The night is beautiful. You walk down from your house to the beach where the waves normally lapped against the shore. The sky above is painted with stars, each one seeming to meld together to create a brilliant mosaic of light. The ocean, a mirror. The still evening air stings your already rosy cheeks. The rocks clatter under your feet, and every few steps lead to you slipping, slightly. Everything is calm.
Tonight is like any other night, you would take the wooded trail down to the peninsula and start a fire. At your side you hold a bag of marshmallows, just in case hunger gets the best of you. Your stride is confident, as you have walked this trail a thousand times before. Little do you know, this is exactly your one thousandth time on the worn down animal trail. Your feet meld to the path, finding the right placement for you.
Slowly, the trees come to life, as they do, and whisper secrets into your ears. As is mandatory, you keep your eyes to the ground.
"They are shambling things, grey faced and gaping. Each breath wracks their bones, and breaks their soul. Rotting, raw corpses live, and do anything but give." distantly screams no one in particular.
You notice now that with each breath, a thick cloud escapes your lungs and billows in your path. It twists and swirls into the sky, disappearing behind you. It reminds you of your parents, the way they seemed so permanent yet wisped away with a light breeze. This makes you sad.
The sound of moving water makes you realize that your turn-off is soon. If you don't pay attention, it will disappear and not reappear until the next new moon, so you watch the trail attentively, never risking a glance above the brush.
Soon, you find yourself turning down the mysterious trail that leads you to the glowing water. Marshmallows in tow, you power through the trail.
The trees were always the loudest on this leg of your journey. They howl and scream as you walk past, making sure you know that isolation in these woods is a distant dream. Slowly, the dirt trail turns into dark stone and the ashes from all your previous fires sit in a neat pile to your left. This is where you need to be.
The stone drops off dramatically, about twelve feet into a fluorescent blue sea that stretches on for miles ahead of you. Of course, no one else sees this from any other shore.
The first step is to gather the kindling and timber. Then, using the matches in your breast pocket, light the fire. After lighting the fire, the waves begin to crash against the bluff below, growing more and more aggressive until one humungous wave splattered onto the ground in front of you.
The bright water left a humanoid being laying on the stone, disfigured and rotting. Each breath it takes makes its entire body shudder and every bone crack. Its grey skin glows with the water it had just been spewed from and due to that, every horrid fold and wrinkle, every hole and putrid scratch is completely visible.
The creature places one hand on the ground, then the other, forcing its weak, broken arms to support its bony frame. As the figure gets on its knees, you see its spine, its skin so thin it almost seemed as if the bones would break right through. You gawk, despite knowing the creature so well.
It gets to its feet and stares at you. Your limbs are numb and you feel as if your knees might buckle. This, is routine.
Without moving, the creature gets closer, and closer until you are face to face with the eyeless corpse. From this close you can smell something that can only be describe as nothing other than death and taste the stinging sweetness of blood in your mouth. The sound of bones breaking rattles loudly now, making every hair on your body stand on end. How could something be this cruel? You think.
Without warning, the creature lifts one bony claw and scratches the side of your face, from the tip of your eyebrow, to the edge of your mouth. Something warm trickles from your cheek and the grotesque being pulls its claw into its gaping mouth. It draws its face closer, opening its thin, almost non-existent lips to reveal dozens of rows of jagged, yellowed teeth. This, is not routine.
You realize what is happening half a moment too late. Its mouth opens wider and wider, inhumanely wide. Its jaw crunches and creaks in protest but yet it still grows wider until-
You never returned home that night. The milk in your fridge curdled, and your cat, Muffles, stopped bothering to check the door and left to roam the streets. And you were forgotten, as is routine.
