Nick stopped packing up his camera equipment to stare in disbelief at his sister. “What? Are you trying to get us killed?”

“Don’t be such a baby. What’s the worst that could happen?” Sarah said, turning to stare out at the nearby tree line.

“Well Nick, how does it feel to know that not only is your sister crazy, she also just majorly jinxed us.”

“Relationship ended with Sarah, sister position is now open for literally anyone else.” Sarah turned and slapped Nick on the shoulder. God these siblings are violent.

“Well why can’t we go? Y’all scared?”

“Of what? Dying? Yeah Sarah, surprisingly I don’t want to get murdered by some axeman in the woods.” I said, Nick nodding along with me.

“And you call yourself gen z.” Sarah said disapprovingly.

“I want to be carried away by Mothman, not killed by some psycho with an axe.”

“Understandable have a nice day.” Nick shook his head at us, as if he also hasn’t daydreamed about being carried away by Mothman. The coward.

“Yeah well I say we forget about the forest and just go and watch a bunch of BUN videos. All for that plan say ‘I’.” I, of course, said ‘I’ because I am a man of culture unlike Sarah, who would definitely be the first one to die in a horror movie.

“I,” said Sarah, “say YOINK!” With that Sarah grabbed Nick’s camera bag and went running off into the woods. THIS is why she’d die first in a horror movie.

“Sarah!” Nick cried out, sprinting after her. I made sure I had picked up the water bottles and before I ran after them both. I could just see the colours of Sarah’s bag through the brush, but no matter how much Nick and I yelled at her to come back, Sarah just continued to run. My lungs burned and no matter how much I tried I just wasn’t able to get enough oxygen. I could see Nick stumble in front of me and was able to stop just before I fell over him.

“Nick!” I yelled, “dude are you okay?” I came over to him, checking to see if there were any broken bones.
“Nick!” and there would be Sarah, running back to us.

“I’m fine. Probably just a bit bruised.” Nick replied, still a little out of breath. Sarah released a sigh of relief.
“Oh thank god.” She said.

“Thank god? Thank god?! Sarah do you have any idea where we are?? Or how we’re gonna get back? We’re lost in the woods and in case you didn’t notice, none of us are wearing anything near appropriate to be in here!”

“What do you mean? It’s literally back that way,” Sarah pointed in one direction.

“And how do you know that? I don’t know about you but we definitely didn’t run in a straight line! The tracks could be in literally the complete opposite direction and we wouldn’t know!”

“Well I could always just the location on my phone? Seriously Gramps it’s like you forget that these exist” She took out her phone and went to turn it on.

“With what service dumbass? We’re in the woods and you literally can’t get a good connection is certain parts of town let alone out here.” Nick, who had been sitting down the entire time to try and catch his breath, stood up and moves in between us.

“Okay guys, calm down. Standing around arguing isn’t going to help anyone.” He said, “What we need to do right now is figure out which direction we want to walk in and try to get there before nightfall.”

“I say we go that way. I’m pretty sure that’s the way we came from.” Sarah said, pointing once again.

“I don’t think the rest of us have any other ideas so I guess we’re going that way.” I said. With Nick agreeing, we started to walk through the trees and bush, hoping that we were going the right way. There were a lot of rumours surrounding this place. It has a reputation of making people go missing, like just last month a couple of kids thought it would be a good idea to run into the woods. They ended up being found about a week later though. They found a little stream so they had water but they kept sprouting on about some giant beast that tried to eat them. The families ended up leaving town since their kids couldn’t be anywhere near the forest without having a mental breakdown.

The farther we walked, the darker it seemed to get. The trees started growing closer and closer together, and the bushes grew thicker and thicker until we could hardly take another step without having wrestle with the plant life. “How about we take a little break,” Nick suggested, “We can drink a little water, catch our breaths and then we’ll keep going.” Sarah and I both agreed, so we sat in a little clearing that could just barely fit us.

We sat in silence, all of us too tired to think of topics of conversation. I was staring at the brush in front of me, just thinking about life and what have you when I hear Sarah gasp from in front of me. I turned to her to see her staring directly behind me. “Bitch don’t do that. What’s behind me, should I be running??” I ask, one wrong step away from a panic attack.

“Max, I need you to move over here before you turn around, slowly though.” Nick said, also staring behind me.

“God this is how I die isn’t it. I was totally joking when I said that. I swear to god if I die because Sarah jinxed us earlier I’m going to riot.”  I stand up, moving as slowly as physically possible. When I got to where Nick and Sarah had backed away to, I turned, my heart pounding in my chest as I try to keep my breathing as quiet and shallow. I stared into the forest surrounding us and a pair of eyes stared back.