I had always been told to stay out of the small forest behind my neighborhood. I can still remember the older kids on the bus scaring me with stories on my first day of Kindergarten. It was always the same, very cliché. Don’t go in. Kids go in and never return. Blah, blah, blah… I took these stories very seriously until I was about twelve. At that mature age I decided that the superstitions were for little kids and I never allowed myself to dwell on them. I did not, however, enter the forest. There was no reason to anyway. The tall tales of evil creatures feasting on the flesh of unwary trespassers had nothing to do with it! I became too old and wise to listen. I wish that now, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, that I was as smart as I had been as a child. I wish I could go back and tell my younger self not to be so quick to dismiss the horror stories. If I had not gotten so grown up in my way of thinking, my blood would not be pooling on the hard ground. I wouldn’t be staring in paralyzed shock as a grisly, furry head dips its muzzle into my abdomen, pulling out sections of my intestine. Yet, here I am, being eaten alive, unable to do anything about it except watch in horrified fascination. The pain is intense, but I seem to be separating myself from it, drifting away, little by little. The terrifying snarls from the beast are becoming faint. I have no idea what this monster is; all I know is that the stories were real.