I didn't vomit, or shit myself if that's what you're thinking. No, she told me about the hike (one day hike, half the time to get there, half the time back, with a couple hours for "fun" when we got where we were going), we kissed again (nothing like the time before) and we parted ways.

The next week was a blur, I bought all the hiking gear I thought I would need. I did some research, then bought some more. I did more research and realized that now I had too much stuff and really needed to calm down, yet I couldn't stop thinking about the hike, about Julia, about the kiss.

The night before the hike I had assembled my gear, including some joints that Julia had asked me to bring, laid out my clothes and done everything I could think of to be prepared. When I realized I had nothing else I could do, I decided to look up the trail we were hiking the next day, see if I could find a video of the hike or something like that.

Instead I found missing person reports going back decades and crackpot theory videos about "something" being in the woods. I shut my laptop with disgust, every forest had people going missing in them, why did people have to twist that into some hidden evil? Of course there was nothing in those woods, those people were just stupid, they got lost or fell or something, obviously.

I was in bed, almost asleep before I actually acknowledged what I had thought. Where had that come from? Videos like that had always interested me, I never really believed the theories in them of course, but they were fun. I was about to watch one of them on my phone, when sleep took me, the last thing I remember was thinking about Julia and that amazing kiss.

The next morning I parked my car on the lot next to Julia's. The night before long forgotten as I looked at her, casually dressed in jeans and a flannel, her hiking boots worn but clearly loved, her red hair seeming to crackle with energy in the early morning sun. For a moment I was reminded of her eyes after the kiss, I think for just a moment some of the pieces to this puzzle had started to fall into place for me.

The puzzle, any hint of a puzzle even, was forgotten as she kissed me again. This one held no special magic, no more than a tongue and her hand traveling to a suggestive place, it worked all the same. If she had asked me to climb Everest, right then and there, I would have, if only to get what her lips and hand had suggested.

Luckily she asked no such price, just that we climb the small mountain (or was it a hill?) that laid before us. I won't bore you with the hike. We walked, hand in hand sometimes, we talked and we navigated this well traveled trail. I was even starting to have fun, a part of me was thinking about following Julia in the woods for the rest of my life, of how happy that would make me.

Eventually we left the main path, turning off when Julia saw a particular rock by a wispy birch. If I hadn't been so blind to everything but Julia, I may have paused to question in that moment. Leaving the path was rarely a good idea and if your do, you don't want to go far, just enough to do your business and get back out there.

You'll understand that logic had left me a long time ago by this point. I wish I could say that I was thinking with my dick, that I was just a dumb horny guy that let himself get led on by a pretty lady, to disastrous results. The truth is much worse though, much much worse, once we left the path we walked miles, it must have been miles because when we stopped it was late at night and the moon was high but I had no memory of walking there, to me no time had passed.

Yet I could not deny that my feet hurt, the sun had long set and I had a few new cuts and bruises on my face and hands. I could taste blood, from a cut lip I assume and my pants felt wet, like I'd wet myself, or walked in water up to my waist a while ago.

Julia however looked amazing. She had taken off her hiking clothes, though I never saw her do it and was standing naked in the moonlight. Behind her, seeming to glow in the moonlight, or perhaps of it's own hidden light, was a pool of water, perfectly still save for the small ripples created by a near silent waterfall.

The entire scene didn't look like real life, it was too perfect, too beautiful. It was like seeing a sex scene in an art film, one of the ones that people talk about for years to come. It was beautiful, she was beautiful but in a way that nothing in nature could ever really achieve.

I didn't see this then, at the time I felt as though I was living in a dream and in a way I was. I lost time again, just a few minutes, when I was aware again I was naked and waist deep in the pool. The water was warm, just slightly warmer than my skin, the warmth of flesh blood as it splashes on your skin.

Julia was in the pool with me, holding my hands and looking deep into my eyes. She smiled at me, it was a sad smile and perhaps the most real one she had given me yet.

"You know, I really do like you" she said, her voice soft. She dropped one of my hands and reaching up, stroked my cheek. "You're a bit of an ass, sure, but I do like you. I think we really could've had something. You're just unlucky, if I'd met you a week later, or if you had said you hated hiking even, we wouldn't be here."

I didn't understand what she was saying, it almost sounded like she was breaking up with me but that couldn't be true, could it? Before I could speak, to plead my case to her, she pressed her finger to my lips, shushing me. "No, don't talk, don't make it harder than it has to be."

She started to cry and again I started to speak, only to be interrupted by her hand finding my hair and slamming my face into the water. She was strong, unnaturally strong as she held my face under the water. My feet slipped, flapping uselessly in the water as I tried to escape.

I started to hit at her, as best I could, slapping clawing and grabbing at her pale skin. None of it worked, her skin felt like marble and she was as still as a statue. When the water invaded my mouth I had a moment where I noticed that this water didn't taste like water, but like pure iron, like condensed blood. It was the last thing I noticed before I died.

Or I think I'm dead. I'm not really sure. I'm writing this down, in a book, somewhere. I don't think I'm where I was before, in like a… metaphysical sense. I'm in the pool now, at the bottom of it, or under it somehow. Maybe I am the pool, but then how can I write?

None of that matters really, Julia comes by every once and a while. She bathes in the pool in the moonlight, when she does I feel myself growing weaker, though I can't explain how. I don't know if I have much longer.

I wonder if the last guy watched me die, or if he was gone before I got here. I guess only time will tell.