You weren’t supposed to be there. Your lineage grew over the course of millions upon millions of years, a number so unfathomable that your pathetic, human brain would collapse if exposed to it. Humanity, and all that we know, is a single strand in a thick, woven jacket worn on the backs of gods.

However, on a much smaller scale, slightly more comprehensible, humanity grew to fill a niche, and then evolved to thrive in that niche. Every animal has been shaped by millions of years, and as such, your body adapted to certain environments, and this was not a location you were supposed to be in.

You were alone and out of your depths.

After finding yourself off of the trail on a remote hiking trip, one wrong move led down wilderness masquerading as hiking paths. The forestry only grew denser and denser as you progressed further into the darkening world. Trees towered over you, the underside of their leafy cover hundreds of feet above you, filtering the sunlight that was quickly diminishing as the sun set and the foliage grew denser.

The massive wooden structures the trees created held patches of dirt between their roots, blending and molding into one massive organism as you realized that you were in the grasp of something impossibly larger than you, the building sized trunks seemed to sway and bend, the world warping around you.

Once night fell, you had this realization; you were completely lost blind and stumbling through an unmoving wall of black, almost like your eyes were never meant to adjust to this level of darkness.

This deep in the forest, the air moved differently, reverberating off of the trees and everything around them, shaking them ever so slightly, before bouncing off into another direction. You were thankful for your hoodie, despite the limited warmth it provided, realizing just how cold it got in these forests. Especially when a slow, heavy wave of air pushed through the trees around you, the force of it almost knocking you over. You felt as if it were trying to push you into the ground, your bones bending as you faced the wave of pressure that compressed your body from all sides, knocking the air out of your lungs and bringing you to your knees. Your ears rang, a headache splitting your head in two as you find yourself unable to find yourself. Something was wrong.

In just a few seconds you felt like there wasn’t any air around you, gasping for air in a vacuum before being slammed into the ground, pressure slamming you hard against the wood below you.

The next wave was when you understood what was happening. Something much larger than you was now aware of you in a way you couldn’t stomach to think about. With the third slam down, you grimaced before gasping in, feeling your lungs push you away from the hard ground below you just as the air seemed to thin, breathing out just before slamming down into the ground, and holding your breath on empty for a moment before breathing in again. This cycle continued for several more repetitions, body bruising and bones breaking as the pressure of the air tested your body’s physical limits.

By the time the thrashing stopped, your head was throbbing, your sense of balance completely destroyed, unable to recalibrate without any visual input. You spun in nothingness as you caught your breath, grounding yourself to the best of your ability given the circumstances.

Without warning, sharp laughter bounced from all around you, stabbing into your ears and shaking your skull with its sound. There was no way to tell where it came from, the frequencies inaudible to you, but the changes in pitch weighed heavy on your body. Your own skull seemed to be the source of the laughter, the sharp noise resonating with your bones.

The reverberations happened so quickly that you couldn’t parse what the feeling was, only noticing a stabbing pain in the center of your head. Something had laughed in the darkness, and you couldn’t think straight because of it. Another laugh, this one lower and darker, reverberating more in your chest as the wicked cackle bounced off of the world around you.

Your cold hands reached down towards your pockets, scrambling numbly over the machined body of modern technology and fumbling it. Your phone clattered loudly as it hit the ground, sending sharp echoes off of the trees as the flashlight turned on mid bounce, the beep of a video starting reverberating through the dense fauna. And so you found yourself here, not ready to die.

The phone had landed face down, the LED on the rear camera illuminating the area with light unseen to the creature stalking you. With it’s muzzle scrunched and ears standing tall, a low growl came from the thing in front of you. You felt the low rumble in your bones, like a deep, hearty laugh from your favorite uncle. That loud, powerful laugh that would be felt as much as heard, always able to make you laugh just from proximity.

You haven’t felt that in a while, have you?

The creature in front of you was easily identified as a hyena of some sorts, but the fur over the eyes didn’t part. In fact, the shape of its head seemed different, the lack of eye-sockets seemingly made up for with hollow chambers above the teeth. This creature’s ears were much larger and rounder, bringing to mind the satellite dish your uncle had on the side of his old house, the first place where you could be comfortable and have fun. The only place you could truly see the stars from.

You had known that this forest seemed familiar, but you couldn’t place it until now.

The massive nose on the hyena stood tall, like an engorged vein, sensitive to the movements in the air. Watching this creature about to pounce, you quickly dodged it, scrambling for your phone and running towards the house from your memories.

Blind to everything, including your smartphone’s light, the hyena-bat hybrid followed your auditory footprint like blood in the water, not quite able to catch up thanks to the many rapid turns and swerves you made. You knew where to go, seeing the marks on the paths again, finally getting close to civilization, the trees becoming smaller and less thick, easier to dodge through now. You didn’t stop running, but you continued down the now easily spotted trail markers, phone dying as you stumbled down the path to your campsite.

Upon returning home, you found a blurry still of this creature in your accidental video, the hyena’s unusual face caught in a smear across the frame. You can remember every detail, using a blurry photo and some paint to capture the creature that had been haunting your mind’s eye. Finally, the laughing stopped once you created this physical representation of that beast. It was real, it was dangerous, but you can tame it.