Snowdrops gently paint the land white like an artist slowly dancing over the canvas with their brush.

 

Sky covered with white clouds allows only a handful of sun rays to pass through their fluffy formation, thus limiting the light hitting the surface, making the day a little darker.

 

Yet the seemingly never-ending forest made out of the dense formation of trees that resembles pine doesn't seem to care, and all animals have more important things to do than worrying about getting less vitamin D, like finding food to survive the upcoming winter.

 

Of course, while the food is not plenty, there are still enough grass and wild fruits for the herbivores and plenty of grass eaters for the carnivores, but it won't stay like that.

 

On first look, everything looks normal, and nothing bats an eye, but amongst the lush greens and snow-covered grounds is an anomaly. A man who almost reached his forties lies on the ground. His consciousness is lost, yet he is alive. Snow slowly piles above the man while strings of fate and fortune keep any wild animal away from this easy prey.

 

 

***

 

 

Cold, I feel a cold I haven't felt for a long time. But when was the last time? Perhaps close to the end of the war, where I got assigned to a squad of mountain commandos. No, the mountain wind was wild. When it cuts your skin, this one is much tamer.

 

 

I never liked fighting in blistering cold and frozen ground, and what is this heavy thing over me, and this unbearable headache. If I had a knife in my hand, I would cut my head to end it. Even my worst hangover was much more bearable than this.

 

 

I waited a little more to gain some strength and opened my eyes. A sky covered in clouds and some snow. Seems not too far from home, but those trees, where I am?

 

 

"Wait!" I shouted and jumped up. The pile of snow over me scattered around. I was dead! Or I should have. I didn't survive a bomb blast from a point-blank, or did I? I am sure I didn't drink anything weird lately.

 

 

With shock, I began checking my body. I am sure that the explosion killed me and turned me into a paste, but let alone losing a limb, my clothes were unscratched.

 

 

"I am alive, but how," I asked myself aloud while still checking myself. "I saw that fuckers, smile, and the moment before the world went dark... And those voices coming from the dark?" I have countless questions in my head. For fucks sake! What is even happening right now?

 

 

"Agh!" With a sudden bolt of pain, I lost control of my body and hit the ground. I suppose I am not that unscratched after all. But this amount of pain is tolerable. I dealt with worse.

 

 

"One, two, three." I pushed myself from the ground and got up, and after some stumbling, I managed to grab a tree nearby as support and prevented myself from falling again. I offer my gratitude to nature for this one. Yet, things are not good. My pulse rate is wild while my eyes are constantly blurring and turning back to normal, not to mention the disgusting sour taste in my mouth.

Suddenly, I jumped from my place with a bird screeched loud as a ship horn. It couldn't be from any bird I know, and it isn't. 

 

 

I looked up and saw the massive beast flying high in the sky. Something that resembles a vulture but on a size of a military transport helicopter. Did someone drug me? No, this is no time to think about that. I must get out of the sight of that thing. 

The unnaturally large beast caused me to ignore the pain and put my body in run-or-die mode. There is so much adrenaline running through my veins that even if I lose a limb, I probably won't feel it until I sit down.

 

 

Trees are similar at first look, but they are much larger and have darker colored bark, and while the ground looks identical at first glance, I don't remember seeing wild plants shaped like the ones here.

 

 

I gave my back to a tree trunk and sat down. Everything is wrong and fake, I want to scream and run away, but I cannot. My body feels heavier and heavier, and the cold is not helping a bit. If I get some food and warmth, I might get well with a rest, but those are luxuries I don't have access to.

 

 

I feel like my eyeballs are shaking, almost as if they are trying to jump out of their hole, and my limbs are trembling in a way I never see them doing. "I should have died. I died!" I screamed. "Explosion, it killed me, that's it. I died!" It is like the after-effects of the shock I felt when I first opened my eyes just hit me. I cannot even properly see what is in front of me. I am not stable, neither mentally nor physically. I must go somewhere safe.

