Chapter Text
WPOV
Track: Show Yourself, Stephen Scaccia
"You're very good at stalking people," I call out into the darkness, shivering. I'm curled up at the base of a tree, and I'm terribly unprepared for the cold night air. I'm not even wearing shoes—they were wet, so they felt even colder than the air, so I took them off. My socks, too. Except now my feet are exposed to the frigid air biting my skin, and I can't quite figure out how to stay warm.
I don't get an answer from my stalker. Not really shocking, I guess.
I pull my knees closer to my chest, and my muscles are taut from the cold. I wonder how long it takes to get sick from weather like this. Then I wonder how long it takes to die from weather like this.
"You've kind of chosen a horrible time to stalk me, though," I tell the stalker. "I'm pretty sure you're just about to witness my tragic death from exposure to the cold. You should probably go home."
Again, my stalker says nothing.
They've been following me for hours. Maybe longer, actually—I might not have noticed them at first. Maybe they were already watching the moment I ran terrified into the woods, sprinting as fast as my legs could carry me without a second thought for the essentials I would need to survive on my own. I just knew I had to get away.
Maybe the stalker saw me step into the creek in my attempt to cross it. Maybe they watched me take off my shoes and socks and then immediately proceed to have a mental breakdown because I have no fucking idea what I'm doing out here, and I'm terrified that I'm not even going to survive the night. I wasn't prepared for this. If I had known this would all happen tonight, I would have packed an emergency bag with extra socks. And food.
"You don't have to freeze out here just because I am," I tell the stalker. "If you have a home to go back to, you should go. It's not safe to be out in this for so long, and you've probably been here as long as I have. If not longer."
No response.
"If you're going to stay out here with me, you might as well introduce yourself," I say. "I'll go first. My name is Will Solace. I'm nineteen years old. I was going to be a medic one day, before tonight happened. I guess that dream's not happening now." A particularly strong gust of wind whistles through the trees, and it feels like it blows right through my shirt. The cold steals my breath for a moment. I try to talk through it to avoid another mental breakdown:
"I can't go home," I say. "So...if your plan is to follow me home, that's not really going to work. I'm stuck out here. But you don't have to be. You could leave. Are you lost? I could try to point you in the right direction, but to be entirely honest, I have no idea where I am, either. But at least it might help you feel better if you talk to someone. We could team up to get you home."
No response. I hear some branches shifting though. Is my stalker in the trees, or is that an animal? Maybe my stalker is an animal. Maybe the stalker has actually just been, like, a bear or something that's going to try to eat me. That would explain the unresponsiveness, at least, but not why I'm still alive.
"Are you stuck out here, too?" I ask them. "I can't imagine there's any other reason that you'd be following me so far. No one would want to be out in this weather if they could help it. If you're stuck out here with nowhere to go, we could team up to try to survive together. Do you know how to build a fire?"
No response.
"I guess not, or you probably wouldn't be here freezing with me," I concede. "Are you a bear? Am I talking to a bear right now? Honestly, the sad thing is that I can't even bring myself to care. At least I'm talking to something if I'm talking to a bear. At least I'm not, like, the only living thing out here."
My fingers ache, and my skin stings. I really need a way to warm up, or I really will die out here. I wobble as I push myself to my feet, swallowing my fear and wiping away the tears sitting on my cheeks. I pick up my socks and shoes and start to trudge through the forest again, this time hunting for anything that might keep me warm. How would I start a fire, in theory? I'd need wood, obviously, but what else? I don't have anything useful with me, and everything is so moist and cold, and maybe my fire would get blown out by the wind immediately anyway.
When I start walking, I can hear the stalker following me quietly. It's all subtle noises. Most of their footfalls manage to land on dirt, quiet and careful. Every once in a while, though, there are too many sticks and leaves for them to walk through the woods quietly, and I can hear exactly where they are behind me.
If I turn to look, I hear a whoosh—and there's no one there.
I gather sticks as I walk. I step on a rock, and I cry out—I think my foot is bleeding now. I can't really see. It's so dark that I can't see more than a couple of inches in front of my face, and even that is muddled and dim. The moon is missing from the sky—of course I managed to get kicked out of my home on the day where no moonlight could save me.
