I awoke in a darker world.

An onyx overcast shell encased my grave.

With my limbs and legs attached, my other sense grew confidence. I tasted damp air and smelled the crisp scent of rotting leaves. My eyes worked, my head worked, my senses worked. But none of it meant I could make sense of what happened.

The emotions of the dream hit me next. It’s always like this. As soon as you tried to remember the past, you felt before you thought. My heartstrings struck a messy tune, one I struggled to recognize.

Was the memory scary, like a nightmare?

Was it novel and exciting?

I think I achieved all of the above. I know I did. The company, the girl, the car crash, Will, and then… Right. I had the mystery too.

What the hell happened on that delivery?

My shirt came with blood, but not my own. I wasn’t hurting, but I lived through a charged finale. I was blinded and then felt the zing of kilowatts. Energy ran through my nervous system until every muscle froze with soreness. A chill so icy it burned, or a burn so sharp it was cold? I shocked myself on an electric fence at a farm once. It’s my closest referential memory.

If I was alive — and so far, so true — then where was I alive?

The patient whistle coming from far above became the first clue. The sea of leaves that overtook my body, and the occasional creak of the old and powerful, further narrowed the possibilities.

My eyes struggled to adjust to the starless night and enveloping darkness, but all other sensory organs indicated a forest. A forest biome.

Did they dump my body up north, a left for dead situation? Was I supposed to be dead? Were they coming back for me?

None of it made sense.

Unless…

Was I being watched? Was this still a dream?

A waking dream?

I waited for the world to react to my presence, for birds, bugs or the intelligent crunch of leaves.

“…Anyone…?”

Other than the on and off gusts of wind pushing arboreal matter over my body like waves in the ocean, no other signs of life resounded. Are forests supposed to be this dead?

I didn’t want to move. I was conveniently camouflaged under the excessive shed of this woodland’s flora.

Eventually, I lifted my head out of my cruciferous bed, and my pillow crackled in expansive relief.

In response, a bush an arm span away rustled. With no moon out and a black canopy above, the heavy outline of leafy shrubbery was barely detectable. But the evidence struck self-evidently.

Life made the bush move.

I stared in disbelief, the moment too similar to a cartoon to justify full awareness.

A rabbit?

A monster?

As I got up, my left foot found an object in the forest bed. Like a stone in a garden, it gave me a brief foothold against the brittle leafy crunch. This hard and shapely find would come with me, as a weapon or otherwise.

I grabbed it, still mindful of the dancing bush, and fondled my discovery before I recognized it in all its glory.

The book.

I couldn’t see the cover, but I knew the title.

Intelligence for Idiots.

Somehow, the delivery came with me. It was odd enough that someone would order a book for immediate delivery at 11 PM when they had a library of them at home — let alone plan to use said book in some kind of trap.

What did the phony officer do to me? Why am I here?

Honestly, the last few hours weren’t adding up. Now, especially so.

The bush made noise again. Two bushes, in fact. Before I allowed fear to sneak into me, I enveloped myself in a fighting mentality. I’m not gonna read this, but can I fight with it?

I gripped the book awkwardly, with the spine facing outwards like brass knuckles.

This is so stupid.

Upright and physically functional, I could flee instead. A road might be just out of sight.

I wasn’t worried about rabbits or bears. I didn’t need to build a campfire or assume I was in some Netflix survival show.

I’m no Bear Grylls.

Barely hanging on to my bearings, I reached for the nearest tree, my hands out like the blind man I currently was. Light would find me, eventually. Perhaps in a grove, or from the unstable flicker of headlights through the forest occlusion. I’d get lucky with an end to the overcast conditions or just wait for dawn. Dawn always came.

Until then, I would try to gather more information. These carbon spines were too tall to be native to my home state of Louisiana. I hugged one, trying to gauge its circumference in the ridiculous absence of rational visibility. In my mind’s eye, I was a planet spinning around the sun. These trees were monstrous.

Did I wake up in the redwoods of California?

Another smack of worry hit my stomach, but I held it down.

Where I’m at matters less than finding civilization.

I pinball’d between a few trees, undeniably making some distance. I noticed the natural background noise of my surroundings and could sort the whistle of wind amongst the meaty treetops against the crack and creak of the forest’s breathwork. Like a dirty pair of lungs, it cycled between an expansion of commotion and a hushed respite. There were patterns, and my brain trained itself to them. The plasticity of the human mind tuned out the unnecessary and allowed the body to sync. That said, it was still surprising how easily I connected to the airy cadency in the absence of conventional sensory availability.