 

 

My stamina drained in a couple of steps, I began rapidly breathing, and suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my lungs and started puking. This wicked feeling, I can describe it like this. My body and mind are clashing. One is forcing the other that I am alive while the other is still in the shock of death and doesn't want to accept it. I am hungry and thirsty, my entire body screams in agony, and now I have to deal with the pain of stomach acid my puke carried to my throat. What a day to be alive.

 

***

 

God knows how much time has passed since I opened my eyes, but thankfully I recovered enough to move around without falling, yet my head is still aching, and blurrings, even though decreased, still happen. But I am alive, maybe inside a monster-infested alien forest, but alive. Fair enough, I can handle this much.

 

 

Suddenly advice told by my grandfather shined in my mind. "Overcome the situation you are in first, then you can think about the next step."

 

 

Following the advice, I began inspecting my surroundings. I cannot afford to miss the smallest detail that might help me. I must know everything I might use, from the smallest pebble in the ground to the mighties tree in this forest. All things have some value if you find usage for them.

 

 

But the most important things are willpower and experience, which I have. I smirked and shouted. "So there are monsters in the sky now! Unless they can see my location from kilometers away in the middle of the night and kill me with a single move of their wrist, they are not dangerous as war machines of humankind!"

 

 

After my short motivational speech, I finished inspecting the surrounding area. "Good, we have nothing useful. I think I saw landmarks of a cave nearby. Now, as I saw what the forest offered me, let's see what I can offer to myself." I began pulling out everything I got in my pockets. A Swiss army knife, gifted by a now-deceased friend, a camper-style lighter with a magnesium stick and a compass, once again a gift, my notepad, a pencil, and my watch. My phone is missing, but I can live with that.

 

 

That's all, enough for me. There is equipment for starting a fire or crafting small items which I can use later.

 

 

My utmost priority is covering my three basic needs: finding shelter, food, and drinkable water. Looking at all the fresh snow around here, I think I can source my water from them, so finding shelter will be my priority.

 

 

Let's see if those landmarks will lead me to a cave.

 

***

 

After countless steps inside this seemingly never-ending forest with hunger and exhaustion, I finally stopped and decided to rest, so I sat next to a tree.

 

 

The cave I saw wasn't a cave, just some trees and piles of rock looking like one from far, how funny nature but the good thing, I saw something like a hill from far and decided to try my chance again and in the middle of the way, my body decided to accept I am not dead. That also meant I started to feel exhausted and hungry. But in the end, my efforts weren't for nothing.

 

 

A few meters in front of me, there is a cave. It is deep. I cannot fully see its inside, but it looks dry, and there seem to be no animals habituating nearby, which is good. Getting mauled by a bear is not on my list.

 

 

But I picked up my Swiss knife for the worst. For example, if there is a hibernating bear still sleeping inside, not like this small toy will help me anyway, but better than nothing. If it is a black bear, I might escape using this.

 

 

With each step, my heart beats faster and faster. It had been a long time since I was in a life-threatening situation. It is a weird but familiar feeling that I sinisterly enjoy. Staying at the edge, live or die, is not everyone's preference, but I like it.

 

 

I gave my back to the wall next to the cave's entrance and peeked inside. "Good, nothing there." I began moving deeper into the cave. The Interior is large enough to call it a single-room house, perhaps even a little bigger. I wouldn't care, even if it was ten times smaller than this. It is good enough for me, long as it's dry and away from wild predators' eyes.

 

 

With newfound relaxation, I let my body fall, and before I noticed, I dived into realms of dreams.

 

 

***

 

Stars and galaxies in the sky proudly display their magnificence to the eyes watching them at night. I remember this scenery, one of my favorites, but it doesn't have a good story behind it.

 

 

"Captain." A man shouted. "We must do something. The enemy is advancing!"

