Leave the Camp

Summary

In a choose-your-own-adventure story, the protagonist leaves a campsite due to a unsettling change in their companion Borris, only to encounter a werewolf on the way to Stoneville and meet a grim end.

Abstract

The narrative titled "Leave the Camp" is part of the "Pick Your Peril: The Hero of Mudtown" series, where readers make choices that affect the story's outcome. In this installment, the protagonist opts to leave the camp and head towards Stoneville after becoming unnerved by Borris's strange behavior. Despite the full moon's light, the protagonist's journey is fraught with paranoia and a heightened sense of danger. The tension escalates when a seemingly ordinary noise turns out to be a pigeon, offering a momentary relief. However, the relief is short-lived as the protagonist is confronted by a pair of glowing green eyes belonging to a massive wolf, revealed to be Borris in werewolf form. The story concludes with the protagonist's tragic demise at the hands, or rather jaws, of the cursed creature.

Opinions

The protagonist's decision to leave the camp is driven by a lack of trust in Borris's altered demeanor.
The author uses environmental descriptions to build suspense and mirror the protagonist's growing anxiety.
The use of a werewolf, a classic horror trope, adds a supernatural element to the story, enhancing the sense of peril.
The narrative employs a false sense of security with the pigeon scare before delivering the fatal encounter with the werewolf.
The story's abrupt end with the protagonist's death underscores the high stakes and irreversible consequences of the choices made in the adventure.

Pick Your Peril: The Hero of Mudtown

(This is part of a series of choose-your-own-adventure articles. If you want to start from the beginning, click here.)

All images generated using Midjourney.

Borris’s change in demeanor has been unsettling, to say the least.

You can’t imagine getting much sleep with this strange man stumbling around in the forest. Trying your luck at the tavern might be the best choice, better than taking your chances trusting Borris.

You rouse yourself and walk out of the camp. It’s only a short distance to Stoneville, but you’re in unfamiliar territory and still trying to shake off the last vestiges of your slumber. Although the full moon provides plenty of light to navigate the road, the shadows of the forest are still dark and deep.

You awaken fully when you think you hear a rustling in the bushes trailing behind you, but it’s impossible to see if anything is stalking you when you start habitually glancing over your shoulder.

Subconsciously, you quicken your pace. It seems your body is trying to get to the town before your nerves get the better of you.

A bush suddenly erupts as you pass by it, causing your heart to skip a beat. You laugh nervously as you watch a startled pigeon continue flapping away from the shrub and into the night. Paranoia has a way of sneaking up on you, surely there’s nothing to worry about this close to civilization.

The trail continues a little while longer before it reaches the town proper, but it’s impossible not to smile when the warm lights of the tavern come into view.

Something in the shadows paralyzes you mid-step.

Two glowing green eyes. The eyes of a massive wolf lurking in the bushes. You try to move when the beast growls and comes forward, but fear has frozen you in place. It’s only as the monstrosity before you gets closer that you realize it is no ordinary wolf.

A man-sized wolf, wearing Borris’s clothes.

As it rears up and howls at the moon, your petrified trance is finally broken and you stumble around and scramble back to the forest. You try to run, pointlessly, but the werewolf is on you in an instant. You barely have time to scream before the cursed creature makes a meal of your guts.

YOU ARE DEAD