Destiny

“What the hell am I about to get myself into?” I asked myself. My heart hammered and my breath was rapid. All the warmth I felt from the sun faded away completely when I stepped into those woods. It was like the moment I had stepped off that main road, I had stepped into another world. I was surrounded by layers of coldness that pressed up against me like abusive hands. I thought about turning around and going home for the last time. I didn’t know what the fuck I was attempting to find, or how far I would have to go to find whatever it was that I needed to find. 

I walked forward deeper into the woods. The more I walked, the more the sky seemed to disappear completely and became shrouded by a canopy of thick tree branches and leaves. I stepped on hard, dead leaves on the ground, walking further and further away from safety - or what I considered to be safety, into potential doom. I turned around. It didn’t seem like I had been walking that long, but I couldn’t even see the road when I turned around, only trees. I stopped where I stood and looked in all directions. Even though I had walked in a direct straight path, I still had the feeling that I was lost and I couldn’t everything looked so identical that I couldn’t remember which way I’d come in. 

I started to walk back in the direction I thought I came in, but after a while, I realized that I was really getting nowhere. It was impossible, all the trees were nearly identical in size, shape, number of branches -

There was a white cloth hanging from a branch on one of the trees. It instantly caught my attention. For some reason I was drawn to it. I walked toward the large oak tree, and as I got closer, I realized the white cloth was actually a white shirt. I tugged the shirt off the thin branch and examined it. It was a simple white T-shirt, wrinkled, nothing special about it at all. Checking to see if anybody was around, which of course was a dumb thing to do, because obviously nobody was around, I sniffed the armpit area of the shirt. It definitely smelled like a guy’s armpit - a very sharp, pungent odor - but the weird thing was that it was that the odor was fresh, as though the guy who had worn this shirt had taken if off only about half an hour ago. 

It belongs to one of them, I thought. The idea just popped into my head randomly without warning or explanation. It took me a moment or two to realize that what I meant to say that the shirt I was holding belonged to one of those boys whose IDs had been on the road. I let the shirt drop to the ground -

A pair of shoes. As I watched the shirt drop to the ground, I saw two black sneakers, propped up against the side of the tree trunk. I ambled around to the other side of the tree and knelt down. Whoever had worn these shoes obviously had big feet, because the sneakers were a size fourteen. I picked up the large, raggedy black shoe and studied it. 

There was something inside. I lifted the tongue of the shoe, half-expecting a spider, a beetle, or something to crawl out and scare the shit out of me. But it wasn’t something alive. I reached into the shoe and found something small, cold, and made out of metal: a key. I pulled it out and stared at it. I stared at it as though I’d never seen a key before in my life. I thought about putting the key back into the shoe where I found it, but something told me that I should hold on to it. I slipped it inside of my pocket and stood. 

I looked around the ground, around the trees for any other item that might have been randomly placed around. Or maybe none of it had been ‘randomly’ placed at all, maybe all these things I was seeing were specifically put there so someone could -

There was a syringe sticking out one of the trees, the kind found in doctor’s offices when taking shots. It was big too. A lot bigger than it probably should’ve been. I was afraid to touch it. I didn’t know why it had been stuck in there or what it had been used for. 

Beyond the tree with the needle stuck in it, there was an open clearing. Instead of dead leaves on the ground, bright green grass sprouted from the earth. The grassy area was shaped in a fairly-sized perfect circle. I walked toward it, intrigued but also puzzled, and not really in a good way. I checked my watch. It was almost ten o’ clock. I should’ve been home a while ago. My parents were probably wondering where I was by now. 

While I wanted to go, a big part of me wanted to stay. Even though it was cold and I was shivering, even though it was really quiet and scary, I wanted to keep going. I walked into the clear opening and looked around. Nothing. Gazing upwards, I saw the bright blue sky, but the sun was still covered by the trees. I was still cold. Which way had I come in? How the fuck was I gonna get out of this fuckin’ place? What if there’s someone else in these woods with me..what if there was something - 

“Shut up!” I screamed to myself. I pressed my hands over my ears and realized I was still wearing my headphones. I’d been so busy tryin’ to be a detective and dumb shit like that, that I didn’t even realize that I was still wearing my earphones. I didn’t want to take them off, in fear that I might get another message...I sighed in frustration, boredom, anticipation, and fear. I had never willingly put myself into a situation where it was possible that I was in a lot of danger. 

Past the clearing was more woods. Those woods looked a lot darker and a lot more dense than the woods I had just come from. Just looking at it, I was afraid to take another step forward, but at the same time, I was compelled to take another step forward. As I moved forward slowly, walking over the soft, damp earth, it suddenly came to me that I hadn’t seen or heard a single animal since I had taken one step into those woods. It was pretty normal to see deer and squirrels around my neighborhood. I figured, this being the woods and all, I would probably see more than a couple. I didn’t even hear any birds singing. It was like everything was completely abandoned and silent. 

I thought of Troy Channing. I pulled is ID out from my pocket and looked at it again. It was hard to explain why I was so fascinated with his picture...why I was so fascinated with him. And then it came to me, very clearly and very abruptly: He’s in these woods somewhere. That voice I keep hearing is him. It sounded ridiculous, but it sounded right at the same time...How the hell did I get here? Why am I in the middle of the woods instead of at home in my bed? This is what I fuckin’ get for running on Sundays. 

The thought that Troy Channing was in these woods kept reverberating in my head. I snatched the earphones off my head and broke them out of anger and out of helplessness. I took my cd player out of my right pocket and flung it at as hard as I could to the ground. It fractured in half. I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to go deeper into the woods. I was going to turn around and go back home, even if it took me all fuckin’ day to find my way back to the road. 

