So there we were, eating chocolate cake in my cramped living room. Thick slices of sweet frosted deliciousness with heaps of whipped cream. Rowan complimented it like the cake was a gourmet masterpiece, and Lukas had a crumb on his chin and didn’t notice until seven minutes down the road. For a minute everything was fine, I forgot about my deadline with supposed death and I was laughing with two good friends. 

Then Rowan stopped chewing. He didn’t say anything but I caught the flicker in his eyes, how they darted to the window behind me and didn’t come back. Lukas was mid-sentence, joking about building an elaborate wagon to fit our hypothetical candy mountain when he paused too.

His grin didn’t fully fade but I could see he was distracted. Then I felt it too, a pressure, like the moment a mug teeters off the edge of a table, the split second before lightning strikes, when the air feels heavy and your bones get tight. Whatever I was going to say dried off in my throat. Something was off.

“Do you guys… feel that?” Lukas whispered, his fork halfway to his mouth, frosting in the air.

“No. There's nothing there,” I said too quickly, shifting my position so I’d get a better view of the windows. An animal wouldn’t make its way to my house, right?

“C-close the curtains,” Rowan looked like he was on the verge of throwing his necklaces at whoever moved first. “It’s close,” and at that, we all stilled, ghost quiet. Phantom noises creaked from every direction, disorienting and overwhelming. Almost to the point I could feel it, attention, a pair of eyes, watching us, just out of view. Blurry sounds still threw rock at my ears until a single noise broke through it all. A horrifyingly real one, clear as a scream. A single tap on the window.

“Hey Aven, d’you wanna go on a walk with me?” it was my father, but it wasn’t. It sounded just like him, but dad always used my nickname, ‘Aven- Raven,’ that wasn’t him. A detail that froze my very blood. That wasn’t him but Lukas didn’t know that. He stood up, but I yanked him back down and clamped my hand over his mouth. I placed a finger over my lips, be quiet, don’t make a sound, was the silent message I needed to convey, luckily, my best friend understood and we scrambled as silently as possible to hide under the table. Our hearts pounding louder than our footsteps ever could. I could barely see the window from crouched beneath the table, but that meant a lesser chance of it seeing us, right? I regret my struggle to see what was outside, because the moment I did I wanted to cry. 

It wasn't the fox. Instead, crooked twiggy antlers jutted from its skull. Skin seemed to rot and fester in real time. Its movements were… staggered, like it was being jerked around on stilts. It pained me to imagine a once graceful stag become reduced to a taxidermist’s deepest darkest fear. I'm thankful I didn't have to see anywhere below its neck. A neck far too long, twisted and stretched out, as if it was only held together by the sheer will of the spirit. It craned and bent sickeningly to look into the house.

“Hey Aven, d’you wanna go on a walk with me?” it parroted, cocking its head. Which was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, so, so, utterly wrong. It’s mouth was nightmare fuel, it stretched far too wide, a grin cut from ear to ear. Its maw dripped with blackish yellow acid that leaked through its teeth, far more than necessary, and quintupled the amount of canine teeth a herbivore should've ever had. It’s nose? Gone, all that was there was exposed bone and blackened, shredded tissue. But its eyes were by far the worst. Solid yellow, pupiless, fixed forward where no deer's eyes should be-- the front of it's head like a predator's. They were grotesquely elongated, migrated from the sides for peripheral vision to the front in a horrifying, twisted, way. Two long, uneven banana-like slits running down its face rotating unnervingly as if trying to see everything at once. To find us. A sick feeling lodged itself in my gut, my old wristwatch read 14:47 p.m. dad’s work ended at 15:00 p.m, he couldn’t come home to this. I don’t know what that thing would do if it saw him first.

I ducked my head back under the tablecloth, heart hammering. The barely audible ticking pressed into my skull, every second seemed to stretch vast miles.

Still only 14:48. Twelve minutes until dad gets back. Our deadline at 15:00.

“I-is that thing your dad?” Lukas whispered, his voice thinner than paper. 

“No,” I said firmly but quietly. “It just sounds like him, it's trying to trick you.”

Rowan was crouched next to us, fists shaking in a white knuckle grip on his necklaces. “We need my mum. If anyone can trap that thing, it’s her.”

“She’s just down the street right?” Lukas said, looking between us, “then let's bolt!”

No matter how badly I wanted to do just exactly that, we had to be smart. “We can’t just run out the front,” I hissed, “It’s right there, if it sees us… game over,” 

Rowan looked grim, “and because your soul is so bright… it could sense us if we tried to leave out a window or something. We’d need to take the  long route around the neighborhood, through the forest.” A cold silence fell over us like a shroud, none of us were eager to move.

“So what?” Lukas murmured. “We just sit here until Aven’s dad walks into a horror movie?” He took a shaking breath, “Either that, taking that thing down ourselves, or running blindly in the woods without knowing if there's more of those… things in there?” 

“But if my plan works,” Rowan started, “It may never catch on,”

“Then you two should go on without me,” I said, half wishing I didn’t. “It wants my soul, if I stay here… then it won’t even notice if you leave. You won’t have to venture that deep in the woods.”

“No!” the two of them said at once, 

“How am I going to explain to your dad that I left you for dead with a demented deer-thing after I barged into his home and ate his cake?” Lukas argued,

“You told me you knew this part of the woods better than anyone in your grade,” Rowan added, “We need you to reach my mom’s house. We’d be sitting ducks without you,”  

“and it’d be even worse because we’re without you!” Lukas added. “We need you Aves, you’re our best shot.” I was shocked, not completely though, I knew these guys. (not Rowan, really, but I felt confident that he'd be a good person) I didn’t think they’d ever leave anybody behind. Even baby chipmunk Rowan.

“Fine,” I relented, “then we stay close, and we don’t stop moving.” 

“Oh, one more thing!” Rowan hesitantly reached around his neck, “Some of these necklaces camouflage soul-energy,” His fingers brushed against each one as if picking out which part of himself to give away, “and I think you two might need them more than me.” He tentatively removed three necklaces from his scarf of jewelry, strung one with orange and green beads around Lukas’ neck, and placed two around mine.

“Hey what's her second one for?” Lukas asked, echoing my own thoughts.

“No time to explain, we gotta go,” Rowan slid quietly out from under our table and we followed, fear gnawing my ears off.