The Shortcut

“Scissors!” Max said to himself, “I need scissors!” Max was rushing to get to his bus stop in order to finish the art project he had waited last minute to complete. He grabbed the long, red office scissors from the kitchen drawer and stuffed them into his pocket.
As he walked out of his pale yellow colored house, he looked at his clock: 5 AM. He felt a cool breeze and noticed that it was unusually dark this morning. There was a full moon in the sky and fog along the sidewalk creating a murky atmosphere. He didn’t care. All Max wanted to do was get to the bus stop the quickest way possible.
He jumped down his front staircase and started running towards the bus stop. He ran and ran until he finally lost his breath. He stopped for a split second and began to breathe heavily. The cool breeze that Max felt when he walked out his house turned into a gust of wind that blew towards the left of him. He turned towards it and saw his bus stop at the other end of a narrow path. ‘That’s weird.’ He thought,’I've never seen this road before.‘
The path had a broken street light that provided its only source of light in the gloomy darkness. The wind seemed to be pushing him into this narrow path. All Max cared about was finishing this art project, so he ignored his instincts and stepped towards this mysterious shortcut.

The path was dark and dreary. The trees were barren. Their leaves scattered around the floor making crackling noises with each step he took. There was something really haunting about this road.

He began walking faster and faster until he was practically running. Then he saw something. It was a black figure. He stood there paralyzed in fear as the black figure approached him. As it got closer and closer he could make sense of what it looked like. It was hunched over as if it walked on four legs. Max tried to step back but with every move he made the black figure seemed to move faster.

Max turned around and began to run as fast as he could. He could see his pale yellow house but it seemed to move further and further away the faster he tried to run. There was no use. He had to stop to catch his breath. He then turned around and saw nothing there. Max felt relieved and stupid that he would let his imagination get the best of him. He shook it off and headed back the bus stop.

As he got closer to the bus stop, the wind got stronger and stronger. There was one powerful gust that knocked him onto the ground. He stood up and dusted himself off but something was wrong. He was afraid to look back up. He could hear something breathing right in front of him. Max finally looked up and could not believe what he saw.

There it stood. The black figure. It seemed to stand up tall now, but it was clear that this thing was far from human. Its teeth were snow white and jagged. Its claws were like a lion’s. Its face was long and it was covered with dark, black hair from head to toe. Whatever this thing was, it looked angry; or even worse, hungry.
“What are you?” Max asked barely catching his breath. There was no response, only a growl. Max immediately ran in the opposite direction yelling for help. He looked behind him and saw the creature catching up to him. He kept on running but the end of the road appeared to get further and further again.

The creature caught up to Max, grabbed him by his backpack and pulled him to the ground. Max lay there terrified as the creature circled around him howling. Max started to think of ways he could escape. Then he remembered of the scissors he had in his pocket. When the creature looked away, Max grabbed the scissors, ran up to the creature, and stabbed it in the back of its head. Whimpering and twitching, the creature fell to the ground. Max grabbed his things and ran towards the bus stop. Max could not believe what he had done. He just killed a living creature. Max looked at his hands and saw blood. Guilt rushed through his body. He stopped and looked up. The end of the road was near, he was in touching distance of the bus stop. He turned around and saw the creature laying on the floor, whimpering. Max started walking back towards the creature to see if there was anything he could do to help. When all at once, a pack of creatures jumped out from behind the trees. He was surrounded. They all circled around Max as the first creature did. Then suddenly, they attacked.