Re-vigorated, I was about to turn back around to head back the other way...when I saw something coming toward me. At first I thought it was an animal, but it couldn’t have been an animal, because it was running on two legs. It was a man. I stood frozen in place. As he came closer, I saw that the guy was completely naked. He was running straight toward me, like a panther galloping toward its prey. Before the sensation returned to my body, before my brain began to re-function and told me to run, the guy had already tackled me to the ground. It didn’t hurt when my back hit the ground. I barely felt anything really. I waited for the pain, but it never came. I was too busy looking into the guy’s sharp, penetrating, beautiful, spellbindingly intense gray eyes. 

He stared at me, our faces only inches away from each other; his hot, rapid breath pouring down on my neck. His smooth but rugged bronze-toned skin, the nearly bald head; his dick was pressing up against my shorts. He pinned me down effortlessly to the ground, making it impossible for me to move - but I didn’t want to move. I was lost in his powerful gray eyes. It was him. The guy whose ID card I had clenched in my left fist: Troy Channing. 

I looked at his gorgeous, perfect, fascinating face, and it didn’t feel like I was seeing him for the first time. I felt like I was seeing someone who had always been important to me and always would be. He had me pinned down on the forest floor, him naked, every muscle in his body flexed simultaneously, slick with sweat and tense with fear. The odor of his tight, muscular body was very sour, almost inhumanly sour - but somehow, maybe because it was him, very alluring. 

Just as quickly as he had pounced on me, Troy hopped off of me. He stood upright, gazing around him, surveying the woods. There was the most fearful expression on his face, like he knew that something bad was coming. I just couldn’t get over the fact that he was standing in front me, naked. He had the body that people could only dream about, the kind of muscular, lean body I could wish forever and a year to have but never attain. 

Troy's body was very muscular, very perfect. I thought at first that he was just an image that my mind just made up. But he definitely wasn’t just an image. He was real. His dick, not hard, but not soft either, looked like it could’ve easily been ten inches; it was thick without being too thick and his nutsack hung nice and low, without being too low. He barely had any hair on his body at all. In fact, except for his thin pubic bush, I didn’t really see any hair on him. 

Standing there, before me, he looked so beautiful, and so primal. I didn’t want my dick to get hard, but it was happening anyway. I don’t think Troy was really noticing my erection. He was sniffing loudly, like a dog searching for clues. He opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. He looked down at me and started moving his lips, but no words came out. 

“Huh?” I said.

He yanked me to my feet with no effort at all. Troy turned around, at the thick rows of trees he had just run out of. He turned back to me, dread flashing in his captivating gray eyes. He tried to talk again, but no words would come out. When he realized that he couldn’t talk, he pointed at the woods with one finger, while gripping my hand really tightly with his other hand. I looked where he pointed, at the woods, and I saw something. I didn’t see it too clearly, because before I got the chance, Troy yanked my hand and we took off running in the direction I had come from. He didn’t let go of my hand. I really didn’t want him too either. 

Even though I had pretty much been a runner all of my life, I had the hardest time trying to keep up with Troy. He was just too fuckin’ fast. I had regained most of my strength when I was walking around, but as we were blindly running though the woods, running over old leaves and broken branches. My lungs burned like they had been set on fire and my leg muscles felt like concrete. I turned around to see what it was that we were running from but I didn’t see anyone or anything. We kept running and running and I couldn’t take any more. It felt like the more we ran the more we were getting nowhere. How had I gotten myself into this situation? Running side by side with this extremely sexy-ass naked guy in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere from something - I didn’t even know what the hell we were running from. How fuckin’ worse could this day get? 

I fell to the ground, directly on my right knee. The pain vibrated throughout my entire body. Troy tried to pick me up, but I think he was getting tired too. He let go of my hand and collapsed to the ground beside me. The pain dulled down eventually, after what seemed like a minute or two. We stared at each other as we caught our breath, our eyes locked on each other. He did look better in person, much much better in person. I wish I had the time to really take in the sharp beauty of his face and his body, to enjoy the perfection before my eyes, but right now it was impossible. I wondered what he looked like when he wasn’t afraid. 

“What were you runnin’ from?” I asked him.

Troy didn’t respond to me at all. He just looked at me.

I asked him again, “Back there, what were you running from?”

He shook his head and pointed to his ears, which kind of stuck out in an adorable way. He moved his lips, but no words came out. But I still understood what he was trying to say, even though he couldn’t say it: I can’t hear you. Troy squeezed his eyes shut as though he were trying to hold back tears. He curled himself up into a ball. It was ironic, he looked like such a strong man, but he was in front of me, naked, balled up, completely helpless and vulnerable. 

“Were you the one I heard?” I asked.

Troy opened his eyes. He looked perplexed. 

“Someone talked to me. Someone told me to hurry and help them. Was it -”

Something growled behind us. It was an animalistic growl, almost like a cross between a lion and a wolf. I shouldn’t have turned around, but I did anyway. The sound didn’t come from the ground behind us, it came from the trees. I looked upward to see what appeared to be a man, crouching on a tree limb, staring down at us; like Troy, the man was naked, but that was where the similarities sharply ended. This man looked human partly, but he had very monstrous features; His mouth was stretched open unnaturally wide, wide enough to fit a whole melon into his mouth without struggle. There was a black void in his mouth, no teeth or tongue, just a dark vacuum. Also, his eyes were missing. Where his eyes should have been were Oreo-sized black holes. The man - or whatever the hell that thing was, howled again, much louder and ferociously than before - and then it leapt down toward us.

To be continued...