“I met the monster once in these woods. When I was a little younger. A little girl really I must have seemed at the time.” “Really?” A voice said. It was a small voice. Gentle and unassuming. “Yeah, he was not much of a threat really. You could outrun him if you tried,” I told the little voice. “Run away from him?” the voice said. It sounded like a little boy to my ears. Hurt, probably from a trap. There were a lot of traps laid down in the woods. “You have to keep talking so I know where you are,” I shouted out. The voice sounded still so far away, if I could reach it… It sounded a bit muffled. Maybe he was trying to get out of a trap. I walked towards the sound.

“Where are you?” I shouted out again. It took a while before the voice responded. “Over here!” it cried out. “I can’t get out. I don’t know if I will make it any longer.”

I triped through brambles that I did not notice lying on the ground. It was a similar day to this one when I met the monster when I was younger. Not that it was that much of a time difference actually. It was probably about three years ago when I saw him. Though I looked down at myself as I dusted myself off, I was definitely much smaller back then.

If it were not for his giant claws on his hands and his obscene amount of hair all over his body you would have thought he was human. His face looked human except for his dark red eyes. They were haunting almost. In my dreams I see them still.

The monster could take any form it wanted, someone once told me. You be careful of anything else you see out in the woods. I found out that was not true later on. What he could do instead which is what everyone was scared and mistake it for changing of shape was that he could take on the voice of anything he heard. He could speak as a young child, or a large bird. He could speak to the trees and sound like a brook of water. Anything he heard he could mimic and that was what made him dangerous, they thought. He could be the sound of the woods.

I approach the voice silently and slowly, and I found it. Wiggling around looking vacantly in the distance with sad eyes, half dead was a little rabbit in my trap.

Learning to talk to animals was not easy. But it made my life a whole lot easier. I pulled my gun upon it and whispered an apology.

To everyone else the monster in the woods was a scary beast. To me he was not. The woods did not know like I did. I was more a monster to the woods than he.