“I should’ve just stayed at work,” I mutter to myself.

This hope would normally warrant sirens speeding towards my last known location. Voicing it could only possibly be a passcode, triggering notifications sprayed across a hundred mile radius that I’ve been kidnapped.

I’d almost prefer the nice warm trunk of a stranger’s vehicle to what lies ahead now.

The annual encroachment of the mist on the horizon seems to roil even more wildly under my wary assessment like a mating dance. I instinctively wave it off, as if the slight breeze from the gesture can dissipate its interest.

I don’t have a boyfriend or anything, but is very much not my type. Too amorphous for me.

My non-slip shoes test the limits of their namesake as I shift indecisively against the slick stone path underfoot. I knew I should’ve just stayed back at the diner, but it was as dead in there as the victims of last years fog.

Us locals find it difficult to be empathetic when it’s the tourists flocking toward their own demise. They hear of the strange phenomenon and decide to challenge it, most making the secondary mistake of not journeying out until the day it happens.

You’d be surprised how many cliffs are hidden within the forests that they then navigate blind. I bet they sure are.

The years I’ve spent in this sleepy town have taught me to revere the strange emergence of the cloud. The cloud that… Is it thickening right now?

Time to go. My legs are shakier than I’d like as they carry me a careful step forward. The air heavy with precipitation and anticipation, I try another step ahead. There! That wasn’t so –

A shrill screech cuts through the air, reverberating off the cliff side it undoubtedly came from until it cuts off with a thud, not unlike that of a tree falling. If that’s what they sound like when they do, I’m really glad that no one is normally around.

I begin to feel faint until I realize I’m holding my breath. Yes, I respect the creepy cloud, but it doesn’t mean I don’t fear it. It’s not so much its presence as it is the unknown that it represents.

I mean, for years I’ve remained living in a town with a malevolent mist, working tirelessly at a diner that gets an annual influx of customers with death wishes.

Somehow, the very broken person that I am finds that better than the idea of venturing out. What if the next town has evil trees or something?

I keep telling myself that I will leave before next year’s mist. Maybe getting caught up in it now is finally I sign I can’t ignore. I’ll be so pissed if I die right now.

With a deep inhale of thick humid air, I hike up my bag on my shoulder and power onward toward the fog with a purpose.

My feet slip consistently on the stone path like some sort of drunken samba. My uniform becomes increasingly soaked through, proving that my washing machine sucks as the smell of fast food emanating from my stained uniform becomes stronger.

The thick woods that had previously framed my back disappear entirely and leave me in full view of the open field the fog has begun to claim. I can almost see my home beckoning me beyond it. The warm tea and lit fireplace that I’ll burn these stupid smelly clothes in are a promise I hope to keep.

My vision begins to lessen in a way I pretend not to notice. It would almost be easier if it were darkness encroaching, that’s something familiar.

This whiteness descending sends my primal sensing firing at the wrongness. I breathe solely through my nose as though it’ll filter any cooties the anamoly contains.

There’s nothing but infinite whiteness although I know I’ve just passed the church on my right. I continue until the air thickens further, and I decide I’ve entered the safety of the forest.

Movement flashes on my left. I trip over my feet and slam my eyes shut. Yup. Definitely better in the darkness. I’d just rather not know.

Even bracing for whatever awaits doesn’t prepare me for a hand to clasp my bicep, but living here this long has taught me not to scream.

I swallow down the instinct still demanding I do and reluctantly peel one eye open.

There are no openly spoken rumors as to what the mist contains, as that would apparently be sacrilege. But I’ve secretly decided that it turns the tourists into fumbling mutant creatures and that’s why their bodies end up disfigured at the bottom of cliffs beyond recognition.

This man must be in the very early stages, because he’s still very pretty. The flannel sleeve of the hand that has me in a desperate grasp is as soaked as my clothes are. His wild blue eyes don’t seem to notice my makeup I can feel melting down my face that I hadn’t thought to care about until now.

“What are you doing out here?” He asks with a tightening of his grip that I don’t appreciate. My expression must say as much as he jerks back and raises both hands to show he meant no harm.

I don’t normally converse with strangers off the clock, but I also don’t normally meander through murderous mists. It’s a day for new things, I guess.

But I’m not going to point him in the direction of my home by informing him that’s where I’m going. “What are _you_ doing out here?” I shoot back maturely.

He shrugs and drops his large arms to loll at his sides. “I don’t know,” he admits uneasily as his eyes scan the nothingness around us. “Last thing I remember was checking out of the motel, then I woke up in the woods.”

