thanatophobia // joshler [✓]

blood trails

within the same hour or so we got supplies ready and went on our way to follow the trail. i tried convincing mel to stay behind. but for some reason i couldn't convince her to stay, so i was carrying her through piggyback.

though she didn't stay behind, dallon volunteered to hold down the hideout while we were gone. we were now a killer and a stealth guy short in the group. and one of those we had no control over.

now that we were on this journey to follow ryans blood that could potentially lead us right to his killer, it was quite silent between all of us. i looked over at pete who noticed it too.

"guys we should play i spy." pete suggested.
"sounds fun." mel agreed.

pete began to look around at the surroundings before looking back at all of us,
"i spy with my little eye something a weird shade of blue."

"half my hair?" mel chuckled.
"yeah you got." pete laughed with her.

tyler slowed his pace to join in the game. he looked around at us and the surroundings before saying,
"i spy with my little eye something something black."

"my soul." mel chimed in.
"nope, but good guess." tyler chuckled.

"our outfits?" pete guessed.
"yeah sure." tyler shrugged.

"was that not the answer?" i wondered.
"it didn't have an answer i just didn't want you guys to look lame."

we all laughed a bit except for brendon. he was walking ahead of us with knife in hand and gun in holster. the rest of us looked at him and then each other.

"how far does the trail for?" pete asked everyone, but it was mainly towards brendon.
"looks like a few miles." patrick answered it anyway.

i heard mel sigh from her being on my back,
"he's not getting better." she whispered.

"give him time, it hasn't been a day mel." i responded in a low voice.

"he should be happy he's okay physically... i feel so fuckin' useless." she mumbled.
"you're not useless, but why didn't you want to stay behind?" i wondered.

"i didn't have a good feeling about it... i don't know it's hard to explain." she admitted.
i nodded, exhaling in exhaustion.

"are you okay?" tyler turned around to ask as he kept walking.
"i'm fine." i assured.

"you don't look fine, you're carrying melanie and group gear. you gotta lose some of that baggage." pete joined into the conversation.

"just give me the gear and you can just drop mel on the street and leave her there." tyler joked.
"okay yeah sure tyler." mel said back in a rather annoyed tone.

after another 30 minutes or so of walking we noticed we were in an unfamiliar part of town. and that's what we noticed something was off.

"uhhh guys?" patrick stopped in place.
"what's up?" tyler wondered.

"look." he pointed towards where the blood trail ended.

there was something written in bold blood on the wall of a building. it read,

hey clique,
your bud left a
trail both ways
-g

and that's when we realized we were set up,
and left our hideout defenseless.