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Keith Kogane was a painfully forgettable person. His professors, his peers, even the cafeteria lady—who was famous for knowing everyone at least by face—forgot about Keith. He blended in well, and no one looked too close.
Keith was so forgettable, in fact, that when people paid too much attention to him—when they looked a bit too close—they were forgotten about, too.
He’d already forgotten their names, Jessica and— Mike, was it? Or Chris? It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that they were film majors, it didn’t matter that their final was a documentary about the forest surrounding the college, it didn’t matter that Jessica never let go of her camera.
It didn’t matter that they liked Keith a lot, especially when he set up their camping equipment and showed them the best spots in the forest to lay down a tent. It didn’t matter that they were scared of the forest. Why, Keith was with them, and he knew his way around a map.
The forest was fond of forgetting things too.
It forgot how twine dolls made their way into tree branches, how stick lions tied with strings swung in the wind in the rhythm of something not meant for human ears.
Keith hummed along.
The shaking, the cracking, the whispers in the leaves. The deeper they got into the woods, the louder the song got. And still, they had no idea. Jessica blamed Mike for losing the map, and he blamed her for losing their food. And now they were hopelessly lost, oh God, oh Lord, they were so, so hopelessly lost.
“This isn’t freaking funny anymore,” Jessica scowled, stomping her foot over one of the stick lions.
“I swear to you it wasn’t me,” Mike raised his hands defensively.
“Well it wasn’t Keith. He was with me the whole time.” Of course, Keith was ever the chivalrous knight. “So what the fuck is making stick lions and hanging them if we’re all alone in the forest?!”
A moment passed, slow and heavy, an early-set betrayal.
“You— You didn’t tell anyone we were doing this, right?” he said, his voice a second away from being accusatory.
“ Of course not, I’m not an idiot, Mike. They’d either laugh at us or steal our thesis.” It was her turn to be defensive.
“Then it can only be...” Its presence was not missed, despite the fact that the name was not uttered.
“No, you’re kidding me,” she rolled her eyes.
“This is our thesis !” Keith let them argue, let them walk deeper into the woods, humming all the way down.
The forest forgets. The forest eats up bones and hair and feeds it to the trees that bleed if you fell them. But no one is so brave as to touch the Blair Witch’s forest. No one is that foolish.
They were close now, the woods thinned enough to give the pair hope. Too much stress, and their hearts would turn bitter—You needed hope to balance the flavour.
The night was unforgiving and the darkness all consuming, Artemis had shielded the moon from the monstrosities that were about to commence. Jess and Mike forgot about Keith for long enough for him to slip away and ahead, just as the forest began to sing in earnest, and wild beasts began to chase the pair, separating them.
Mike found the house first, desperate for shelter. Jess came in third, still clutching her camera.
The footage was almost indiscernible trash, but one could still distinguish Keith’s figure, as he stood facing the wall, away from the camera. “Keith?” Her voice was almost as shaky as her hands, but Keith remained unmoving. “Keith!” she said again, this time with more urgency in her voice. The camera registers the moan before she does, and stops in her tracks. She forgets about Keith and runs up the stairs, the camera capturing each new step as it comes into frame.
The camera lens captures the horrors that the human eye cannot— will not. If only to protect the little sanity Jessica and Mike had before they were forgotten.
The last thing the camera captures is a corpse, a flashlight, and the distinct sound of heels clicking against stone before it’s crushed.
~~~~~~
Keith Kogane was a forgettable person to all but one, and the first time it had happened, he found it unnerving.
The fact that someone could see him, and not only that, that someone would approach him.
He heard footsteps descending the staircase and turned around slowly, as if he hadn’t just brought two people to their deaths.
In time, he got used to being noticed.
The Blair Witch’s heels were entirely impractical for a forest predator, but that never bothered him. He moved with utter grace, carried by some kind of supernatural force Keith could only ever catch glimpses of. But despite this magick, there was no denying the Witch was physically strong as well, as evidenced by his powerful thighs. His defined abs were hidden away by his corset—another inconvenient clothing item the witch preferred—but Keith knew they were there. He was well acquainted with every inch of Lance’s skin.