"Do you want to be friends?" I ask. "Is that why you're following me? I would be friends with you, if you want. It would help if you would communicate somehow though. And it would also help if you knew how to build a fire because otherwise I'm kind of thinking we might both die out here, so the friendship wouldn't last very long."
No answer. I can hear their footsteps behind me, though. I don't think a bear could be so quiet. I really think this is a person following me. I know objectively I should be apprehensive, but after the day I've had, I'm honestly more concerned about surviving the cold and finding a place to stay than the strange figure following me through the night.
I keep walking even though my right foot is bleeding and my toes are beginning to feel numb. That's probably not a good sign. I wonder if that's frostbite? I wish I knew.
I fall into silence because the wind has picked up again, and it's strong enough that I can barely walk without falling. I stumble, finding support by leaning against a tree for a brief moment, and then trying to continue on into the darkness. My shirt gets snagged on a thornbush, and when I try to tug myself free, I accidentally get a handful of thorns.
"Ack!" I cry, releasing the bush and shaking my bleeding hand. I'm still stuck to the bush, and I'm so frustrated that I'm about to throw my hands in the air and give up but—
"Here, let me help," comes a smooth voice, and I startle.
I squint, trying to see the figure as they approach in the darkness. It's really too difficult to see anything at all—I only feel their hands on me as they tug me loose from the thorns.
"Let me see your hand," the stalker tells me, and the voice sounds masculine. My heart thumps. Am I about to get murdered, seduced, or healed? I have no idea. I offer my hand blindly to the darkness, and someone's gentle fingers remove thorns from my skin.
"What's your name?" I ask.
No answer.
The stalker pulls the final thorn out of my hand, and I wince at the stinging pain. Then the stalker releases my hand, and I let it fall back to my side.
"Do you know how to start a fire? We're going to die if we don't start one," I say.
It's quiet for so long that at first, I'm not sure he's going to answer me. I reach out in the darkness—I want to touch him if I can, just to confirm that he's still here and that he's real. He's so quiet that I could have imagined this whole thing. I wonder if people hallucinate more when they're close to death.
"I know how to start a fire," the figure says as my fingertips find his shoulders. "I would rather instruct you on how to start one, though."
"Is this one of those 'give a man a fish, he eats for a day' philosophies?" I ask, and I keep my fingers on his shoulder so that I know he's there.
"No," says the figure. "If I start a fire, you will see me."
"Is that so bad?"
"Yes." Fingers pull my hand away from his shoulder and lay two hard objects in my palm. He closes my fingers around them. "I will help to keep the wind from blowing out your fire. You use this to build one. I will stay in the shadows, and this way, you'll never have to see me—but you'll survive the night."
I decide not to argue. I very much want to know who I'm speaking to, but he's just saved my life by giving me something to start a fire with, so I should probably shut up and do what he wants. Gratitude and all that.
I find an area where the trees aren't so thick, and I kick leaves out of the way to make room in the dirt for my fire. I hope I'm taking the correct safety precautions for fires in the middle of the wilderness. If I start a wildfire, I'll never forgive myself.
I lay down the sticks I've collected—I've done a pretty good job of picking out the ones that are dry enough to burn, I think—and then inspect the objects that my stalker gave me. I can't really see, but I think one of them is a piece of metal or something. Maybe flint?
I turn the other object over in my palm. It's got a sharp edge—some sort of short blade, I think. Smaller than my thumb.
I'm pretty sure my dad taught me how to make a fire once. I reach into my memory, scratching at its depths and trying to pull the important details to the surface.
If I remember correctly, the first thing I need to do is get some flint shavings on my pile of sticks and dry leaves. I use the knife for that.
I have no idea how much flint I've put on my tinder, so I just shrug and move on the next step when it feels like the right thing to do. I flip the flint over to use the other side, scraping my knife against it again, and sparks fly.
My tinder burns quickly, so I break off branches from nearby trees to keep the fire alive. I find a rotting log and break off pieces to throw on my fire.
"If you're still there, I owe you a lot," I call into the darkness as I dump wood onto my fire. "If you can think of a way for me to repay you, please let me know."
When the fire is warm and bright, I finally let myself take a break from collecting more firewood. I collapse next to the fire, exhausted. I'm also pretty sure I can't go to sleep. If my fire goes out, I'd die in my sleep from the cold. If my fire spreads, I'd die in my sleep from a wildfire.
