Finally, after a day of boring canoeing and fishing I get to go to sleep. I can’t believe I got dragged along on this camping trip. I take one last look at the sky before I go into the tent, I can see through the trees that there’s a full moon, but it looks like the clouds are about to block it. Not like I care, I just want to go to sleep, so I crawl into the tent, get into my sleeping bag, and throw my head onto my pillow. Jake, my so called friend who is responsible for bringing me out into the middle of this lame forest, climbs into the tent, after me. We chat for a bit and then say goodnight, but I lay awake. I can’t help but notice just how quiet it is, I don’t even hear any bugs, I’m still thinking about it as I fall asleep.

I wake up, but it’s still dark, in fact it’s darker than when I fell asleep, then I remember that the clouds were going to block the moon. I can’t figure out why I woke up, but then I hear it, a rustling. I look over towards Jake; he’s still sleeping soundly, not moving. The noise isn’t coming from him, but then I realize it’s coming from below the tent. I couldn’t feel it because I was on my air mattress, but the entire bottom of the tent was writhing. I wonder if an animal had pushed itself down there, I reach out to touch it and when I do I feel something thin, long, and moving, and there are a lot of them. I yell and yank my hand back, had we sent up our tent on a snake’s nest or something?

My yell wakes up Jake, he begins to ask what’s wrong then he sees the issue. He lets out a yelp as well; he then calls out for his parents, who were in a separate tent a short distance away, but no response. We’re both staring at the tent floor when we hear it, the sound of tree branches moving, but the tent isn’t being flapped around, there’s no wind, so what is it that’s moving the trees? Suddenly the bottom of the tent stops moving, so do the tree branches. We both sit in complete silence, too scared to say anything.

Then, right by me, directly outside of the tent, I hear a giggle. It shatters the silence, so do our screams. Once we calm down we hear more giggling, lots of it, more than one person could ever do on their own. At that moment the clouds clear, allowing the moons light to shine again. What it shows is the silhouette of a short, two foot at most, figure hunched over by the tent. We can see more of them dropping from the trees, all of them giggling manically. Then, all at once, the giggling stops, the one closest to the tent holds something up, it’s about the size of a soccer ball. Then, with a horrible sinking feeling, I know what it is, the head of one of Jake’s parents. I try to stifle a sob of pure terror, as the hunched figure, in complete silence, slowly walks around the tent, reaches the door flap, and begins to open the zipper.