The closer the Witch got, the more reality seemed to warp. His footsteps weren’t in time with the clicking of his heels, and he seemed to get closer at an unnatural speed. Keith wasn’t fully aware how close he was until the Blair Witch was wrapping an arm around his waist. Brisk clarity seized him, and his partner-in-crime smiled at this, his other hand tangling in Keith’s long hair right before he pulled him into a kiss.
Keith met his lips with no hesitation. He needed this, needed his Witch’s kisses more than he needed air or water. It was more than a need, more than his lifeforce. It was an absolute truth of the universe: Keith belonged to the Witch.
“Good job,” Lance said, breaking the kiss just to look at Keith. He looked back, reached up and wiped a drop of blood from Lance’s cheek before he kissed him again. And again. And again.
And Lance belonged to Keith.
~~~~~~
Keith Kogane wasn’t a person, he was a monster’s shadow. The monster, who was also Keith Kogane, understood that he blended in with humans just as well as oil blended with water. The monster and its shadow understood that human company wasn’t for them. One didn’t place a starving wolf in a barn full of sheep, and Keith Kogane didn’t spend time in civilization.
But if he was the shadow, Lance was most definitely the light.
A light so bright it made the candles Keith lit seem like dancing shadows on white wax.
He loved candles, and the magick that made them float around in the cozy little cottage. Despite his monstrousness, there was quite a big deal of things that Keith loved. Candles, for one. Louis Armstrong’s version of “la vie en rose” that gently echoed throughout the cottage he built with Lance. Lance, and the fact that he favoured the taste of cranapple juice over blood and wine. The fact that he knew this, had his all lover’s favorites memorized. The fact that his lover was extremely tall and some sort of forest deity.
He felt a gentle claw cover his hand and he gasped, softly, broken out of his thoughts. He put down the matches as he watched the talons shift back into a hand wearing fingerless gloves, and leaned back into Lance’s embrace. His lover rested his chin on Keith’s shoulder, slowly swaying them to the music, his necklace of teeth jingling in tune with the song.
“You still wear my gloves,” Keith said with a soft, teasing smile.
“They keep my hands soft,” Lance replied, only slightly defensive.
“Now what need would the Blair Witch have for soft palms?”
“So I can do this,” Lance smirked and dipped Keith, one arm wrapped around his waist and the other reaching up, so his hand could cradle Keith’s face. And it was soft, Keith thought to himself, right as Lance kissed him and Keith rediscovered something even softer.
~~~~~~
Keith only had a knife. It’s good. It’s enough. He doesn’t need anything else.
He clutched the blade in his gloved hand, his bare fingers brushing the hilt of it. His classmates loved to tease him for his fingerless gloves, but he was above it. He didn’t need their camaraderie, didn’t need their love and attention. All he needed was his knife and the breath in his lungs, the violence covered for everything else.
The violence, for what else would he call it. Keith wasn’t a poet, he was just a boy with a knife. A boy with a thirst for blood. A boy who couldn’t feel the burning in his lungs as he ran through the forest, let alone anything else.
The victim panted and cried, their tears falling to the forest floor and watering the dead trees. But they wouldn’t last much longer. They never lasted much longer. The victims tripped on exposed roots or fell into thorny bushes or slipped into a pile of stones and never stood back up. And Keith was there waiting, the violence a ghost always one step behind him. Guiding him, guiding his hand as it rose the knife and plunged it into the victim.
This victim wasn’t any different. Keith even saw the exposed root before they tripped on it, twisting their ankle so badly they couldn’t get up no matter how hard they tried. Every failed attempt landed them back in the forest dirt.
Keith didn’t say anything as he approached, but the victim noticed him. They even turned around and looked at him, hot tears streaming down their face, evaporating into steam in the dark night.
