The trees were thick with summer haze, and the sunlight lay sleepily in the clear azure sky. The forest was suffocating, the enveloping shade smothering all that entered. Staying out in the sun would surely burn you, but entanglement in the strangling forest was unbearable. The outskirts of the forest were usually overpopulated at this time of year, with perfect little families of four, sitting out on the picnic tables with chequered tablecloths, sickly sweet memories being imprinted on the innocent little children’s minds.
The popular picnic spot was deserted, and the only sound accompanying the eerie silence was the lazy crashing of midsummer waves against the rocks. No birds sang here.
Curled up beneath the pier, the form of a skeletal boy sat hunched, his head tucked to his knees. His tanned skin was covered in a thin film of sweat, and his forehead beaded with perspiration. He rocked back and forth, slowly, slowly. Barely audibly, he hummed in a monotone: a futile attempt at breaking the silence that was slowly, progressively deafening him. His hair was of unruly raven, masking his once blue eyes.
Suddenly, the boy was muted by a piercing scream, shattering the uncanny air like a brick to a window. The boy jumped up, and scuttled further under the pier, until he had waded into the water up to his bare waist. Trying to hide himself as best he could, he cowered against one of the supports holding the rotting pier up. Screwing what was left of his eyes tightly shut, he uttered a silent prayer for the next victim.
Pressing himself to the wooden pillar, he slid into a foetal position. Emaciated from fear and trauma, the barely sane wreck of a boy couldn’t even remember his name.
As he stared pointlessly down into the murky depths, something soft had brushed past his submerged hand. He felt around with his other hand until he came into contact with soft, long threads, tangled and clingy. Suddenly a fistful broke off into his hand. Horror and realisation set in, and the boy shrank back in nausea; it was the hair of a corpse. The boy couldn’t see the mutilated body, or the torn open ribcage with decomposing organs trailing from it. The naïve boy, not more than fourteen, was blind. He had once loved the sun, he would endlessly sit out in the summer months, staring at the sky, playing games with himself, seeing how long he could stare at the sky for before his eyes watered with pain.
That was before they came. They stole his sight and massacred all familiar to him. He had fled in terror, stumbling directionless towards the only place he knew, to seek sanctuary under the dilapidated pier. His home was nothing more than a ghost town, houses empty, everything quiet, so quiet. He kept movement to a minimum; the grass once so green and lush was dried and yellowed, littered with corpses and encrusted in blood. In the beginning he longed for silence, his mind was filled with anguish and screams of pain, as strangers and friends alike were torn limb from limb. The lucky ones had their eyes scratched out. They didn’t have to face the sight of every single bone in their bodies being methodically snapped. Others had their eyelids sewn open; they were forced to look at the sun until their retinas burnt clean out.
Jumping out of his daydream, the boy froze in panic and he heard the irregular thud of footsteps on the decking above. He could hear muffled cries of terror, and the scraping of a broken body being dragged along. A scream broke loose to pierce the air once more. The desolate boy began to whimper as he recognized it to be that of his sister. Seconds later there was a final scream, and a moments silence before an audible splash. He knew it was too late to save his sister; she would drown before he had any hope of finding her.
This was it. They had them all now. Sinking further into the swirling ocean as the tide crept back in, the solitary boy resigned himself to his fate.
He was the only one left.
*OK this was a late night job and didn’t turn out how I intended, it’s really my first horror piece, sorry if it sucks*
~Lady~