It all started as one of Nico’s ideas.
The five of them hadn’t seen each other in months. Nico insisted on a camping trip in the forest: tents, a campfire, alcohol, and zero signal. Hugo organized the logistics. Lara accepted because she needed to disconnect. ElÃas went because he always did. Raúl joined at the last minute.
No one seriously checked the weather.
On Friday the rain turned torrential. On Saturday the river overflowed and the only road was underwater. No signal. No way out.
They took refuge in an old forest ranger’s cabin.
Raúl, stubborn as always, decided to go out looking for help that same night.
He put on the raincoat, grabbed a flashlight, and disappeared among the trees.
He never came back.
The other four stayed inside, listening to the rain hammering the roof without stopping.
Perspective 1 – Hugo
I just tried to keep order.
When Raúl left, someone had to take charge. The food was limited, the water kept rising, and Nico wouldn’t stop making shitty jokes that only made everyone more nervous. Lara argued about everything. ElÃas just watched from the corner as if he already knew something the rest of us didn’t.
By the third day I couldn’t take it anymore.
I raised my voice at Nico. I told him that if he didn’t shut up he was going to have problems. It was stupid. I know. But someone had to set limits.
I’m not exactly sure what happened next.
I only remember the sudden cold, the pain in my chest, and the feeling that the floor was disappearing under my feet. When I regained clear consciousness, my voice was different. My body was different. And the three of them were looking at me as if I were the problem.
I tried to keep giving orders. I tried to keep them from panicking. But no one listened to me the same way anymore.
From that moment everything spiraled out of control.
Lara was next. Then ElÃas. Nico… Nico laughed until the end.
And that night… that night no one had the strength to stop what happened.
I just wanted all of us to get out of there alive.
I didn’t ask to be turned into this.
Perspective 2 – Nico
Fuck, what a random trip.
Seriously. You plan a camping trip to disconnect and end up in a cabin with the Apocalypse outside and your friends transforming one after another. If I tell this no one is going to believe me.
At first I was just trying to lighten the mood. Jokes, like always. Hugo took it personally, the way he takes everything personally. He got aggressive, yelled at me… and boom. From one moment to the next he wasn’t Hugo anymore. He was… something else. A female version of Hugo who still tried to give orders with tits.
I laughed. Not because it was exactly funny, but because the brain sometimes protects itself that way.
Then it was Lara’s turn. She was intense. She looked at me like I was to blame for something. I told her to relax. She didn’t relax. And she changed too.
ElÃas was the quietest of all. Until the end. When it happened to him he barely said anything. He just looked at me in a weird way, like he had understood something in the last second.
Me… I was the last one.
I don’t know if it happened to me just because or because the forest had a sense of humor.
I only know that when I looked down and saw the new body, the only thing that came to mind was to laugh again.
And that night…
look, when you’ve gone three days without sleeping well, isolated, soaked, and suddenly everyone is in the same boat, things happen.
Looks were exchanged. Hands were exchanged. And we all ended up on the floor of the cabin while outside it kept raining as if the world were ending.
It was confusing.
It was intense.
It was, honestly, the most fucking surreal thing that has ever happened to me.
But hey… at least we weren’t bored anymore.
Perspective 3 – Lara
Someone was directing everything from the beginning.
It wasn’t “the rain.” It wasn’t “the stress.” It wasn’t “an accident.”
Nico started changing from the second day. His jokes were no longer jokes. They had an edge. They had intention. Every comment of his pushed Hugo a little closer to the edge. Every look of mine he returned with a smile that didn’t entirely belong to him.
When Hugo transformed, Nico wasn’t surprised enough.
When it was my turn, I already knew. I tried to confront him. I told him openly that there was something wrong with him, that he wasn’t acting alone. He laughed. And the next second I was also on the floor, with a body that wasn’t mine and a rage that had nowhere to go.
ElÃas was the only one who seemed to understand it at the same level as me. We looked at each other for a second before it happened to him too. In that second there was a silent agreement: Nico was not alone inside his head.
Then he changed too.
And that night… that night the forest won.
It wasn’t just desire. It was as if something external was pushing. As if the humidity itself entered under the skin and shut down the part that was still resisting. We all ended up tangled, moaning, holding onto each other as if contact could save us from what had already happened to us.
I know what I saw.
I know who started pulling the strings.
Even if he never admits it.
Perspective 4 – ElÃas
I knew it from the second day.
Nico spoke the same… but he didn’t blink the same. Sometimes he would stare at the rain for too long, as if he were listening to something the rest of us couldn’t hear. One night I saw him whispering against the window when he thought no one was watching.
It wasn’t Nico.
Or it wasn’t only Nico.
When Hugo fell, I understood the mechanics. The forest needed tension. It needed someone to lose control in order to open the door. Nico (or whatever was speaking through him) knew exactly which buttons to push.
I tried to warn Lara. I told her, in a low voice, while the others were arguing:
“It’s not him. There’s something else.”
I didn’t make it in time.
When my turn came I had already accepted that I wasn’t going to leave that cabin as the same person. The pain of the change was different from the others’. Slower. More conscious. The spirit wanted me to understand.
And I understood.
Nico was the last because the forest needed a complete circle. Four new bodies. Four broken wills. When he changed too, the possession was completed… and then it withdrew, satisfied.
What came after was inevitable.
The desire wasn’t only ours. It was the forest’s. It filtered into the breathing, into the contact of skin, into the way that suddenly none of us could stop touching the others. We ended up on the floor, wet from the rain coming in through the cracks, fucking each other as if our lives depended on it.
I looked at Nico (at the woman who was now Nico) while everything was happening.
His eyes, for a second, became only his again.
And in that second I knew that he had also been afraid.
Afterward the spirit left.
The rain, little by little, began to calm down.
But none of the four ever went back to being who they had been when they entered that cabin.
And Raúl…
Raúl never returned.
The End.
Comments
Post a Comment