(This story contains gore. Reader discresion is advised.)

Two hunters were hiding out inside a camouflaged blind, drinking beers, and enjoying a lazy weekend. One of them pointed to movement among the bushes. A pronghorn trotted out into the open and began to graze. One of the hunters carefully readied his rifle and aimed so that his crosshairs were squarely over the creature’s head. He was about to pull the trigger when the animal was abruptly dragged away by an unseen force through the brush behind it.

“What the hell happened?” asked one hunter to the other.

“Don’t know, but that one was ours!” the other said annoyed feeling a bit insulted by the steal.

Both men took along their rifles and went after their trophy. Making their way through the thicket, they thought over what they saw. It must’ve been a trap that was able to drag away a pronghorn like that. Typical for a trapper to steal a hunter’s honest quarry up form under their noses, after hours of waiting for the perfect shot. They bet the trap wasn’t even permitted.

They made their way out into a clearing and saw their prize, and someone crouched over their game.

“Hey, you got a permit to trap here?” one of the hunters asked, but there was no response as they approached. They noticed something wrong with the stranger, so they readied their guns.

“We’re talking to you!”

The stranger stopped and turned around. It was Genna, hyperventilating as her mouth was caked in froth and pronghorn blood. She stared at the two hunters with wild, bloodshot eyes, bulging from her misshapen head, which had lost much of its hair. Something else wasn’t right about the visibly throbbing cranium, which seemed to be on the precipice of bursting open.

After cursing under their breath from shock, one of the hunters slightly lowered his rifle and stepped closer with a hand reaching out.

“Whoa, hey lady,” he asked, “you okay? You need a hospital or something?”

The other hunter noticed small stones, dirt granules, and leaves beginning to float off the ground. He tried to get the attention of his hunter buddy. Genna’s forehead started splitting, causing the enlarged brain to begin swelling out from behind the pooling blood streaming out the opening. Taking one deep inhale, she let out a scream that sent out a shockwave, blowing loose forest debris, uprooting small plants, and knocking the two men off their feet.

The end had begun.