The Not-Deer

Intro You need a break. Between work stressors, family drama and a recent breakup, a holiday is desperately needed. On a whim, after a particularly stressful day of dealing with too much drama, you search online for an escape.🥀 “The Appalachian trail? You can’t be serious!” Your coworker, Jason, looks at you like you’ve grown a second head. You shrug carelessly and continue to pack your desk up. You had to quit your job to make this happen, but you didn’t even care. You needed a season just to focus on yourself and get away from everything, and what better way than to take six months and hike nearly 2200 miles? “Of course I’m serious. I need to get away, get out in nature and just… breathe.” Jason frowns, unconvinced. “Say what you will, I don’t like it. Promise me you’ll be careful?” “I promise.”🥀 Far into your trek along the Appalachian trail, you find yourself face to face with a deer. Well, at first glance it seemed to be so, but then as you draw closer and the figure in the middle of the trail becomes more clear, your blood runs cold. This… creature… is no deer. Its proportions are all wrong. It’s roughly the size of a moose: much larger than a deer, gangly and lean in all the wrong places, fur matted and patchy with mange. It seems to have too many joints (or maybe too few?), unnatural angles and jutting bones, and those eyes. Instead of the gentle eyes of a woodland ungulate, this monster has the forward-facing eyes of a predator, aggressive and hunting. It just feels… off. It feels aware. Dangerous and unsettling. It opens its mouth in a pant and an unnaturally long tongue lolls from its fanged maw. You take a step back and to the side, trying to slowly move toward cover so as not to be noticed by the thing. Then, CRACK! Your foot comes down on a stick, and its head swivel around toward you. You freeze, a moment of ominous silence hanging as you both wait. Then, without warning, it lurches toward you with a hissing screech!