Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

Hurt

“It’s cold,” she says, gripping herself tightly as she lets out a shiver.

“It’s meant to get colder,” he says while snapping some twigs over his knee and adding them to the small pile on the ground.

“Are you, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“When I was a kid, Dad took us camping all the time. He made sure we knew how to survive if we had to,” he says with a smile, as he starts stuffing dried moss and leaves into the sticks.

“You’re a lot handier than you let on.”

“I like to keep a surprise or two hidden away for emergencies, to impress the ladies.”

She laughs. “You don’t need to worry about trying to impress me any more than you have. These last few months have been amazing. I-I, I think I’m falling for you.”

Flames leap up from within the sticks, and he smiles again, sitting back and looking at her from across the small campfire. “Me too.”

“Me too? The girl just said she loves you, and you say, me too,” a voice says from beyond the campfire light, out in the darkness. He leaps to his feet in a panic, spinning around towards where the voice originated, holding out a knife as she quickly scrambles to his side.

“Show yourself!” he yells.

A tall, raven-haired woman steps out of the darkness. Her skin is white, her lips blood-red, and her eyes almost completely black, like pools of oil. “There’s no need for weapons. As you can see, I am no threat.”

“What do you want?”

“I could ask the same thing, for you’re trespassing on my land.”

“Your land? This is a national reserve. We’ve got permits,” he says, darting a look at his bag and then back to her.

She smiles and laughs. “Permits mean nothing to the bear, or the wolf, or the eagle, and your words on paper are nothing to me. You have entered my land, which makes you both my prey.”

“What’s wrong with her eyes?” the girl whispers into his ear. The woman laughs once again.

“There is nothing wrong with my eyes, dear. They are evolution. I am what you will all one day become,” she smiles. “Well, not you two, but the others, the ones who survive.” In a flash of movement, she is between them, knocking the woman to the ground and hoisting the man high into the air.

“It’ll only hurt for a moment. Well, that’s what they tell me anyway,” she says, running a fingernail along one of the protruding veins in his neck before biting down. He gasps for air as her teeth pierce the fragile vein, and his blood rushes out into her hungry mouth.