(red)

The forest is full of tall, spiny trees, their branches skeleton fingers clambering upwards towards the sky, and they tear at his clothing as his feet pad over corroded autumn leaves.

Someone screams behind him.

He's panting, his skin covered in angry scratches that run all along his arms, spidery lines drawn in red ink. His own blood wells up through his pores, his sweaty fingers tighten their grip around the hilt of his sword. The hat disappeared sometime long ago and he wonders if it's snagged on a bramble bush somewhere, waving like a discarded paper bag; he wonders if she can smell his fear woven into the fabric.

To his left, he sees a quick, indecipherable flash, a fleeting, glancing movement that leaves him even more rattled than before. His knuckles are stretched white, his nails have sunken into the scallopped grip of the handle, he is so tired, so damn tired.

Shamefully, he lets himself cry.

Run, boy, run, his father repeats in his mind as he dashes over fallen logs, whips through the opague gloom with adrenaline speed, feels the friction in his stomach shrink to an acute little dot of nausea. He wants to stop and vomit but he has no time, he has to keep running.

(rule #1 of survival: never stop running away)

And goddamnit, he can still hear the screams echoing, residual soundwaves bouncing around in his ears, and he can't make it stop.

Run, boy, run, and don't you ever stop running until you've made it out, father whispers again. Run, Finn.

His mother used to say something before he went to bed - "Don't let the bedbugs bite, dear" - before turning out the lights and giving him a quick goodnight smooch on the cheek as she left. He would lie under the covers, squirming in his pajamas, and wonder how to keep the bedbugs from biting. He wasn't even sure if they had bedbugs; mom always kept the house so clean.

To ease his mind, he counts. He counts sheep, he counts the lines in the bark of a twisted elm, he counts the number of steps he's taken and he counts the days.

One, two, three, four, seven, ten, twenty, forty-one, seventy-eight, ni-

He's lost his place.

Don't you dare stop, says dad.

Do I even have a choice? he thinks, bitterly.

Something screams behind him.

He stops at the edge of a thick cluster of elms, their branches twisted into spiderweb formations, their roots sunken so deeply into the ground that they bulge up in certain locations, turning the terrain into a mass of entwined, bulging veins; he treads carefully, because one small misstep and he'll break an ankle or a leg and then, as BMO was fond of saying, "Game over, Finn."

He thinks it doesn't matter so much now.

There's a whoosh of air, a slithering sound, and damp footfalls. A familiar laugh.

"Jake?" he whimpers.

He is met only with empty space and a bloody strip of fabric draped over a rock.

There's a message on it, drawn in blood. His eyes roam over the letters.

It says, I'm coming for you.

One-hundred days, 2400 hours, 144000 minutes.

There. He's finished counting.

Run, little boy, run as fast as you can, the sky seems to say, peering down at him, a vast stretch of grey ocean that cries acid rain. You better be quick, you better run swift, 'cause I'm the big, bad wolf and I'll eat you up in a lick.

Run, Finn.

The sword sweeps around in a 90-degree arc and collides with an invisible wall. He goes stumbling back, his grip slackening, and just as suddenly as his fingers loosen from that scarlet blade, it is snatched out of his hands and into the pale arms of a lich.

Her hair trails down to her back, clotted with twigs and stones and bird's bones, woven in wreaths around her scalp. A pallid pink tongue flops from a fanged mouth and runs over obscenely plump red lips, grey flesh redolent with the smell of decay clings tightly to slender bones. Her eyeballs are made of fire and death.

"Hello, Finn," the were-woman croons. "Did you miss me?"

He has only a moment to react, to scream, before her mouth turns into a wolf's gaping maw and she rams into him, feathered and clawed and stinking of damnation. He tries to shout but his mouth locks and he stares into the Gorgon's gaze of the demoness draped over him like a housecat.

"Finn," she purrs, and that is all he hears before her fangs sink into his neck-

Run.