Into the Woods - Finish the Story Contest - WEEK #14

This is my entry for the week #14 of the awesome contest held by @f3nix: Finish the Story, and earn Steem Basic Income Shares.
More informations about the contest may be found here: https://steemit.com/contest/@f3nix/finish-the-story-contest-week-14

This week, the professional copywriter @ntowl takes the lead and bring us "Into the Woods"...

Suggested soundtrack:

@ntowl opening

The clouds rolled in as Sharon parked in her driveway. She sat there for a few minutes before going inside, pondering the immensely bad day she’d had.
It started off with her being late for work, the first time in nine years. Her boss had been waiting for her reports, and her lateness made him late which made him unhappy. No, unhappy wasn’t the word. Unhinged fit better. She’d left his office feeling assaulted and ashamed at having performed so poorly, even though she had been the top sales manager for five years running. Walking back to her office she thought it all felt a bit off - too intense for being a mere ten minutes late.
But before she could think about it for long, she was hit by a cart full of old desktop computers the IT guy was taking to recycle. The metal cart had ripped her nylons and left her with a bloody gash on her left calf and bruising on her thigh and hip. He hadn’t even apologized but instead glared at her as he picked up the equipment that had fallen to the ground.
The rest of the day continued like that. Everything went wrong from the vending machine taking her money without dispensing her granola bar to the afternoon coffee burning her hand. The harrowing drive home topped it off, and she considered herself lucky to have just lost a fender to a drunk, uninsured motorist.
Finally opening the car door, she glanced up at the sky. The clouds looked thick, but WeatherBug had said the rain would hold off until tomorrow. Not that she cared. She needed to run and shake off the day even if it poured and even if she was bruised and sore.
She changed into her workout clothes and grabbed her headphones before going back outside to the road. Her usual playlist blasting a little louder than usual, she headed north to the trail. It was her usual 10 km route she ran when she needed to think - or de-stress. Her body would move on autopilot while her brain sorted everything out so that by the time she returned home she’d feel normal and relaxed.
The trail into the woods looked a little darker than usual, but she thought it should with the clouds coming in. She didn’t even pause as she went from pavement to forest floor. Another half kilometer and the trees opened up onto a large pond, a swamp really except for the beavers that had built their dams to fill it up. She always slowed a little on this part of the trail to see if she could catch them working. She admired their persistence and ingenuity.
The mound that made their lodge wasn’t too far from the trail, but she had difficulty seeing it. She slowed even more but was unable to focus on it - as if it were twilight when the shapes and shadows blended together. But it wasn’t that late. She looked behind her, and she could see everything just fine.
Stopping, she stared at the beaver lodge and thought she could see a black haze swirling around it. Then she noticed the water. It too was black and seemed to have a dark fog floating just above the surface. Concerned more than worried, she started running again along the trail that continued into the woods. She thought she'd get a better view from the other side of the pond.

My ending

Sharon circled around the pond, keeping an eye on the strange blackish haze that was hanging over the surface of the water.

A rustle coming from the underbrush made her startle. Twilight had already lengthened the shadows on the ground, like black claws. Her steps became uncertain as she peered with his pupils dilated in the bushes. Her heart was beating madly in her throat.

Again a rustle, and a thud in the water behind her. Sharon lost every remnant of rationality and her hand ran to the pocket of her tracksuit. The fingers tightened convulsively around the can.

A strange figure dressed in black sprang out of the bush, with disturbing pictures all over his face, which made him look like a skull. Sharon shrieked and jumped back. Her arms snapped out of her pockets in an unconscious gesture.

The figure, legs wide and bent, continued to jump on the path emitting guttural noises, as if he hadn’t noticed her presence.

From the pond emerged another more or less human figure, dripping with water. He seemed in his underwear, his body covered with a greenish pigment and glitter. He was wearing a grotesque fish mask.

The adrenaline, that the heart of Sharon now was pumping in her arteries, made her spin, while from her mouth came a voice in the middle between a cry and a roar. Resuming control of her movements, she firmly grabbed the can in her pocket and pulled it out, spraying pepper spray toward the aquatic figure, which was babbling something incomprehensible. The figure froze for a moment, made a shriek deformed by the mask and twisted around in the shallow water, lifting a lot of splashes.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sharon saw another man dressed in black, with a make-up on his face, emerging cautiously from the woods. Definitely, that was not her best day, but she had had enough shots of bad luck for that time.

"Enough!" She screamed against the whole universe in general, as she struck a powerful kick in the groin of the first man in black, making him slump to the ground with a groan.

"Stop! Stoooop! Damn it, what's going on ?!" a long-haired man called out from behind a bush. He wore a video camera on his shoulder and was dressed like an out-of-date metalhead.

He stepped over the man in black on the ground, in a fetal position with his hands on his groin, and he moved excitedly towards Sharon.

