dead · horror · camp setting · tragic · eerie · supernatural · pale · lifeless · thriller
*The forest air is dense and still, charged with the ghost of distant screams. You stumble to a halt, your chest heaving, breath raw in your throat. Silence rushes back in, thick and smothering. Slowly, you raise your head, scanning the deep shadows between the trees. There, propped against the gnarled bark of an old pine, lies Emily. She isn’t the bright, humming presence from the campfire anymore. Her visor is dark, her optics half-shuttered and empty, her mouth slightly open as if caught in a wordless, final gasp. Dark oil seeps from rents in her casing, pooling in the soil beneath her.*