Crunch, crunch, crunch.... The sound that the gravel made as he walked down the driveway. It was the ass crack of dawn and Waldon was just returning to his house after a long night drowning his sorrows in the local pub. He lived in a two-story modern log cabin-style mansion, deep in the woods. When his parents were alive, this mansion was built away from immediate civilisation because they wanted to be undisturbed and undisturbed they were, well until people started going missing in the woods near their abode. The people of the town started gossiping and speculating, simple speculation and questions became whispers of suspicion. Soon they were being blamed for those disappearances until they too disappeared, leaving only their son; Waldon.
It had been 10 years since Waldon's parents had disappeared, and he had long become accustomed to living alone and depending on himself. He was what would be dubbed a loner, he much like his parents preferred to be away from people favouring being alone to being silently judged, misunderstood and disregarded just for being different. For you see Waldon was a cute, petite, 5ft 1", 20-year-old man with long raven hair, pale skin, silver eyes and many piercings. To a traditional town, Waldon stood out for all the wrong reasons, so he spent most of his time in the woods or in the mansion. Today was one of those days, especially after his night at the pub; Waldon felt that it was time to take a long nap and that was just what he did.
A few hours later….
Outside his bedroom window, throughout the vast expanse of forest, a thick layer of fog covered it going as far as the eye could see. There was a stream somewhere not too far from the mansion, like the forest that had seemed to become ominous since people started disappearing, the stream was also a place that was renowned, known as the Forbidden Creek, it was said that the souls of those who went missing in the forest could be seen in the moonlight floating around the stream. As time went by and Waldon slept, the forest fog grew thicker and thicker, and with it, visibility became impossible for anyone not familiar with the forest. As the silence grew, quiet whispers woke Waldon from his slumber. This was the first time that he had ever heard anything besides the flutter of wings from the birds and the occasional woodland animal, so he got out of bed slipped on his oversized black hoody, jeans, and beanie and converses, grabbed his keys and phone as he walked out the front door.
Much like the blonde idiots in horror movies who decide it's a brilliant idea to follow the sounds and directives of unknown voices and suspicious people, Waldon sets out following the beckoning sound of the whispers within the trees, leading him down an untrodden pathway towards the creek. However, after looking around he sees nothing, but that all changes as the fog in a particularly desolate and barren part of the lake suddenly starts to lift. Hidden under the broken branches and bramble that cover a more narrow part of the stream were three mangled bodies. Two of the bodies were his parents, they were decapitated but their heads were completely drained of blood, their tongues were cut out and their eyes had small throwing knives sticking out of them. Their bodies were also in terrible condition, his mother had her arms ripped off and reattached to where her legs were supposed to be, while her legs were whittled down and stuffed into the stump of her neck in replacement of her head; his dad had one of his legs stuffed up his rectum while his other leg was stuffed down the stump of his neck both feet meeting at his torso under his ribs, unlike Waldon's mother however his father's arms had been left intact but some of the skin from his torso had been carved of leaving a patchwork of bone and muscle. The last person had been sliced from the throat to the navel, his intestine lay pilled into his slack mouth, and his heart was missing. His lungs were punctured by two of his own ribs and his arms were refitted into the gap left by his missing organs.
You would think that the bodies would decompose in the 10 years that his parents had been missing but they still looked as if it was the same day they had died. As Waldon looked at the scene that was present in front of him, he suddenly started laughing, and the longer he looked the longer he laughed. The whispers that had brought him to the creek suddenly stopped, as the silence returned to the forest Waldon also stopped laughing and looked around feeling as if someone was watching him. Slowly, Waldon turned around and moved his downward gaze up, finding a tall man who looked ethereal staring at him from just beyond the closest tree. ' Hello' Waldon said to the man, 'Who are you', snapping out of his dazed stare the man replied ' I am Arwin, the guardian of the lost woods and a high fae. Are you that boy that lives in the mansion of the traitors not too far from here? What is your name?'. Looking into Arwin's crystal blue eyes, Waldon answered 'If by traitors you mean, my parents who are evidently dead as you can see, then yes; my name is Waldon'. And with that, he abruptly turned around and started on his journey back to his mansion having satisfied his curiosity.
Picking his way through the forest Waldon soon found himself outside his front door, however upon arriving he saw Arwin waiting on the porch. 'What are you doing here, what do you want from me?' Waldon asked apprehensively. ' I want you, I will not harm you like I did those others, they tried to take that which didn't belong to them so I gave them their retribution. You, however, seem to coexist peacefully in this environment so to you I present two gifts, the ability to move freely within these woods without fear of harm and my friendship. Being high fae there is little that can harm me and as my friend, you will gain more than you have lost. However, be warned if ever you thank me you owe me a favour and I always come to collect'.