I almost trip over my own feet at that, stumbling back. “Woke up in the woods?” I repeat in as much confusion as he’s expressing.

Nodding slowly, sadly. “I heard my friend scream and…” he trails off, staring vacantly into the white.

Now I’m scanning the emptiness of our surroundings just as he was. I hate the way my voice shakes as I ask, “Why did you come to town?”

He clears his throat and toes at the ground hard enough to reveal grass there. White rushes in to replace it once more.

“My buddies and I were apparently called here by the mayor to do a construction job,” he says tightly, “but they never contacted us after we arrived beyond giving us a place to stay.”

I scan the anxiously angry man. His short, soaked through hair is dark and curled, front pieces falling onto his brow as he looks down and tries to make the grass reveal itself again with short kicks. As if he knows neither of us have any control over our current situation but even seeing once blade would give him hope right now.

I’m losing my mind in an entirely different way. The mayor knows better than to invite anyone here this time of year. Unless… unless it was on purpose.

“Y - you’re not here for the mist?” I rasp through an ironically dry throat. I really don’t like just standing here in it and I dislike this conversation even more.

Those blue eyes pierce me to the spot with incredulity.

“Why would I come here for this?” He snarls with arms spread wide to gesture at our surroundings, as if I hadn’t noticed what looks like Heaven but feels like Hell. His hands raise once more in apology for his valid outburst.

I exhale heavily and pretend the precipitation beading my skin is a balm of calm. No one would blame me for curling up in a ball and rocking back and forth until this passes, but if what he says is true, I’m literally in the thick of it with an apparently summoned sacrifice.

I really need to move.

“Well, it’s your lucky day,” I say, wincing a bit at the look he gives me. I deserved that. “I know these woods well,” I explain, “so, let’s get you to safety until this passes.”

He assesses me then, not unlike the mist did, before tilting his head in encouragement for us to continue. I could do this walk with my eyes closed. In fact, all the locals have learned to, in the event we encounter this very situation. It was only an abstract concept then.

I gotta say, not a fan of the real deal.

I motion for him to walk behind me and copy my steps, maneuvering over fallen logs seemingly painted visually out of existence as I decide where to take this stranger. Maybe one of the few cabins before my cottage that I could navigate him to sit in the rocking chairs of.

The silence between us seems to expand along with the lack of dimensional sight. “Where you from?” I ask dumbly.

He woke up in the woods to the sound of his friend’s last scream, and here I am making small talk.

I don’t receive an answer for long enough that I consider him lost to the mists until the man clears his throat and answers, “‘Bout an hour from here.”

I nod as if that means anything to me.

“Less foggy there, I bet,” I say inanely, but smile a bit when I almost get a chuckle out of him.

“What -,” he clears his throat again, “what is this? Where is everyone?”

I stop with my leg poised to hurdle another fallen tree and instead turn back to him with a frown. “It’s the annual mist. You’ve never heard of it?”

He looks at me like I’m the crazy one. “No way, and this is no mist.”

I look around us and shrug. I’m no meteorologist, but I don’t think he’s wrong. Does us no good to stay in it any longer though. “C’mon,” I encourage.

We round the bend I was looking, well, _feeling_ for. I confirm it with a grip on the near invisible trees. Like a blessing from the mists, they dissipate slightly to reveal a clearing ahead.

“Oh, thank god,” the man says as we both pick up our pace in that direction, “I was going to go crazy if we were in there any longer.”

I can’t help but laugh a little in exhilaration, which he joins. I can’t believe I was so afraid of the unknown when it only showed me the way to a gratitude I couldn’t even fathom.

The man speaks up once more, riding the same high as I am at the sight of the muted greens ahead signaling freedom. “I’m going to go back to school,” he declares to the mists and me, “I’m going to call my ex and tell her I was an idiot.”

He turns to me as I laugh, smile widening as if he just recalled I was here and is glad to have someone as witness to his resolutions.

I barely keep up with the speed he’s covering the distance. We’ve almost reached the cusp when he looks back at me with a boyish gleam, and dares, “Race ya!”

I laugh freely once again as he takes the lead barreling out of the mists, but let the performance die off as his scream begins. I don’t judge him for that. He never learned not to.

Slowly, reverently, I approach the edge of the mist, looking down from the false image to see the true treacherous cliff.

My sigh at the sight of its newest victim below makes the whiteness twist and twirl in a smoke like caress. The sacrificial payment for safe passage to my home is denoted by cleared path that appears to my right.

I can’t believe I was lucky enough to encounter someone the mayor summoned in the mists.

I usually have to lure them from work.