Noah stands in front of his house and he can't decide, pacing back and forth while munching on sour patch kids. His excursion lasted over an hour, but he still has about two hours left before he can go back home.
Typically he'd just sleepover at Tyler's house, but the Jenkins are on vacation at Cedar Point. He wishes he was at Cedar point right about now, drinking iced water in one of those roller coasters lines. His family would be normal and hyping him up, telling him how wonderful the ride would be. And maybe they'd get ice cream at McDonald's on the drive back to the hotel, laughing and reminiscing about the fun they had there.
But instead here is, trying to choose between two different tortures. On one hand, he goes back into the house, interrupting his parents "play-time" in the process. Perhaps he'll only get a minor beating—his father will surely be worn out after so much sex, he assumes—but he doesn't want to risk getting beaten at all.
"I'm going to the plant.", He finally says to himself, nodding and striding toward his backyard. What could his brother do? Argue with him? Dimitri isn't the physical type, though he talks like he's tough, and plus Noah did exactly what his brother told him to do. He went to the 7- Eleven that's open 24 hours, but it was only about an hour walk there and back. It only took him longer because he was pretty bummed out, and he had time to stall kicking dust anyway.
So off he goes, still munching on his sour patch kids, and then he stops in front of the forest. At this hour it's pitch black, and there are no street lights in the forest, of course. He's certain of that. If he goes he may not find his way back, and he'd be stuck there for the duration of the night. Maybe they wouldn't even find him as they were walking back, so he'd be there till morning all alone in the dark.
But he has a good feeling that he'll find his way through, which is why he eventually decides to continue further. Walking into the forest is like breaking a membrane of some sort of thing. He doesn't know what, but the whole atmosphere changes with those few little steps.
Weirdly enough, it's as quiet as can be outside the forest. But inside the forest, the animals are nothing but alive. Crickets chirp fast-paced and loud, the bushes rustle as little creatures move about through them, and he doesn't see deer roaming about, but he can hear them.
He almost falls in the stream after placing his foot on something that isn't a rock, but luckily (or perhaps, unluckily), only his left foot plunges into the water. Ugh, wet socks are the worst, and now he'll have to walk through the woods with it soaking wet. But it isn't the wet socks that bug him the most, rather, it's the feeling he gets in his gut. That's because, with every passing step he takes, he gets an increasing gut-feeling that he's in imminent danger. Wise men say to trust your gut, so perhaps he should, but he knows it's nothing but nerves and the jitters.
Then, he hears sounds. At first it's a squeal, a short high-pitched squeal that he supposed a mouse might make. But then he hears a loud moaning sound, or maybe it is a grunt, but he can't tell which. The sounds are far away, but what he knows is, they're definitely in the direction that he's walking, which is even worse.
His brother has told him stories about Krampus before and, although it isn't quite December yet, he believes these are the type of woods that Krampus would lurk in. He'd punish bad kids like Noah, punish him for not obeying his older brother. But Noah's nice. He's not bad at all, he loves his family, even if they're not as functional as the rest. Family is family. All Noah is certain of now is that he doesn't want to die in these woods, he just wants to be with his family again.
It starts with a gulp, but then extends to something bigger. The sound becomes a mixture of swallowing and chewing, the sound a competitive food eater makes when gobbling down food. To Noah, the sound is both revolting and terrifying, and he can only imagine the worst that's happening in the unknown. Just now he realizes he's not holding his bag of candy,—though he doesn't know when it fell out, but he believes it must've been when his foot fell in the stream—and that adds to his fear.
Noah knows that he's almost to the white flower garden, because the trees start to look thinner around these areas. In his mind, the garden should be behind the large collection of thorn bushes and trees that he's facing. He pushes through the shroud of plant-life, trying his best not to get cut by thorns, and when he lifts a branch over his head he stops dead in his tracks.
At first he thinks it's a wolf, a pure-white wolf having an evening snack, but unfortunately that isn't the case. The supposed "wolf" is leaning over a dead deer—the deer's guts are spilled out on the ground, and even in the dark Noah can see the blood—and Noah bites his lip to try not to make a sound. But, what he overlooks, is the amount of noise he made reaching the flower garden in the first place. So, it is only a matter of time before the wolf turns and faces Noah, and then he realizes it's not a wolf at all.
It's that guy from the news, Ian, the one who's new stepbrother is Reggie. His teeth look stained, his eyes are wide, and his mouth is completely drenched in sweet red blood. The hunchback nature of his back caused the wolf illusion.
That's when Noah runs. He goes in fight or flight mode, running as fast as he can reasonably conceive. Tears start to fall from his face, and the fear for his life is highly prominent. He doesn't bother looking back, he knows he's ahead of Ian, but he'll have to run faster in order to stay that way. His drenched left foot slows him a bit, but with his adrenaline pumping it isn't a problem.
Noah doesn't know where Ian is in comparison to himself, so when the hand finally grasps the back of his shirt, it almost causes his neck to snap from whiplash. He's tackled to the ground by a tremendous force, and he starts to have a runny nose as well as the tears.
Ian covers Noah's mouth with the palm of his hand, before making a shushing gesture and saying, "Calm down, I'm not going to hurt you!"
But Noah can't hold it back now, everything comes up, his eyes continue to water and he feels like he might choke on his own snot build-up.
"So, this is what it's like.", Ian says, examining Noah's facial expressions.
"What if I just do this—", Ian says before breaking Noah's ring finger completely. Noah squirms and screams as a reaction to the pain, and though only a small sound escapes through Ian's hand, it doesn't stop him from screaming more. The squirming is also useless since Ian has his arms pinned down with his knees.
"Interesting....", Ian says, bending Noah's thumb to the breaking point, which incites another scream to be muffled by his palm.
"Sorry, i just needed to see a few things.", Ian says with a laugh, lifting a busted beer bottle out of his back pocket.
"What are yo—", is the last thing Noah is able to mumble, before Ian slices his neck with the bottle and rips his throat out. Blood spurts out like a water fountain, and Ian rejoices under it's rain.
Slicing the boy's abdomen, Noah fetches for a liver, crosses his legs on the ground, and starts licking the blood that oozes from the organ, paying little attention to Noah's body as it continues to squirm and it's neck makes a disturbing gurgling sound.