 

 

I got up and looked around. If I didn't have my night vision equipment, I wouldn't be able to see anything in this pitch-black environment.

 

 

Still, even with night vision, only certain things are clear, while the rest is, for some reason, blurry, as if they were just placeholders in a memory.

 

 

Suddenly several bullets flew above me, and their whistle followed them right after, then they crashed into the building behind me, scattering concrete everywhere. These weren't directly targeting us. To be more explanative, we are the targets, but I don't think whoever fired those rounds knew our exact location and just tested his luck by firing towards the building, a rooky mistake.

 

 

I shook my head. It is no time to think about other things. "Everyone take cover. They know our locations and doing suppressive fire." I commanded the soldiers around me.

 

 

With my command, soldiers around me began taking cover behind anything bulletproof and large enough.

 

 

Only I was standing, yet not for no reason. I looked at my rifle and closed its safety. "Our enemy doesn't seem to have night vision, and if they had thermal, we all been dead by now. Boys cut the light and spread it to the land. We hunt tonight."

 

 

 

One of the soldiers rushed to the building behind us and closed the generator inside. With the cut of power, the whole fort went dark.

 

***

 

I jumped up from my sleep to the sound of a branch snapping. My view was blurry but cleared the moment I rubbed my eyes. Good, that means my body finished adapting. It is almost night, perhaps one or two hours before complete darkness falls over the sky, but I can see the silhouette walking towards the cave. Something resembles a human, with a tool I cannot completely put my hands on hanging on its hip.

 

 

Good or bad, perhaps it is someone searching for me, I don't know, but safety comes first. I pulled out my Swiss knife, I don't think I can do much if I am against something like a bear or wolf, but I rather have something in my hand than nothing.

 

 

I began approaching the silhouette with a friendly voice. "Friend, I am glad I finally saw another human in this place, I don't know how I came here, but it seems like I found myself in a bad series of events and ended up here. Do you have a phone? It appears that I lost mine."

 

 

But the thing didn't answer. It is still moving but a little faster now.

 

 

"Well, it is a little rude not answering despite hearing someone, but can you stop approaching at least."

 

 

The thing didn't answer but reached to his hip to take out something, and for a second, I saw this thing was under the moonlight and threw myself back and crawled far as I could from the monster. "It has to be a joke. Right? Does it have to be God damn joke? Right!" I shouted. But my reactions are not unnecessary. A skeleton, a moving fucking skeleton with no internal organs or anything. It is standing in front of me and slowly closing the distance.

 

 

Before I managed to shake away the shock, the skeleton finally closed the distance and raised its weapon, a mace. A monster, like the ones from cheap horror movies, is ready to strike me down, but no matter how shocking it is, I can't let fear take control of my body. Occult or supernatural, I don't care. I won't go down without a fight.

 

 

Yet my voice is still cracked and shaky. There is a mix of fear and wrath in it too. "What sort of sick joke is that?" I grabbed the skeleton from its weapon-holding arm and skull and slammed the monster to the closest wall. 

Without internal organs and other biological mass human skeletons don't weigh much, so I lifted the monster into the air and slammed it to the ground with ease. It was ineffective in damaging it but gave me some time to think.

"Ground is too soft to crack the bones, so we are back to walls then." I grabbed the skeleton from the skull, and slammed it towards a wall, then began repeatedly smashing its head towards a sharp edge. And while I was doing that, the skeleton managed to lift its weapon to strike me. How pitiful. "Is that best you got?" I glared at it and forcefully pulled the mace away from its hand.

 

 

"Thank you for this." I pushed the mace into the skeleton's skull and used it as leverage to separate its jaw from its head, then slammed the monster to the ground and began hitting it with its weapon.

 

 

I didn't talk, didn't think, just kept hitting the skeleton's skull until it turned into a pile of dust, then allowed my body to fall to the ground, but this time, I didn't close my eyes and just looked at the dark roof of the cave. "What the hell was that."