Selena packed her duffel bag with shaky hands. She grabbed the essentials first: a first aid kit, an umbrella, a gun. A couple changes of clothes in case she got lost. Her dad had taught her orienteering when she was a kid—map, compass, cardinal directions. She wouldn’t get lost out there. Not like the others.
She hated herself for even doing this. For caring. For loving Greg, after all the ways he’d humiliated her. Why did she still want to help him? Why couldn’t she let him burn?
Selena paused, hand resting on the zipper. She sighed. Maybe it was that hollow look he always carried in his eyes—like something inside him had been scooped out and nothing could fill it. She thought, once, that she could. That her love would be enough to soften his heart. But she’d been wrong. So wrong.
She closed the bag with a harsh zip and sat on the bed. Out of habit, she checked her phone again. No new messages. No response from Greg. Her chest tightened.
Frustrated, she opened Reddit. The message boards were a wildfire. Hundreds of comments, photos, memes. Strangers with rifles posing in camouflage. Groups grinning at the treeline as if this were some weekend hunt. Someone posted a meme of a deer with Greg’s face cropped over it. Another thread was blunt: “Is this shit real?” Replies stacked under it—“Fuck him.” “Hope someone gets him on day one.”
Then she saw the comment that froze her.
A profile with a pixelated avatar. It looked like a giant fly. The username she couldn’t place, but the words stuck.
“Heading out to the forest. Watch out for the flies. It’s gonna be a feast for them.”
Selena’s stomach knotted so tight she thought she’d vomit. This wasn’t a game anymore. This was a feeding frenzy.
She set her phone down, too afraid to keep scrolling. She laid her bag beside the bed and set her alarm for 6:30. Sleep didn’t come easy. When it did, it punished her.
Greg, skewered on a tree trunk. Greg, eyes wide and pleading, as wolves ripped his entrails out. Greg, mouth open, teeth smeared with his own blood.
Selena twisted in her sheets, desperate to shake the images loose. But there was no escaping them. No preparation for the nightmare waiting for her in the woods.
