Creature From the Pit
It was a dare, and never om his life could he turn down a dare. His friends called him crazy. But he enjoyed living on the edge. It made him feel alive.
Since they were small, they’d all been warned away from the woods and the swampy marsh within. It was dangerous, deadly, and possibly haunted.
Everyone knew someone who knew someone who never returned from that swamp.
His family was no different, but to him the stories were the type to tell naughty children or around the campfire to scare your friends. It didn’t scare him. Privately, he always saw it as a challenge.
So, when his friends approached him with the dare, he was eager to take on the challenge.
His friend clapped him on the back and handed him the gear he wanted to put in his pack. “We thought you’d call our bluff,” he said. “On the full moon, no less.”
He laughed. “I want a show,” he said. “It would be too boring otherwise.”
He threw the pack over his shoulder and left his friend a good distance away from the woods. His friend was scared. He believed the stories.
He chuckled to himself and jogged off into the woods. All the while, he planned how he was going to scare the crap out of his friend when he got back. He was going to enjoy the look on his face!
He was so wrapped up in his plans that he didn’t hear the squelching footfalls that were growing closer and closer steadily over the last half of a mile or more.
The moisture in the air grew and an eerie, swirling fog closed in around him.
Still, he did not hear the footsteps.
The rotting and decayed smell finally reached his nostrils.
He stopped, gagged, and batted at a slimy, low hanging vine that brushed against his neck.
But this was no vine.
It cinched tightly around his neck, cut off his scream, and dragged him into the swamp.
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