all around him as if a pack of animals was closing in for the kill on wounded prey. Panicking, Jack turned his body as fast as he could to the right, to the left and back to the right, staring directly into a pair of pitch black eyes. He screamed and jumped, stumbling before tripping over his feet and landing flat on his back. The eyes, blacker than the night, crept closer and Jack glimpsed a massive mouth filled with rows of needle like teeth opening slowly under the eyes right before he raised his rifle and shot the creature in the face.

The roar of the gun cut through the dead silence and the bright muzzle flash briefly illuminated the surrounding forest, revealing several humanoid figures standing around him with unnaturally large mouths hanging open, hundreds of razor sharp teeth revealing themselves to Jacks horrified gaze. The monster he shot reared back immediately and let out a scream akin to nails scraping on a chalkboard, swiping blindly around itself with claws that looked as long as Jack's forearms.

Jack wasn't about to wait around for the other monsters to start ripping him to pieces, scrambling to his feet and sprinting as fast as he could into the woods, still clutching his rifle but leaving his backpack and all his supplies behind. After running for what seemed like hours, he slowed down, gasping for air and covered in sweat. The sun had set a long time ago and the forest was in complete darkness, Jack being unable to see a meter in front of himself as leaned against a tree to recover his stamina before some other horror of the night somehow appeared to ambush him.

Breathing more steadily now, Jack started to walk slowly, wincing from cramps in his sides while keeping his free hand trailing on the bark of the tree for support until his hand abruptly met air and he lost his balance, falling through a large crack in the wood he had been leaning on, revealing it to be a standing husk, only a shell of thick bark where a massive titan of the forest had once stood. Crawling through the split in the wood and over to the opposite side, he sat up and trained his rifle on the small entrance, straining his ears for any sign of the monsters finding him.

“Ahaha...hah... They want to eat me.... I'll be a snack... A Jack snack...”

Giggling disturbingly to himself, Jack stared at the crack in his bark shelter long into the night until his exhausted body finally gave out on him and he sank into a deep sleep, his rifle slipping from his grip as he slumped slowly onto the ground.