I have to stay awake, so I might as well keep talking to the stalker.
"If this is because you're self-conscious about the way you look, you don't have to worry about that," I tell him. "I'm not going to judge you for whatever it is that's holding you back. We're still all human, no matter what we look like, right? I won't treat you differently based on anything like that."
No response.
"You never told me your name," I say, squinting into the darkness in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the elusive figure.
"I know," the stalker responds.
I wait for more, but that appears to be all that he has to say. I guess I'm not getting a name, then. That's really too bad. If we're going to be friends, that's going to be difficult if I don't even know what to call him.
"Well, I owe you my life, Mr. Nameless Person," I tell him.
"You owe me nothing."
I'm feeling better now that I have a fire and a friend to talk to. I'm still hopelessly lost in the world, and I'm definitely still terrified about how I'll survive tomorrow, but at least tonight isn't so bad.
"Come sit with me," I offer. "You need to stay warm, too."
"I cannot."
"I won't judge you."
"I said I can't."
"I'll close my eyes if you need me to."
No response. I'm probably pushing too hard. Maybe if I make him a place to sit next to me and seem friendly enough, he'll come over on his own.
I scoot over in the dirt and brush the twigs and rocks away from the ground next to me to try to make a comfortable place for him to sit. I realize I might be acting a little desperate for company, but due to the circumstances, I don't think I can be blamed. Also, I do owe him. If I can't convince him to come over here, I might never get to repay that debt, and I'll be thinking about him for the rest of my life.
"There's a spot over here for you," I say as I smile at the darkness, hoping I'm looking in the right direction. "So...if you get cold, you can always come over here."
I hear a soft laugh at that. Probably he's laughing about the fact that I still haven't given up on trying to get him to sit near me. I can't help it; I'm so scared that he's going to leave me alone out here. I don't think I can stand to be alone right now.
I don't get any other response after that. I talk to him even though he doesn't answer. I tell him about my siblings and about how I had found an apprenticeship to be a medic, but that probably won't work out now, and about how I really hate the winter, and about how in the summers I like to sunbathe.
I can feel myself getting more and more tired as I talk. I'm not sure how much time passes, but my stories are becoming less and less comprehensible as my mind grows foggy. My eyes drift shut, and it's never been so difficult to fight sleep before.
At some point, I find myself lying down in the dirt, still mumbling to the stalker in the hopes it might help keep me awake just a little bit longer. My eyelids feel so heavy—I can't quite keep them open, even though I'm trying. I know I need to stay awake. If I fall asleep and the fire goes out...
God, I'm just so exhausted.
I give up on keeping my eyes open. I'm still mumbling, but nothing I'm saying really makes sense anymore. I'm barely conscious.
Sleep overtakes me in the middle of a story, and I tumble into a realm where frosty tendrils of cold embrace me. I'm being hunted in the woods, and when I turn to see the face of my hunter, my mother's disapproving eyes bore into my soul. She raises a bow and carefully aims an arrow at my heart—
When it hits me, a chill explodes in my chest, but there's no pain. I've never felt like this before—like I'm at the threshold between life and death. My body won't quite move how it's supposed to; I'm trapped in a macabre performance of paralysis.
"Will, wake up," my mother says, but her voice doesn't make any sense—it's masculine and concerned. "Your fire went out."
I can't make my body move. I'm numb. I'm frozen. I'm dead. Despair gnaws at the edges of my consciousness as my extremities succumb to the encroaching frost, turning ashen and lifeless.
"Will, come on, wake up," my mother urges. I try hopelessly to follow her instructions—I want to push myself off the ground, I want to pull this arrow out of my chest. I want desperately to ask her how I can fix this, but my body is turning to stone. I watch in horror as my fingers and toes turn gray, and the color spreads up to my wrist and ankles, and then it's taking my arms and—
"Damn it," says the masculine voice from my mother's mouth.
It's startling, hearing my mother swear like that. She doesn't normally curse.
Suddenly, warmth floods the desolate landscape, thawing the icy tendrils that bind me. Slowly, sensation returns, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of numbness. With a Herculean effort, I pry open my eyes, grappling with the remnants of a surreal nightmare, and—
And I'm in the woods. I'm awake. Memories about how I got here fill me with fear for a moment, but then I push them aside—I can't focus on surviving if I'm overtaken by the past. I push myself up. My back is to the fire right now—I want to face it so I can feel its warmth on my face.
