They Always Run

They run from you. 

They always run.

Every camp counselor or drunk teenager or curious podcast host who stays out late in the dense, dark woods of Lake Arrowhead thinks they’ll be the one who survives. That they’re being smart when they sprint off the moment they see you approaching. After all, you’re slow and they’re fast. Faster than they ever thought they could be, fueled by the fear of you taking away all of their tomorrows.

But in the end, you always catch them. Even that track star. Setting a record in the 400 hurdles didn’t translate to escaping a hulking undead vengeance ghoul. They always get tired. Or injured. Or cocky. And stop. 

But not you. 

You never stop.

One of the few perks of being a hulking undead vengeance ghoul. 

Of course, they only learn this at the end. At the start, they always think they can outrun “Stumbles.” That’s still what they call you, “Stumbles.”

It’s been 15 years since you were the counselor who accidentally stumbled into the bonfire at Camp Cowabunga.

It’s been 13 years since you were burned alive in one of their stupid pranks gone wrong… admittedly because, yes, you did stumble and fall. 

It’s even been 12 years since you first rose out of the grave to collect revenge on the counselors who caused your death and cursed you with the dumb nickname that lives on–

“GO AWAY, STUMBLES!”

Ugh. They still call you Stumbles. This one, named Pat, yells at you instead of begging. He sprints ahead under the night’s full moon, but even with that extra light– THUD! He trips over roots. Before he can scramble back to his feet, you stomp your rotting hiking boot into the center of his back, forcing his face into the dirt. Despite this, he keeps yelling…

“GET OFF OF ME! I WAS ONLY SMOKING A J! I NEVER DID ANYTHING TO YOOOURGHK–”

Pat doesn’t shut up, but those are the last complete words he gets out as you pull both of his arms back towards you until his muscles and skin stretch further and further, against nature’s design. Then… snap, you tear them off like wings from a rotisserie chicken. You bend his legs backwards and press your foot down into his back to hold him steady until… snap, the legs come off too. You bite into one hungrily, gnashing with vicious intent, stripping off chunks of meat, then washing them down with still-warm blood.

Still eating his leg, you crouch down to let Pat stare into your lidless eyes. He thinks he’s never done anything to you. He has. They all have. They continue to call you Stumbles. No matter how many you kill, flay, and devour, this is always how they view you. That’s why you can’t stop. No jury would convict you. Not that you’re concerned with the legal system. Or being caught, shot, impaled, or even burned again. Until your hunger for revenge is satiated, you will keep coming back. Over and over. Another perk of being a hulking undead vengeance ghoul.

And your hunger isn’t satiated. Not yet. Not when you hear the giggles of foreplay out amongst the trees. You shamble towards them, with each oblivious outburst bringing you one step closer. Soon, you see them, your next targets: two college-age counselors from the nearby Camp Bearmoon, Frenching and rolling around on the spot where you failed to stop, drop, and roll. The male whips his shirt off and starts sliding down his shorts when the female pauses.

“Oh Jared, we’re not really going to, like, do it do it, are we?”

“Carrie, babe, the dare is to hike to Camp Cowabunga at night and bang it out where they say Stumbles died. It’s worth five hundred points! We do this, we win the All-Night Dare-A-Palooza!”

“But how will anyone even know we did it? Nobody’s watching us.”

“Better to bang than risk losing.”

“...I do like winning.’

Carrie stands and catches up to Jared, slipping off her own shirt and shorts. This neither arouses nor infuriates you. As tasteless as it is to have sex on your death site, these two are hardly the first. You step closer as she lowers herself onto him. Jared chuckles and leans back, so caught up in the moment that he doesn’t hear you. So you place Pat’s severed hands onto his shoulders.

“Wha– Ha! See, Carrie? Toldja Dare-A-Palooza has someone watching us!”

Jared sees Pat’s hands, but Carrie sees you, holding Pat’s severed arms. You wave one of Pat’s hands at her because, hey, you find joy where you can. Then, as if she’d read the script ahead of time–

“AHHHHHHHH!”

They run. They always run. Jared looks back at you, confused… but then it hits him:

“Stumbles?!”

For this, you slap Jared with Pat’s hand. He staggers, but turns these uncertain steps into his first strides away from you. He grabs his shorts off the ground while sprinting after Carrie, joining in her scream. Everything they do is what you’ve come to expect from all your victims. The only interesting choices Jared and Carrie make are remaining fully naked and running deeper into the woods. Most victims run for their cars. These two race further from safety. There are bears out that way and bears… bears put up a fight. Far more than any counselor.

Jared rifles through his shorts’ pockets near a dead bush. You close in, one corpse’s length away, but when you reach for him… FWOOSH. He blazes up the bush’s dry branches with a butane lighter. It spreads instantly, lighting up your arm like a torch. He runs on, certain he hurt the monster. Maybe even defeated it.

But he didn’t. You keep walking after him, flames crawling up your arm. They re-sear your flesh, releasing the stink of twice-roasted flesh. The odor takes you back to your first death, but the pain is no more than a sunburn now.

Jared doesn’t look back. He charges ahead, powered by the doofy confidence of a young man who’s been told he’s clever so many unearned times that he believes it. Carrie waves him into an abandoned cabin. She locks the door behind him, as if that will stop you. Logic like that explains why they’ve yet to come up with a better name for you than “Stumbles.” 

You march towards the cabin, sizing it up its door when you hear… a howl? No, not an animal. It sounded fuller than that. It was… new. You don’t get a lot of “new” anymore. You’ll have to find its source… after you kill these two.

You raise up your foot to kick down the cabin door when from inside—

“OH GOD! NO, NO, NO! LEAVE US ALONE!”

“TAKE HER! NOT ME!” 

“JARED!”

They fear you. Your long dormant facial muscles fight through the atrophy to lightly smile. Yes, terror makes your victims’ meat taste sour, but hearing them like this… the ones screaming instead of you… this is why you do it. This keeps your passion for being undead alive. 

Their screams increase, beyond words to unfiltered animalistic expressions of horror. That’s… odd. It’s too early for those noises. Your delight turns to concern. To speed this along, you stomp into the front door like a battering ram, bashing it off its hinges to reveal–

A bear… devouring your meal. Acting like it’s the top predator in these woods. Stupid bear…

But the longer you look at it, you see it is also not a bear… bears aren’t ten feet tall… or horned… . or surrounded by an aura of blue flames… 

Or have wriggling mouth maggot tentacles slithering out to pull human heads into their mouths. 

So… not a bear.