As the cold wind brushed her bare arms, she shivered and wrapped her thin shawl around her tighter, barely able to bring her warmth from the harsh, cold winter. She walked slowly away from the empty clearing. She had been drinking too much alcohol from the party and now she felt tipsy, hell, she might have even been considered a drunkard if one were to judge her from the amount of alcohol she consumed.

'Liars, the bloody lot of them. Said there'd be a party but would you look at that. There's no one there. Bloody bastards.'

She mumbled broken curses and stumbled unevenly out of the woods. As she walked she noticed a stray signal light from a car. She made the conclusion that she was nearing the highway, and decided to speed up her walking. But as she was nearing the place she last saw the stray light, a soft almost inaudible crunch of the freshly fallen snow was heard. She whipped her back, straining to hear the sound again. But only the deafening silence and the sound of her heavy, drunken breathing was heard. Even as she tried to hear with such concentration, she couldn't hear it. She shook her head and berated herself for her stupidity.

'Of course, no one is there, you're alone in the bloody woods and drunk from the alcohol you drank. Stupid.' 

Slowly she walked forward again, her thoughts swirling with ideas and theories as to how that simple inaudible crunch unnerved her so.

'It's a probability that because I am in the woods, I instinctually come to the conclusion that I must be stalked or haunted.'

'Yeah, that must be it.'

She assured herself that must be the reason why she couldn't help but feel unnerved. As her alcohol intoxication slowly faded from her blood veins, she waited for any sign of life -when, she heard it. The low rumbling sound of an inhumane creature was heard in the forest, she jumped, panicking at the sound that she knew didn't come from any wildlife creature. It was too... abstract to be anything from this world.

'Oh my god, I'm going to die. I'm going to die!'

She thought, breaking into a terrified run. The creature's vicious voice got closer and closer to her. Every time she looked back it seemed as though the thing downed away all life from the trees, local flora, and fauna. Likewise, it sucked away any source of light leaving only pure darkness the one even darker than black.

She could see that around the edges of the darkness where the moonlight could; just barely, light the area. The shadows floated like ashes, foreboding like a symbolic warning. It floated away slow in its descent back into the vortex of the ever-consuming darkness. Ignoring the twisted pine scraping her soft flesh and meager clothing, she continued running, trying to outrun the shadows. After running for what seemed like hours, she reached the edge of the cliff. At the bottom were jagged rocks that could pierce any soft and tender flesh that was unlucky enough to fall into their forbidding grasps. 

'What do I do now?' 

She pondered, the beast, creature, whatever it was- was inching closer. It was growing so immense that even the moonbeam, her only source of sight was fading away, being snuffed out by the being. And there, in the faint distance yet at the same time like a secret whispered in her ear, she knew that the creature chasing her was not one inhumane being but a collective hive of like-minded individuals.

It was then and there she knew that it was futile to resist. She couldn't escape, but she didn't want to.

The waters down below crashed into the Cliffside, loud and prominent like the cymbals and thunder rumbling in a cacophony of sound that hurt her ears. She knew it was inevitable, she was just a pawn to be toyed with and the hive would patiently wait to see if the outcome was satisfactory to the greater hive collective. She inched backward, the hive in front of her and the sea calling her, beckoning her to do the right thing.

And so she did.

"𝑨𝒍𝒍 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒐𝒏𝒆, 𝒔𝒆𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒃𝒚 𝒂 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏 𝒗𝒆𝒊𝒍 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒉𝒚𝒔𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍. " — 𝑱𝒂𝒄𝒆 𝑩𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