Forest Nightingales - The Forest Wants to Play

Teddy Bear Picnic - Change of Plan

Thoughts circle my mind as I try to think of a song sung so many years ago. I concentrate on my thoughts so much that I trip over an exposed root falling into a large puddle of mud. I lift my head wiping the mud from my eyes and my visions first sight is one of the dark bears walking towards me smelling the air. My breaths become slim and I move not one muscle as the bear with its glowing red eyes is just a hairs width away smelling me. The bears groans lifting its head away from me and runs off when it hears branches breaking in the distance.

I wipe the mud away from my mouth turning to watch the bear run off and remembering what Pythose had been singing, 'If you go down to the woods today, you had better go in disguise'. Why would he give away such a clue to deter the bears away from me? Somehow I feel he has something planned strangely to make the game shorter. Again I walk through the forest thinking when I come to an old cottage that has almost run into the ground. Broken windows, half the thatched roof fallen in, the front door hanging by its hinges and without a thought I make my way in out of the rain.

The first couple of stairs to the higher rooms are missing and it would be safer upstairs, what with the bears lurking around, so I look around for old furniture to help bridge the gap. The living room was covered with dust and spider webs with many ornament scattered around the place. All the ornaments depicted characters from children’s stories and songs; A black sheep, three pigs and there are many others around the room... But as I look to the window, on the floor lays one of the ornaments smashed, I pick it up to see what character it was and I see that it was of Goldilocks.

I stand up straight and gaze out the window again, I see several bears in the perimeter of the cottage and so I quickly get a chair placing it under the steps. Clambering my way up the stairs, I kick the chair away once I make it on the steps grasping at the floor boards. Once I am at the top of the stair case I listen carefully for the bear, I take look out the window to my right seeing the bears running from the cottage. Knowing it was safer I search around the rooms the bathroom being the first, the floor has given way and the bathroom now lays in the kitchen along with some of the thatched roofing.

The first bedroom I come to the floor has partly given way, due to all the rain, but on the other side of the room is a small bed with a chest at the bottom of it. The floor cracks and creeks as I make my way over to the chest. When I make it to the chest I open it to see what fills it, the first thing I come to is an old note attached to a clothe that was covering old hunting leathers. The note is rather strange, most of it is not clearly written, but what I can make out it seems to say;

(Cold Weather Leathers – the k..y i.. in ..e cel..ar. WARN..ING ..o not en.... t.... ..d …..m)

The writing is too unclear to read any further, but what I can decipher from what is written is that there is a key in the cellar, to what... I do not know. Obviously the cellar is not a safe place to go, I decide to wear the hunting leathers as they will keep me warm on cold nights such as this and I tend to stay away from the cellar as the note seems to warn me. When I exit the bedroom the chest slams shut making the rest of the floor gives way fall into a crumpled heap in the rooms below.

The last room of the cottage is crudely boarded up using the floor boards from the steps and I begin to take down all but one of the boards when the door begins to rattle violently. I hear someone or something frantically scratching against the door occasionally hitting the door hard on the other side. What ever lies behind the door has trying to get out and thanks to my negligence it might just have its chance to regain its freedom.