In the chilling conclusion of our three part series covered here and here, our hero James enters the third and final stage of the Hide and Seek Tournament of Earth, put on by a group of intergalactic travelers for the purposes of gambling for “Space Bucks”. James has already bested a wendigo and a lake monster, and now will face his toughest opponent yet. The winner will be crowned Hide and Seek Champion of Earth. As previously stated, the reader swears to the validity of this story, and I sincerely believe him, as we here at the Reality Register strive to print only the truth.
Jacob Bartholomew
As soon as the five minute timer hit zero, the snapping monstrosity at my feet, the thorns around me, the lake, and the moon melted away to reveal my plain white room. My cuts and scrapes remained, but I was now seated comfortably instead of suspended in the brush. I had been victorious, but before I could catch my breath, the holographic sign appeared before me once again. It read CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND: HUMAN V SASQUATCH. Of course it was Sasquatch. I feel like that’s an old played out joke, that Bigfoot was the undisputed champion of hide and seek. As the sign changed to a five second timer counting down, I figured I was about to find out. I jumped forward into the portal, and my white room disappeared to reveal a dense, wet forest.
It was daytime, though the thick canopy kept me in a deep shadow. The evergreen forest dripped a constant trickle of leftover dew or recent deluge. Though I couldn’t see far through the trees around me, I could tell I was in the valley of some mountainous terrain.
The holographic sign was with me again, displaying the rules of the game that I now knew well, seeker has five minutes to find the hidden competitor, winner of the best of three rounds would be declared champion. It changed to reveal that I was to be the first seeker, and the timer began to tick down.
I scanned my surroundings. If I were a giant hairy ape, where would I hide? I stared into the canopy, trying to catch any trace of movement. I spun around and peered through the forest. One minute had already passed.
I didn’t know what my best move was. Should I be on the move or should I be stationary and watch for movement in an effort to catch the sasquatch as he shifted to see my progress? I started to move slowly forward, being careful to remain silent. I now had three minutes left.
I realized he wasn’t going to make a mistake, the whole mystique of his kind revolved around his elusiveness. I now began to wonder if slow and silent was the best strategy, maybe I wanted to make a lot of noise in hopes of trying to draw his attention to me, making Bigfoot make a mistake. I began to run and crash through the underbrush. Two minutes remained.
I began to panic, frantically tossing my head from side to side while running to every nearby tree to check behind it. There was still no sign of him when my timer passed the one minute mark.
I broke into a full sprint in no direction in particular, having no idea of the correct tactic to take. Suddenly my foot caught a raised root and I felt my ankle snap as I spun and crashed to the forest floor. Pain overtook me as I howled in agony, my shoe facing the opposite direction than it was supposed to. Through the white hot throes of seering misery, I thought of the scratches and cuts that stayed with me after I finished my last match-up. Would I be like this for round two of this match? What about if I somehow made it out alive, would I be going home like this? The clock began to count down from ten seconds as the world started to fade to black and my head fell backwards, hitting the ground with a hard “thud”. The last thing I saw was a large shadowy figure step out from the side of a tree about six feet away from me. Almost had him.
I opened my eyes not knowing what had happened after I passed out, but I was in a different location and my clock was counting backwards from three minutes and fifteen seconds. I tried in vain to get up, but my injury had rendered my leg useless. The searing pain returned in the form of a heavy throb as I dragged myself to the nearest tree, where I lay as silently as I could hoping that the dense forest would shield me as well as it had my opponent.
Just as the timer struck the three minute mark, a giant hand grabbed me hard on the shoulder. I exhaled heavily as I was lifted into the air, the other hand finding my groin. Expecting my white room to appear as it had before as soon as an opponent or I was touched, I half felt relief as the monster tightened his grip on my shoulder and genitals. Unfortunately, the game didn’t end.
There I was, deep in an intergalactic forest, suspended in the air over the head of a sasquatch, now crowned The Hide and Seek Champion of Earth, and he was beginning to fold me in half. As he twisted my body, I could do nothing but watch in horror as my buttocks grew closer and closer to my face, until I was pressed against it, my back snapping multiple times before my skin finally tore and my entrails were dumped upon the wet moss that enveloped the ground below. Talk about a sticky situation!
James (Last Name Withheld to Protect Privacy)
So it turns out the narrator telling the story was dead all along! Pretty spooky huh? If you have a story you would like to submit for publication on our site, please email us at [email protected] and we’ll take a look at it. I do some editing to ensure it’s up to our standards and to make myself feel worthy of a paycheck, but I do not change anything pertinent to the story as a whole. Thanks for reading!