And then I heard it. An anomaly in the rhythm. The damn rustle returned.

It was directly behind me. Another animal, that’s the woods for you.

I slapped the nearest tree, drumming it vigorously in my best impression of a territorial squirrel. Did you know they did that? The sight is funny enough that it never leaves your memory once it encodes.

The bush paused it's shakings at my impressive challenge, or at least I hoped so.

Electing to ignore that nonsense, I managed a bit further before realizing activity followed me with each step.

My fear meter rose as multiple shrubs shivered. Behind and in front.

Am I gonna have to climb a fucking tree or something?

My worstseller in hand, I took a more intelligent approach.

“Hello?”

The rustling stopped.

Damn, it had the reverse effect on my fear gauge. No matter. We were still strolling through the woods by my measure.

Or we were. I stopped to hold my nose after a mouthful of toxic fumes.

My skin prickled with excited concern. A bizarre stench wafted around me. Perhaps it did earlier too, but this time my whole-of-body took note.

Another whiff and I almost barfed.

It stunk beyond belief. A pungent, putrid, painful odor that had no place in the animal kingdom. No predator would ever allow itself to fester around hunting grounds like this because all the prey would flee well before the stalker reached them.

Maybe it’s a defense mechanism? Something tiny and scared?

I could feel eyes. Don’t say it sounds ridiculous, we’ve all felt them before.

Fortunately, my solution came quick.

“Enjoy your night,” I said cordially.

As soon as ‘night’ completed its vibration through the air, a tickle of sand hit my neck.

!

It either fell from above or was thro—

A pebble hit my side.

Thrown?

The rustling stopped, but the tossing of minutiae continued. I resumed my forward assault, blocking all rational concern and opting for my old trick of instant movement to avoid meandering thought.

I’m going. I’m just gonna go. And it’ll go away.

And the tossed matter did. But a secondary attack commenced in its place, this of a sonic variant.

I heard hoots. Thank god, it’s just some stupid monkey.

And then chirps.

And squawks.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

And finally, a low undulating warble. All from the same voice box.

What the hell?

All the stupid creepy pastas from the mid 2010s, which I was hard at work suppressing, begin to actualize in my mind.

I chucked my paperweight like a throwing star. In motion, it flapped without a whistle. The hardbound book was bound for the bush to my six. I waited for a reaction after a vegetative clump.

It never came. The book flopped through a leafy runway, landing who knows where.

What was I thinking… Perhaps I needed Intelligence for Idiots more than I thought.

Curiously, the bush family stopped speaking its unnerving forest language.

No warble. No chirping. No monkey noises.

No immediate threat.

I sighed, frustrated.

Obviously, I’m more likely to die of a heart attack than a skunk.

Whatever was out there, regardless of how horrifying or easily misunderstood, it would not hurt me more than my condition already could. Would.

Until then, only I was real.

The rest is performance, the elaborate conversation of what-ifs.

For a long time I continued forward, decidedly unabated by the unusual sounds or the rock tossing. My best guess was the actions underlined a territorial statement. They or it, or whatever, wanted me out. So I left.

With my phone dead, I continued my trek through the tenebrous trees, unaware of how much time passed. On and on I went, gradual claustrophobia creeping into me as I stumbled through the closeted freedom of this shadowy open-world. I didn’t nod off, not while on my feet, but the slow burn of concern and late-night hallucinations from sleep-deprivation teamed up to make everything worse.

Lactic acid weighed my legs down, but I toiled further until eventually wandering felt more Blair Witch than I could tolerate.

So I leaned against a tree to cover my back, suddenly more interested in listening for sounds of a road or the smells of human cooking. I needed a sign of escape or a sign of civilization, something for my senses to cling to.

In the silence, beyond the silence, I caught the crackle of chatter.

There’s always some cajun redneck homesteading somewhere — even in the damp gloom of the Louisiana thicket, or some creepy Californian reserve.

The mysterious bush beasts and their racket took me for a spin, but using my ears like radar in a grid format made this so much easier.

I could follow the sounds, pinpoint them. And as I did, I could follow smells next. Hunger was catching up to me. Not hungry monsters. But if I made it back home, I could catch up to a 24hr drive thru and make this night a meal instead of just bad memories.

I checked the pockets of my black chinos for some green freedom.

Empty...

No wallet, no cash, no ID. Basically screwed in the modern world. I’d have to beg my way back to society. I kept my vape pen, for whatever reason. Maybe I could trade it for a ride?

