Party in the Woods - Unexpected Guests Have Big Claws and Bigger Appetites!

Abridged story transcript. Sexualized passages have been omitted or replaced with brief non-explicit editorial summaries in square brackets. This is not a verbatim transcript. Separate host segments and advertising are omitted. Prepared from an automatic transcription; residual transcription errors may remain. This reading version is based on the recovered remastered-story transcript; wording may differ from the original episode recording.

Party in the Woods by Joe Solmo Tristan and Becca made their way down the wooded path behind Tristan's neighbor's farm. Josh and Emily went to bed pretty early, so for years Tristan had brought friends down here behind the farm to explore the woods. As he got older he explored less and came to the woods to drink and party with the girls from town.

Becca was new to town, just moving here a month ago. Tristan was infatuated as soon as he saw her in the hall in school, her long brown hair flowing behind her. He followed her after school trying to come up with something to say to her to spark a conversation. It paid off though, he thought, as he sneaked a glance at her behind the moonlight, through a break in the trees.

She carried a bottle of Jack Daniels in her right hand. It was already missing a quarter of the brown liquid inside. She was more of a drinker than he was, he noted with a smile. He couldn't keep his eyes off of the way she walked, the curve swaying back and forth. It was mesmerizing. The swaying stopped in front of him. Tristan, did you hear that?

she whispered to him. Hear what? he asked at a normal volume. Shh, something in the woods. She replied. Do you guys have bears around here? She asked with a little bit of fright in her voice. I didn't hear anything. Don't worry. I've been coming here since I was a kid. There's nothing out here that can hurt us. He said and smiled that famous smile that got him the girl on numerous occasions.

Becca still stood there for a moment. When she didn't hear anything, she began to walk the path again, but cautiously. Tristan snuck up behind her and grabbed the bottle from her hands. She let out a scared yelp as he laughed at her. He took a big gulp off the bottle, letting the alcohol burn his throat. Are the others meeting us up here?

Becca asked. She wouldn't agree to coming out to the woods with a guy she'd just met unless others were going to be there. He scrambled to find another couple to come along. Yeah, it's not much farther now. We got a little fireplace from an old house, Tristan said. It must have been from the seventeen hundreds, he said. Sounds cool, Becca said. Thinking of the fireplace, Tristan frowned.

He should be able to see it from here. He knew Greg and Beth were already there. He saw Greg's car down by the side of the highway on the way over. Maybe he was just lazy, he thought. The moon was hidden by the boughs of the trees above. Tristan made his way in the dark to where he knew the stone chimney was.

He could barely see the lighter stone in the darkness. He felt around to the right where he stacked the kindling. It felt wet, but he didn't remember it raining recently. Greg, if you pissed on our wood, I will kill you, he called out to the night. He hoped Greg heard him as he banged Beth or whatever they were doing. He grabbed a book of matches from his pocket after stacking the wooden branches into a small teepee shape with pine needles and last fall's leaves underneath.

I can't see anything, Becca said from behind him. One second, he said, masking his disappointment. She was one hell of a looker, but she seemed kind of annoying to him. He struck the match, which blinded him for a second with its brightness in the almost complete dark. He instinctively moved the match to the pine needles under the wood before it burned out or the wind got it.

He saw spots in his vision as he gently blew on the pine needles. Yes, he called out as the fire came to life. It wasn't piss on the sticks. It was a darker, thicker color. It reminded him of the bottle Becca carried. Hey, babe, can I get a drink? He said, getting to his feet. The sticks were catching now and the light from the chimney was spreading.

Becca didn't answer him. Babe, he said, and turned around. Becca was standing in front of him, 10 feet away with the bottle still in her right hand, her widened eyes staring past him towards the chimney. What the hell's gotten into you? He said and took a step closer, but she didn't move. He watched as the bottle slipped from her hand and struck the ground, spilling its contents.

What's wrong with you? He said, grabbing the bottle off the ground to save its contents, which he tried to pour down his throat. He stopped with the bottle to his lips. Becca still hadn't moved. He started to get a creepy feeling and turned towards the fire. The light from the flames illuminated the immediate area. The stack of wood he had piled there yesterday was definitely wet, but it was also red.