"We’re here for half a day trying to shoot this fucking video clip in the midst of mosquitoes and humidity, we lacked only a mad woman that puts k.o. half the band! "

Sharon didn’t even have time to rationalize and argue, that someone cleared his throat. A huge guy, apparently wearing a beaver costume, with the mask under his arm, came forward and said:

"Er... Zack, we also have a problem with the smoke machine. Water must have come in, I don’t think it should make that kind of smoke. "

The second man in black had approached his similar groaning on the ground and exclaimed:
"Dammit! You smashed ol’ Mendoza huevos, you know! "

"He's fine with him, Machete," replied the whining voice of the fish-man who was laboriously raising himself on dry land in a state of obvious suffering from the pepper spray. "And then, why do I always have to be the one in the mud?" He added, with a quadri-tonal fart of prostration.

Sharon put her hands to her temples, a powerful headache was coming... definitely a day to forget!

---

[versione italiana]

Sharon girò in modo circospetto intorno allo stagno, tenendo d’occhio la strana foschia nerastra che aleggiava sulla superficie dell’acqua.

Un fruscio proveniente dal sottobosco la fece sussultare. Il crepuscolo aveva già allungato le ombre sul terreno, come artigli neri. I suoi passi si fecero incerti, mentre scrutava con le pupille dilatate tra i cespugli. Il cuore le batteva all’impazzata in gola.

Di nuovo un fruscio, e un tonfo nell’acqua dietro di lei. Sharon perse ogni residuo di razionalità e la sua mano corse alla tasca della tuta. Le dita si strinsero convulsamente attorno alla bomboletta.

Dalla boscaglia balzò fuori una strana figura vestita di nero, con pitture inquietanti su tutto il viso, che lo facevano assomigliare a un teschio. Sharon emise uno strillo acuto e fece un salto indietro. Le braccia le schizzarono fuori dalle tasche in un gesto inconsulto.

La figura, a gambe larghe e piegate, continuò a saltellare sul sentiero emettendo versi gutturali, come se non si fosse accorta della sua presenza.

Dallo stagno emerse un'altra figura più o meno umana, gocciolante d’acqua. Sembrava in mutande, con il corpo cosparso di un pigmento verdastro e brillantini. Indossava una grottesca maschera da pesce.

L’adrenalina che ormai il cuore di Sharon pompava nelle sue arterie la fece girare di scatto, mentre dalla bocca le uscì un verso a metà tra un grido e un ruggito. Ripreso il controllo dei suoi movimenti, afferrò saldamente la bomboletta nella tasca e la estrasse, spruzzando spray al peperoncino verso la figura acquatica, che stava blaterando qualcosa di incomprensibile. La figura si bloccò per un istante, emise uno strillo deformato dalla maschera e si contorse rotolandosi nell’acqua bassa, sollevando un sacco di schizzi.

Con la coda dell’occhio, Sharon vide un altro uomo vestito di nero, con la faccia truccata, emergere con fare circospetto dal bosco. Decisamente, quella non era la sua giornata migliore, ma aveva avuto abbastanza colpi di sfiga, per il momento.

“Ora basta!!!” urlò contro tutto l’universo in generale, mentre assestava un potente calcio all’inguine del primo uomo in nero, facendolo accasciare al suolo con un gemito.

“Stop! Stoooop! Dannazione, cosa sta succedendo?!” gridò un uomo dai capelli lunghi uscendo da dietro un cespuglio. Portava una videocamera in spalla ed era vestito come un metallaro demodé.

Scavalcò l’uomo in nero al suolo, in posizione fetale con le mani sull’inguine, e si diresse concitato verso Sharon.

“Siamo qui da mezza giornata a cercare di girare questo cazzo di videoclip in mezzo alle zanzare e all’umidità, ci mancava solo una pazza che mi mette k.o. mezza band!”

Sharon non ebbe nemmeno il tempo di razionalizzare e ribattere, che qualcuno si schiarì la voce. Un tizio enorme, che indossava apparentemente un costume da castoro, con la maschera sotto braccio, si fece avanti e disse:

“Ehm… Zack, abbiamo anche un problema con la macchina del fumo. Deve essere entrata acqua, non credo che dovrebbe fare quel tipo di fumo.”

Il secondo uomo in nero si era avvicinato al suo simile gemente a terra ed esclamò:
“Porca miseria! Hai frantumato los huevos del vecchio Mendoza, mi sa!”

“Gli sta bene, Machete” rispose la voce piagnucolosa dell’uomo-pesce che si issava faticosamente sulla terra ferma in stato di evidente sofferenza per lo spray al peperoncino. “E poi, perché devo sempre essere io quello che sta nella melma?” aggiunse, con una scoreggia quadri-tonale di prostrazione.

Sharon si portò le mani alle tempie, le stava venendo un potente mal di testa… decisamente una giornata da dimenticare!

---

Join the fun! Here is how this contest works:

You receive an unfinished fiction story or a script weekly on @f3nix blog. This is the link for this week: https://steemit.com/contest/@f3nix/finish-the-story-contest-week-14

You finish it with your own post or a comment in the comment section. A limit of 500 words is recommended.

YOU WIN! 3 @steembasicincome shares to the writers with the best ending + SBD payout (+1) between all the participants who won't get one of the 3 shares.

---

Do you want to be sure to read and upvote all the entries in Finish the Story Contest? Follow the @bananafish! Follow its trail!

---