And then the good news hit me.

My wallet is smart enough to know its place.

That is, it came with a built-in GPS tracker, like an AirTag. So if I got power to my phone, I’d find the wallet, and feasibly the real criminals of tonight along with it.

My mood rose with every step. The gradual incline was occasionally made difficult by roots and slippery somethings, but I managed.

Was it hunters around a campfire? And the smell of… beans? Like a cowboy dinner?

Orange and green found their way into my field of view. I caught glimpses of the burning glow, now unable to stay fully hidden through the mysterious forest. Like a moth to flame, I drew near with excitement. Eventually I was close enough that the flares of energetic brilliance hurt my eyes, probably from my irises adjusting to the brighter lighting conditions. At first, I saw an impressive bonfire commanding an assembly of lanterns strewn about. The central fire raged like the sun, but the constellation of tiny metal contraptions held an ethereal green I didn’t recognize. They weren’t LEDs, but were more like candle flames if under the influence of artificial food dyes.

That’s a lot of Green #5, I thought, giving up the count after 20 lanterns.

Before I came into view of whoever made the campfire and its encircling mess, I stalked the periphery.

I listened and tried to observe the campsite while the crackle of the atypically large fire kept my sounds covered up.

Using a tree trunk to hide most of my body, I peered from the perfect vantage point. I spotted three men, quite scrawny. At first, their dated attire reminded me of miners fit for the 49ners era.

But the Edwardian hats, straight out of a Peaky Blinders scene, gave me pause.

Not miners, not cajuns either.

Then what?

Renaissance fair… campers?

Or Amish people?

Hallucinations?

Wrong on all counts, the trio turned to me like ghost hunters to the supernatural.

Jolted, I backed into the crooked embrace of branches, hoping their confident glare was coincidental.

I gave off no signature. Yet their reaction… none gave me a face of surprise. Their's are eyes on a prize.

Concerned, I backed up further, only to snap a branch behind my head. Convinced of the worst-case scenario, I stepped into the light.

“Sorry to scare you,” I announced before it got any stranger. “Believe it or not, I’m lost.” I walked forward, but not by much. The lanterns were like landmines.

“One of those stories best saved for a police report,” I continued. “Kidnapping, crazy ex, that kinda thing.”

I lied, but you knew that.

A camper with a ragged button vest stared fiercely at my hands, his eyes like fireballs as they reflected his dramatic bonfire. I could tell the group was deliberating. But why are they thinking this much?

“So. You folks are… campers? Hunters?”

“Friends of De’Lussac,” one replied from the middle of a sea of lanterns.

His two unspoken partners made noise at that.

Who?

“Sit down.” The man with a newsboy cap gestured to a dried out log.

I had to navigate a litter of lanterns. There were tons, more than any Oregon Trail playthrough would ever need. Around us, sparse living came into my awareness. Their tents were up, and I could study some of their belongings. Everything was old, not old world Amish, but from a distinct time period. A style came through. My memory fluttered like pages in an open book, images of an era, the pre-industrial era… all came to the forefront.

My fellow conversationalist disappointed me after a full minute of silence. I gazed at him like a woman would, expecting an effort to be made.

“Anyway,” I started after he failed to speak further. “A fire this big, and you might attract an army of Gondor.”

I watched him intently. He frowned as soon as he heard ‘army.’

“The bonfire is for keeping the mardekkels away, traveler. And the moldalights..." He gestured to the lanterns and their green flames. "Well, we carry extra for certain insurances."

“Right. The marked… dekkels.” The bush creatures? Was that some local lingo?

“I’ve never seen one. You deal with a lot of them?” I asked, trying to get information without sounding ignorant.

“Them out there are babies,” he said, his manner of speech matching the manufacturing style of his outfit. “Lucky you survived their turf.”

If only I knew what the hell they were talking about.

I looked back at the woods. Tall black masses sunk into wide outlines of lightless blots. The black creep of shadow was more than eerie, it made all it touched unknowable. This infinite black had me squeezed into the eye of an existential hurricane. To me, beyond this campfire was map fog straight out of a video game.

And even then, even here — I’m surrounded by a ring of green lights, an asteroid belt of lanterns around a central sun of unnecessary heat. Frankly, I couldn’t understand what was going on. I’m missing the critical piece of the puzzle.

“So, chuckaboo,” He patted his wool trousers back into form. They were straight but poorly sewn, as if by inexperienced hands. "What SVA you with?"