It looks like something bled all over it. His eyes fell to just in front of the stack of wood and he saw the source of the blood. Greg, naked to the waist, lay on the ground, twisted in a way Tristan could only describe as wrong. His face looked behind him and several vertebrae stuck out from a gaping hole in his neck. His eyes were wide open in fear, similar to Becca's.

He turned towards his would-be girlfriend, but she was still looking in the same direction. Tears streaked her cheeks and a sob escaped her lips. He turned back to see what she was looking at, and that's when he noticed Beth. [Editorial summary: Beth has also been killed. Tristan recoils from the scene of the violent attack.] Panic started to settle into Tristan. He stepped backwards away from the mangled corpses of his high school friends.

Becca, he called out. Run. He turned himself to run and saw a horrid sight. Behind Becca, who still hadn't moved from the same position, stood three humanoid shapes. Their eyes reflected the firelight from the chimney. Becca, Tristan managed to say before the creatures moved. In an instant, Two grabbed his date and held her arms behind her back. He heard a sickening pop as one of her shoulders were dislocated violently.

The pain seemed to break Becca out of her shock. She screamed. The third creature charged Tristan. He managed to land a punch on the monster, but it didn't seem to have any effect. It grabbed him and forced him to his knees, placing one of its large clawed feet on the back of his legs so he couldn't get up. Help me, Tristan, Becca called out.

It was her last words. One of the creature's hands suddenly protruded from her lower abdomen, tearing out of her flesh with a violence Tristan had never witnessed before. No, he called out in horror and began to sob. He swore the creature holding him mocked his cry. Tristan saw the moment Becca died. He could see it in her eyes. The moment it ceased to be Becca and became only a sack of meat.

It was worse than the mangled corpses of his friends. Watching her die like that, Becca's body fell down to the ground. The two monsters fought over her, tearing pieces of her flesh off in front of him. The same flesh he was admiring just a short time ago. Tristan couldn't take it anymore. He put his head down, letting his hair cover his eyes, but the creature holding him reached down with its gray hand and pulled his hair until once again he was facing Becca.

Not only did they seem to enjoy killing, but it seemed they enjoyed making him watch. He cried out. When the two creatures finished dividing up Becca, they began to eat. Tristan struggled, but the creature's strength was too much for him. He clenched his eyes closed to block out the horror in front of him, but the creature seemed to know. It dug a dull nail into the back of his neck every time he closed his eyes, only letting the pressure off when he opened them again.

Closed or opened, he was being tortured. He kept them closed as long as he could take the nail digging him, never in the exact same space, then opened them until the pain from the nail was replaced with the evisceration of his date. It seemed to go on forever. He couldn't take any more. He tried to move again, but the third creature that held him did so diligently.

Go on. Get a bite. Tristan called out to his captor. It was the only thing he could do, mocking his torturers. He had no way to track time, but at least 15 minutes passed as he watched his date disappear piece by piece down the gullets of these hellish creatures. He couldn't take any more and closed his eyes to escape, but his ears picked up on the wet snapping of teeth through flesh and bone.

It reminded him of tearing the wings off of a chicken for dinner, and it made him want to throw up. The creature holding him down pushed him all the way to the ground. He opened his eyes and looked at what was left of Becca. At that point, he did throw up, but it had nowhere to go. Being forced down to the ground, he breathed in his own vomit and thought he was going to drown.

The creature yanked him back up to his knees as the other two approached. He was pulled all the way to his feet, and with the last act of defiance, he kicked the groin of the creature right in front of him. It stepped back from the impact, then reached out with its gray skinned hand and grabbed his chest, tearing cloth and flesh away from his body.

He screamed. The pain was intense. Just fucking kill me already, he yelled out, just wanting it done. He couldn't take any more. Do it, you cocksucker. The monsters didn't heed him. One of them grabbed his hand and held it out. The first creature that had been holding him the whole time switched places with the one that tore a piece out of his chest.

It looked him in the eye with an evil intelligence behind its gaze as it slowly and deliberately raised his hand to its mouth and bit off his thumb. He screamed out into the night. He held on to a slim hope that Josh or Emily might hear him in the quiet country night. They had just had a newborn, so maybe they would be awake feeding it, he thought.

The creature bit off his middle finger and smiled, Tristan's blood and flesh still sitting in its gaping maw. Its body shook with small convulsions with a grunting sound. A shiver shot up Tristan's back as he realized it was laughing at his misery.