I turn to face the fire—
And there, putting wood on the fire, is the Monster.
I freeze.
King Hermes has been warning all the villages about the Monster. There are stories about him luring people into the woods and killing them. The Monster promises safety and kindness, then stabs you in the back and kills you. Hermes has offered a reward for anyone who can arrest or kill the monster; hunting teams search the country near-constantly.
Holy fuck. I'm going to be killed, I realize.
I can see why people fall for his tricks. He's really fucking handsome. He almost looks human. His face is all sharp edges, and his eyes are a heartstopping chocolate brown. Dark hair falls around his face, alluring and beautiful.
His body is muscular and scarred. Probably from people fighting back when he tries to kill them, I realize.
And he has large black wings protruding from his back. They're folded up right now, but even still, they're large and intimidating. I can't stop looking at them. Maybe I'm still dreaming right now. That would explain a lot, actually.
The stalker glances over at me after adding more wood to my fire. He's got dark bags under his eyes, and when he sees the way my entire body is rigid while I stare at his wings, he winces.
"If you're going to try to kill me, it would be great if you could wait until morning," he tells me tiredly. "You almost died sleeping out here. I tried telling you your fire was going out, but I think the cold was making it difficult for you to wake up."
"You're the Monster," I choke out. "Are you going to try to kill me?"
He frowns at me, his lips forming a thin line. His gaze turns back to the fire. "I've never hurt anyone. Also, did you forget I just saved your life?" He pulls his wings closer to his body, and it feels a little bit like he's trying to hide them. "I've been trying to keep you alive. Why would I do that if I was going to try to kill you?"
Logically, that makes sense, but the King has warned us that the Monster always seems so kind when you first meet it, but then when you look away—the moment you become vulnerable—it reveals its true intentions, tearing apart mere children just for the sake of killing. The Monster takes joy in watching the life drain from your eyes, and if you ever see it, you should try to kill it. If you can't kill it, you should try to restrain it and contact the Royal Guard so that they can arrest it.
Almost weekly, the King has sent his men to give speeches describing the monster's cruelty. It's been going on for years. I've grown up being taught to be cautious of the creature in front of me.
When I still don't say anything, the Monster rubs the side of his face. "Look, I know. You're scared of me. I get it. But if you try to kill me, you're dooming yourself. We both know you can't survive out here on your own. Just keep me alive long enough that I can make sure you make it out of these woods and find somewhere warm to stay, alright?"
He reaches to a pile of sticks that wasn't there when I fell asleep earlier. He must have collected them for me. I swallow nervously. It feels a little stupid to ignore the King's dire warnings, but also, the Monster is right. Why would he save me if he wanted to kill me?
"I...I owe you for saving my life twice now," I murmur as I watch him add another stick to the fire. "I don't know how to repay that kind of debt."
The Monster's eyebrows raise, and he finally looks at me again. I'm still tense—you would be too, if you'd been warned of a serial killer and then found yourself in his presence—but I'm no longer asking him if he plans to kill me, so I guess that's progress in this relationship.
He stands up. For an insane, hysterical moment, I swear his cheeks have turned a little pink. He turns his back to the fire. "I'll give you some space. I don't want you to be scared. I'll just...be in the woods. If you need anything, just call for me. I'll be back to check on you soon to make sure your fire hasn't gone out again."
My heart thunders with apprehension as I watch him walk away into the trees, his figure blending with the darkness as he gets farther away. Slowly, I turn my eyes back to the fire—and I notice a feather left behind by the Monster's wings. It's obsidian black, a little difficult to see in the dark. I reach for it and pick it up, mostly to figure out if this has all been a bizarre dream or not.
I know this is real because I can feel the soft texture of the feather as I run my fingers down it.
My fear shrinks and deflates inside me while I touch the feather. Have I reached the phase of mental breakdown where I'm desperate enough for something calming that even touching a feather fallen from a monstrous serial killer will do? I guess so.
I don't sleep again after that—adrenaline keeps my eyes wide awake until the sky turns red and the sound of birds return to the trees.
And the whole night, I never let go of that feather.