“Uh.” Fortunately, acronyms were my specialty. “I’m not with the Savannah... Valley…" As I watched his eyes vet each word, I decided to cut the bullshit and cut my loses. "No SVA right now. Like I said, I’m not normally out here. Not a park ranger or a surveyor or—”

“But you are strange… stranger.” He finished for me. I caught a bit of his accent there, definitely French-feeling, but not local to Louisiana. Where the hell am I? The fire painted the hulking tree line, confirming what I already knew, but struggled to accept.

I was out-of-state. Maybe out-of-country.

Worst case scenario, I could be in Canada. Worst case.

I massaged the two burn marks on my forehead as they itched to high hell.

Or maybe out-of-mind.

On a beach of ashes burping out of the fire, the newsboy-wearing camper attended to a resting pot. He stirred a greenish stew, indistinguishable from vegan barf.

Trust me, I can tell. I went full vegetarian after my diagnosis. I figured it would buy me more time. Who really knows.

The three woodsmen were conversing with each other ever since I dropped my wishy-washy answer to their question. It’s making me nervous.

“If you’re not signed to an SVA, then where’s your vault?" He asked. "Back home? Lost it?”

Vault?

“At the bank,” I said slowly. “I keep my cold wallet in a safe deposit box, disguised as a normal USB.” I grinned. They stared blankly in reply. Surely there are no wrong answers here. “Speaking of civilization, you guys have service out here? A charged phone I can borrow?”

“No, no borrowing of—”

“Is that a rare medallion?” His corduroy’d partner chimed in. “I heard this vein has unusual finds. Course, we carry nothing speci—”

The speaker hushed him with a gesture.

Medallion? A data provider maybe?

“We only carry what we need.” The newsboy man finished the thought as I looked past him to the mess of moldalight lanterns.

Sure.

I had heard horror stories about weirdos in the woods. It came as no surprise to me that one day I’d have my own tale to add to the collection.

If anyone, it would be me.

I never lived the status quo, I always had a crazy story for the past week. It’s a curious exchange. By fixating on my TC condition, I ended up in wild situations. Except for the car crash, they weren’t always bad. With that exception…

My emotion meter went up a notch.

Damn.

All it takes is one big deficit to ruin the whole surplus. I had yet to fully process the train wreck of tonight. Will went down in flames, and my lucky survival netted me little. In fact, it represented only the first wave of challenges I’d have to settle.

Regardless, I wouldn’t succumb or settle for whatever the fuck was going on here. The only thing to be settled were my nerves and my ride home.

As I considered the best way to navigate these loons, and map my way back to NOLA, my host shuffled his feet.

Newsboy, who had stayed quiet through my busy mindedness, returned to the fire. His hand moved close, way too close. I watched him make a curious gesture as a wild lick of flame ran up and around his wrist.

“Hey? You alright there?”

He said nothing.

Was he drunk or inbred?

“You looked like you got burned…” I trailed off as I watched the fire expand.

From my vantage, the flames seemed rather large for such a small pile of fuel. Some sort of forest redneck trick? Kerosene sweat?

“Not even a hornswoggle of a tale,” he said, his gauntly face taking on the worst of the campsites’ ambient lighting. “No friends out there either, from what I hears. A shame.”

My thoughts stumbled on the right response.

“I tell you this.” He spoke to me but stayed occupied with the fire. “Ain’t no way a solo traveler can make it through this strip of Everwood.”

Everwood? That doesn’t sound French. Or American.

Sounds lik—

“So you’re comin’ with us.” He waved his partners over. “Count this as us... savin’ your life.”

They laughed, but the delivery was all wrong. Newsboy and his lantern gang were dimly lit, both inside and out.

Anyone’s inner child could tell them that this was a ‘taking candy from a stranger’ scenario.

“I don’t need to be saved. I just need directions.” Irritation creeped into my voice. “The nearest road — or a place with people and phones. Honestly, this should’ve come up already,” I said as I scanned for the nearest lantern. For one in reach. It wasn’t hard.

Then I looked to my potential targets. Again, their body language struck me as odd.

“You guys act like ‘missing persons‘ is a daily event in your world,” I concluded.

“We only deal in missing persons," one camper replied from behind me.

“What do you mean? Like federal agents?” I asked, as I nervously got up from my log. “You retired detectives?"

“We’re here to make a trade.”

Without hesitation, my mood mechanically lifted.

“Trade is my favorite industry. What’s your product?”

“People.”

"Oh."

And then my heart crashed.