The knife plunged into their soft, warm flesh.
Was mercy ever an option? Was mercy something Keith was capable of? Was it him, or was it violence that brought the knife down, again and again, splattering him with blood.
It would make a lovely painting. Keith Kogane as the monster, vicious and unfeeling, his eyes darker than the forest. His victim, portrayed by fresh blood and the glinting of a blade. But alas, Keith wasn’t a painter.
Something stopped him before he could plunge his knife into the victim again. A hand, rough and taloned, gripped his wrist, as the knife fell uselessly to the ground. For once, the violence was silent, and Keith looked up to see what could chase away the primal horrible spirit that’s haunted him his entire life.
His eyes found incomprehensible beauty. A man that was not wholly a man—his eyes glowing with a bright light and his head adorned with a crown of thorns—stood before him. He gripped Keith’s wrist in a manner one would lift up a piece of paper off the floor. The stranger— the man, Keith didn’t know what to call him. Call it . He wasn’t even sure if this was real or a hallucination his mind had come up with, but then the stranger looked him in the eyes, and Keith was hit with the full force of his stare.
“What are you doing in my forest?” he spoke in a voice that belonged to the woods. Keith didn’t know how a person could sound like the overwhelming feeling of being surrounded by the woods, but this stranger did it. He sounded like both the wolf and the doe it its jaw, he sounded like birds, like insects, like thorns.
“Sacrifice,” Keith said slowly, aware that it was not the truth, aware that this creature could kill him for it.
The creature’s mouth split into a grin, much wider than any human was capable of, much sharper, too. “Liar,” he decreed, with a kind of curious glee in his terrifying voice. “I’ve seen what you do in my forest,” he let go of Keith’s wrist, moving slowly around Keith and the lifeless corpse in a circle. “How you desecrate it, how you indulge all of your urges here,” it said, and Keith tried to follow his movements but to no avail. It was too dark in the forest, and the creature seemed to be part of it.
“Tell me,” the creature said suddenly, much closer to Keith’s face than before, he could practically smell the moss and tree bark. “Do you think you are hidden here? Do you think your god doesn’t see all of your dark, hideous desires if you commit them all in this forest?”
Keith couldn’t speak. The violence was never discussed, it was never fully acknowledged, and now that it was gone he wouldn’t even know where to start.
“I’ll tell you,” the creature leaned in, the thorns on his crown scraping the skin on Keith’s face. “Maybe your god sees it. Maybe he doesn’t. But he has no power here. I do. And you and I, we’re going to make a little deal,” he said and leaned back. “Is that okay?” the creature asked, but there could only be one answer.
“Okay.”
~~~~~~
The bodies, the victims, the people Keith feigned to call classmates, lied before him and the Witch. Blank eyes open, staring at nothing, eternity resting heavy in blown pupils.
Lance grinned, mouth spreading, teeth flashing, fangs long and sharp and white against his lips as they got ready to Collect.
The sacrifices are exactly what they are, sacrifices. The blood is drained, siphoned into dark bottles, saved for later either for a late night drink or for whatever ritual Lance may have in mind.
The soul is carefully extracted; it's fragile. The lifeforce of a human body cradled in large palms and gingerly taken outside to be released into the air as a gift to the forest. An apology for the havoc and disaster the population had brought onto its lands. The trees sway and shake, pleased by the offering, and Keith will never cease to be amazed at the brief glow that encapsulates the night drenched leaves.
The bodies are dealt with similarly. People believed the Blair Witch consumed its victims, an absolute lie— Lance had higher standards. Of course, he may take a bone here and there, but Humans were not as palatable as one may think.
Instead, Keith helped his lover carry the remains outside of their cottage, leaving them out for the wildlife to take. They deserved just as much as the forest. They deserved compensation for the lives of their own lost to overhunting, cars, families that took their homes to build ugly houses on top of.
It was a give and take, and Keith was always more than happy to give.