Long walks are how I relieved stress. I work in printing, so my job keeps me challenged. Not that I don't like challenges.

She stood in the middle of my path staring at my eyes. I didn't want to make prolonged eye-contact, so I did flinch. That made her laugh. She insisted I let her walk with me, so I did.

Every day she was waiting, after that. We would walk through the field and then the lower trails and then the woods. Whenever we got to the woods: she would kiss me. The first time she just blew a kiss, and then left me.

Her kisses found my cheek and then my lips. Then her kisses got increasingly more passionate. I somehow got the wrong idea about all this, although I am not sure how. One day I simply tried to kiss her first and she shied away. She smiled like I was crazy for that, but then she kissed me anyway. Weird.

Every time she kissed me she would leave. I tried following after, naturally, but she would vanish. So I resolved to get my kiss early.

I asked her, "I don't want to go all the way. Can we stop here?" while we were on the lower trails. She just shrugged and walked on, leaving me there.

I didn't see her again, after that. She had herself a new friend. More creeped out and curious than anything, I followed them and watched.

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As she reached the woods he stood in a trance. She extended some kind of root from her mouth into his, drinking something out of him. When she was done I saw her true face, horrible and bark-like. Her hair was filled with leaves and her legs were those of a faun. She nimbly vanished back into the forest leaving her latest victim. I left him there as he looked on after her, touching his cheek from her 'kiss'.

I stopped with my back to the old brick wall with the moss on it. I slowly sank down, trembling and wide-eyed. I wanted to look back, to be sure of what I had witnessed. I cannot understand how such a thing can be.

Terror gripped me, unable to comprehend what I had just seen. Then I realized the root had gone inside me too, and I was unaware of what she had done. Somehow she could cloud the mind of her victim.

I struggled to look over the crumbling wall, where I had shielded myself. Flashes in my eyes of the pulsing brown root and the white rolled eyes of her victim made me flinch. Although she had finished with him he was still standing there and I could still see the fresh memory of what she had done. As the other guy walked away I looked back at the woods.

I stared for a long time, slowly walking towards her little woods.

Two big brown eyes shone there in the everlasting shade. I could hear her laughter and I realized that it was sincere. I knew somehow, while staring back at her real eyes, that that little patch of trees had stood there always and it was her home. Surrounded now by apartments.

Still trembling in the residue of a nightmare, I ventured home. Maybe I will take up yoga to relieve stress.