He was hiking through a wooded area, a few miles from town. It looked scenic driving by, and he finally decided to explore it a little. The road dipped down in one area, and a partial bridge had been built to go across the edge of a low spot, a pond that came up to the road. The trees looked more open further in, and he decided that he needed to check it out.

Parking nearby, he had hiked over, wearing his sandals and scrappy jeans, he was ready to get wet feet. Feeling the cool water over his feet, bliss crossed over his face as he delved in deeper. He could hear the traffic, the road was to the west. After the first pond, there was a somewhat meadow in the trees, and more low spots here and there, not as deep as the initial, but crystal clear and cool. He splashed around. It was incredible. He hiked through a small section of trees and found an area a little bit swampier than the rest, more undergrowth sticking out of the water, more branches, but still clear. He dipped in, being a little bit more careful where he put his feet. He steadied himself on nearby 

Grabbed from behind. His blood ran cold as he was suddenly spun around, nearly twisting his ankle in the undergrowth. A slender, naked women stood in front of him, her arms wrapped over his shoulders and around his neck. His mouth dropped open, he didn’t know what to

Pain. Sudden, searing pain in his shoulders and neck, as the woman looked into his eyes, a smile on her face. He began to scream, scream as loudly as he could, and wrenched More pain. He couldn’t pull himself away, his shoulders were in incredible pain, his neck. He strained to look down and saw thin tendrils of branches extending from the woman’s body, bent and angled, and pierce into his belly, his sides. He screamed more, when his voice cut out. He could feel things inside his throat, in his neck. The pain was excruciating. His legs began to feel incredible pain, piercing, stabbing into him. The front of him ran red with rivulets of blood, and his eyes rolled up into his head, his veins strained beneath his skin. Veins and branches.

The woman, normal from behind, was a sea of tendrils emerging from in front of her, piercing the man in a hundred places, crawling inside of him, through his body, around his bones. He was immobile, twitching. She stood there for a minute, enveloping the inside of his body, her eyes never leaving him, looking up and down, at his face, his chest, watching the tendrils move beneath his skin.

She stood there, looked behind her, the tendrils from the sides of her face partially extending, partially tearing from the man’s own face, and looked back at him. She fell forwards onto him, into the water. A loud splash, and some turbulence on the surface of the water. The waves slowly subsided, and the water was still again.

The Hag 4, by KatieLynne