May's Workshop Stories

Horrors and Hauntings

Author's note: This story contains some gruesome scenes and potentially triggering elements.

She is gasping for breath, but there doesn't seem to be any air left, or at least none that her weakened lungs can inhale. It's as if, suddenly, she has forgotten how to properly breathe and is just standing there, her lungs feeling like they might burst out of her chest in search of that precious gas.

Going to the forest known for being the most haunted forest in Romania was supposed to be fun. Yet, standing there, alone, even though she knows that her friends are nearby, Tessa can't help but wonder what she was thinking.

The feeling of disconnectedness, of floating away from reality, embraces her as she attempts to remember how to get back to her senses. As she tries to remember who she is. Broken pieces of her memories, of herself, are fighting against the oppressive air of the forest, and she isn't sure who will come out of the struggle victorious.

Odd growling sounds are all around her.

Stalking. Preying. Devouring.

"Tessa, we need to go. Something is wrong," Gerome says with such urgency that he manages to break through the thick veil that seems to surround her mind.

"I am sure it's nothing," Tessa says, but even she isn't sure if that's her talking or someone else, something else.

"Tessa, Derek is gone! And Monica is fighting the invisible monsters. I can't convince her that they are just a hallucination. It's definitely something," Gerome says, panic clear in his usually calm voice.

"We need to find them. They need to find us," Tessa says automatically, moving deeper into the forest as if she is hypnotized by it.

The weirdly shaped trees start to move with her adjusting their shape to the shape of her body, allowing just enough room for her to pass, hugging her body in their creepy embrace.

"Tessa, please. We need to leave. Coming here was a mistake. I am sorry that I insisted on it," Gerome says, grabbing her hand in the last effort to save at least one of his friends.

"Join us. Dance with us," Tessa says with a strange timbre in her voice.

It is no longer his friend talking.

Before Gerome can make up his mind, think through what he should do, Tessa pulls him in behind her. Thus, he is carried away in the eerie, misty world of the forest. A place where time and place stop to matter, and all that remains is a powerful yearning, a yearning to become one, to join in the dance of the forest.

The once empty forest fills with people calling the two friends, inviting them in. The shepherd with his two hundred sheep calls them forth. He encourages them to join the never-ending dance of lost souls and broken promises.

"Tessa, we can't do this," Gerome manages to say weakly.

Yet, he can't remember why they couldn't just become one with the spirits around them. Why they can't dance for eternity in the gloomy forest that seems to be breathing them in, inhaling them into its very core. Never before had the forest felt so alive, and never before had Gerome wished more for his death than in that moment.

Because being dead would mean his rotting corpse joining with the earth and feeding the forest, keeping the precious giant alive. All he wanted to do was to let it feast on his flesh and consume his soul. His purpose was to be part of the forest, to be devoured by it.

"With this dying of the daylight, out of my own free will, I bestow my body to this forest so that it grows, so that it can devour everything in its wake!" Tessa yells in a trance. "I am the forest, and the forest is me. Soon enough, we shall be one."

As she says that, she suddenly takes up a knife that was gifted to her by the one person who had meant the world to her, her husband, and plunges it deep into her own heart.

Blood gushes out onto the forest floor, spraying Gerome in the process, who just stands there with his mouth wide open as Tessa's heart pumps out all of the precious liquid.

Then, the feeding frenzy starts. The trees' roots start sucking up the blood, hungrily. They are like thristy flowers soaking up water after days of dryness. They cut through the body, devouring Tessa like vultures upon finding a fresh carcass.

"Tessa, no," Gerome manages weakly, although he isn't exactly sure why he shouldn't do the exact same thing.

After all, that's what the voices in his head are telling him. It's what they are pleading him to do. They promise that everything will be so much better once he is dead, once they get the chance to dine on him, to tear him apart. In his mind's eye, he can see his body torn to pieces, and a smile crosses his face.

"That would be wonderful," he says dreamily, his mind lost in the sea of other, unfamiliar ones.

His thoughts are indistinguishable from those of others, from the hungry voices telling him to just die.

Strange faces without bodies start appearing around him. Watching him. Wanting him.

"Feed us," the low whisper goes through the forest as the last remnants of Tessa are eaten without leaving the tiniest trace behind.

"Yes, yes, of course," Gerome says, not even noticing that his eyes were bleeding as well as his nose.

"I am yours, and you are mine. You are my home and my master. I surrender my soul to you willingly. Rip my heart out and feed on it. Drink my blood and let it restore you to your full power so that you can rise once again and conquer the world," Gerome says, the words that he doesn't really understand.

A small part of himself, deep down in his mind, is screaming for him to stop. However, that part is so far away from being in control that it can't do anything but watch his own hands wrap around his neck and squeeze the life out of it.

The forest and its voices rejoice as they rip him apart, muscle by muscle tendril, by tendril, until there is nothing there but the insatiable hunger of the forest.