My love life has always been a mess. The first time I fell in love, I was excited—nervous, but hopeful. I tried to flirt with her, clumsy as I was, when my friend came to me and offered to help. He claimed to be an expert in women's psychology and promised he'd get us together. Two weeks later, he was the one dating her. That betrayal left me heartbroken.
The second and third times weren't much better. I was cheated on once, and the last one nearly broke me. We were only months away from getting engaged when she left me for someone else. That was the heaviest blow to my confidence. After that, I realized whatever women wanted in a relationship, I didn't have it. Still, I never blamed them or grew bitter—hating women for my own failures felt stupid. But I also lost the will to try again. It's been twenty years since then.
After that final breakup, I found a new hobby. Once a year, I take a week off work and disappear into the woods. Camping calms me. It lets me forget work, forget relationships, forget the world. It's not that I don't trust people, but I always feel distant from them, even in a crowd. My mind drifts somewhere else. Conversations run on autopilot—I say what people expect, not what I really feel.
And so here I am, deep in the jungle, sitting by a crackling campfire after bathing in the river nearby. The night is strangely silent, the kind of silence that makes the hair on the back of your neck rise. I tell myself it's nothing—too late in the night to worry. The full moon hangs above me, washing everything in silver light, and for a moment, it feels like all my troubles are swept away.
I stay awake until one in the morning before finally deciding to get some sleep. The quiet lingers, heavy but harmless—or so I think.
It happens too fast to process. Instinct kicks in, and I roll to the side just as my tent rips open. Pain sears across my back—claws. Something had slashed me open.
I turn just in time to see it lunging at me. Without thinking, I snatch up my shotgun and fire. The blast throws the creature backward mid-air.
Heart racing, I stumble to my feet, sling the shotgun over my shoulder, and bolt toward the river. Footsteps pound behind me—fast, too fast. It's gaining. Desperate, I dive into the water.
The cold current takes me instantly, dragging me downstream. I fight to keep my head above water, lungs burning, terror clawing at me as fiercely as the thing in the jungle had. All I can do is let the river carry me, further and further from the place where it attacked me—further into the unknown.