There’s a monster in the forest.
One with cloven hooves. It stands on two legs but runs on four. Not-A-Deer, some call it. Others use Wendigo, Skin Walker, Jersey Devil.
It moves silently when it wants to, creeping through the underbrush. Stalking along deer trails. Following hikers. Hunting fluffies. It can be loud when it wants to, antlers crashing through branches, stomping it’s hooves, screaming in an inhuman cry. It scratches at the ground with long claws, leaving deep furrows in the hard soil. They say it’s claws are sharp as knives.
Feral fluffies don’t stay in the forest long. Few dare to tread between the trees to reach any of the abundant berries or plentiful chestnuts. When the particularly dumb or self confident venture in, they rarely come back alive. Those that do scream in their sleep about the green monster, it’s eyes black as night and it’s teeth long and pale. How it chased them, nipping at their heels, herding them down the trail. How they barely escaped with their life.
The others return in pieces.
A chunk of leg here, an ear there. A stringing of guts spread along the grass. The further you go from the highway the worse it gets. A pile of rotting heads, skin falling away from the yellowed bone. A chain of strung through foals hanging from a branch.
Deeper in, where the trees become giants and the overlapping branches leave the world in perpetual twilight, you find more delicate uses of remains. A path marked with vertibrae, a wind chime made of ribs. A pile of teeth far to large to belong to a fluffy. A shredded backpack, contents strewn about.
Few explorers make it further than that, and for good reason.
If one was to follow the deer trail all the way to the end, they would find a dried corpse. It’s hands frozen in curled, clawing positions. It’s shoulders pinned to a tree with large stakes driven through it’s collarbones. A small rudimentary shelter has been built over it, just enough to keep the rain off. It’s eye sockets hollow and empty.
No one has explored further. No creature goes beyond that point. The message is clear.
But, dear Reader, if one was to get a little closer, take a better look than any of the panicked travelers in the past have, one would notice the corpses tattered lab coat. Perhaps make note of the logo on the sun bleached name tag. HASBIO. And, if one was to travel past the sentry pinned to the tree, one would find a structure hidden in the brush. Branches piled stop each other, scraps of wood and metal lashed together. A door made out of a plastic panel is disguised on the side, just large enough for a small person to squeeze through.
If one was bold enough to reach this place, and observent enough to figure out how to get into this secret place, one would find a fairly cozy home. One where the ground is dug out to create enough room for a small person to stand. Makeshift shelves across one wall. A metal bucket full of river water on the floor. And off to the side, the form of a young man asleep on the floor. His skin is tanned and his hair is dark and just barely tinted green. He snores lightly, pulling up the patchwork fluffy skin blanket. His green furred, cloven hooves stick out the other end of the blanket.
For now, the satyr sleeps. Years after his escape from the foul lab that created him, he knows it’s safest to forage during dawn and dusk, when the world is still. When the sun is lower in the sky, he will wrap himself in a shroud of dark fabric, adorn himself with the top of a deers skull - antlers attached - and go out for his nightly tasks.
His little corner of forest is unsullied, not by man nor fluffy. The food is plentiful and the water is unsullied. He has enough. His trail of destruction and gore keeps him hidden from ever inquisitive humanity and their ever hungry creations.