WITHIN THE MIST - HV22

1.

His eyes were closed, and the wind was blowing gently on his skin. His hands above his head, he was enjoying the coldly evening. Nothing could keep him from falling asleep inside of his comfortable hammock. He smiled as he thought about the fact that his mother wanted him to be careful about the forest. He always responded: "Mom, I am the forest, and she is me." And at this moment, Dan was feeling it.

While he fell asleep, the woods went quiet. There was something going on. Afar from the camp, a bird on a tree raised its head and stopped chirping. It turned its head and looked inside of the gray and opaque mist. As soon as humidity got close to the bird, it disappeared. Only a little chirp escaped from the cloud wall, but nothing more.

A water drop woke him up. He blenched and looked upward to the sky. There was no rain, but the clouds were heavy. It was probably dew, he thought, standing up from the hammock. He was hungry. So much that his belly was making growling noises. He sighed, went to his little freezer, but at this point, he was already living upon few ressources. Tired, he grabbed his stick where he added a hook and walked toward the lake.

He was kind of cold, not enough to put on a lot of layers, but enough to make him close his jacket to the top of his neck. He crouched on the side of the water and put the stick inside the water. With the hook, he grabbed his fishing trap and put it out of water. 

"Empty..."

Nothing to eat, it was probably time for him to think about going back to the city, but it would have been admitting he couldn't do it. Because a lot of people didn't believe in him, and he was not going to let them be right.

He got up, when a strange and crackling noise comes from behind. He looked up, frowned and stopped for a moment. But he heard nothing else. He shaked his head and began to think about hunting in order to have something to eat this day, but the noise broke the silence again. He had to choices: ignoring the problem until it solves itself, submit to his curiosity and approach the noise. 

But Dan wasn't very smart, and he was also very very curious. He took his machete from his belt and progressed in the woods. Few meters afar, he stopped completely: in front of him, a gigantic wave of clouds and gray mist was blocking the way. Normally, he would have walked inside and ignored the unreal situation, but here, the mist was spreading a strange feeling of unsafety and danger. The fear Dan was full of was taking all over him. 

He couldn't move, not a finger, and really fast, the mist was nearly touching him. No. The mist touched him now. In fact, the mist was trying to grab him, closing its horrible fingers on his shoulder. But, like a survival instinct, Dan woke up from his tetany, raised his machete and brought down the weapon on the monstrous wrist, and a terrible, horrible greenish hand fell to the ground. At the same time, another hand reached out of the mist and grabbed the machete, forcing the man to let it go. Terrified, he started running, like his life depended on it, and it may have been. He rushed to his camp, but at some point, the mist was already recovering the camp, with all of his stuffs. He couldn't think about another way of leaving than going on the lake.

When he came here, he found an old dinghy that he thought he could use to fish. But now, he was probably going to use it otherwise. He jumped inside of the little boat and grabbed the paddle to push himself away from the shore. 

On the ground, the mist rushed to him, as if it was trying to catch him, but as soon as it tried to cross the border between the earth and the water, it completely stops, as if water was impossible to get on to. 

"What the hell ?!" he screamed, paddling away.