Now, when I smell something, it's either really bad or really good. My nose isn't very sensitive. But what I smelled it was awful.
Imagine...no. Picture a writhing piece of garbage: rotting fruit, coffee grounds, moldy bread, cheese so old it smells like ammonia. Now, picture that shoved up your nose.
This certain part of the woods seemed to be physically changed as well. The vines that drooped from the trees were brittle and didn't sprout any bright green leaves: the abundant trees had shed their leaves, and what was left had turned either brown or gray.
Not that it mattered. In this part of the woods, brown and gray were pretty much the same thing.
The ground was composed of dead leaves, dead leaves, and dead grass. Not to mention more dead leaves. Murky water seeped into the ground, leaking from a small lake that stretched around the trees, enveloping everything in a rancid mist of gray-green fog.
Jared poked through the skin of floating leaves and algae that coated the water. It rippled and separated, like thick seasoning in a pot of stew.
"We'll have to cross over there," said Helen, frowning. "I don't remember this place...oh well. There are some rocks and logs over there. We can hope across."
I started off first, Fallie right behind me. Helen and Jared soon followed. Each piece of rotting wood seemed to barely hold my weight, and more than twice Fallie nearly fell into the water, black and uninviting, stinking even worse than one of the worst landfills in the world(not that I've been there).
Then it happened: I slipped off a mossy rock, tripping over and smacking my face on a slick rock. When I opened my eyes, my nose was resting on a skull.
Oh, I screamed. I hate bones.(human, that is) Ugh! To realize that that bone had been someone's head, covered with muscles and skin and dirt and hair...now it had rotted away, feeding the disgustingly large growths of maggots that thrived under the rotting logs.
Helen screamed too, even though she was a good five feet away. Brushing myself off, I tried to ignore my heart, which fluttering like a flock of hummingbirds. Then I carefully stepped on a piece of submerged wood, something that had once been a tree. Little growths exploded all over the wood, and it seemed so soft I could have bounced on it. So I did.
Which was probably one of the number-one-stupidest-mistakes-I-had-ever-made-in-my-lifetime.
Because the next thing that happened was the chunk of wood rising slowly out of the water. Two beady eyes popped out, and a long row of ghastly teeth, still quite sharp, snapped at me.
I fell into the water, soaked to the bone and completely terrified, as a monstrous beast rose out of the water. The two little eyes glared at me with so much hatred I knew that every inch of sinuous muscle that lay under its green-gray, warty skin was intent on crushing me to oblivion.
"Troll!" squeaked Helen.
So I did the only thing humankind has held its ground for: I ran.
Fallie galloped soon after me, Jared and Helen on her back and every single rock and chunk of tree smashed to bits by the troll.
Fallie soon caught up with me and I could see wonderful, dry land through the mist. Suddenly, my ankle caught on the corner of a rock and I tripped, skinning every bit of skin on my hide worth skinning.
A dark shadow fell over me. Gazing up, I saw a chunk of drool plop onto my face. I spat, spewing whatever disgusting thing the troll had eaten last.
Gripping my sword, I swung it out of its sheath. The troll growled at hearing its ring and pounced. At the very instant it fell on me, I stabbed it through the heart.
Then my vision was blotted out.