The trees whizzed by as Richard put the gas pedal straight to the floor, violently driving into the forest.  The storm clouds and that bolt of lightning had been enough to worry not only Richard, but Cindy as well.  She’d promptly yelled and ordered him to go faster and head in to see if Nick and Hannah were safe.  His mind was racing as he sped through the forest, but her reaction just goes to show that even the most sadistic of people can be realistic and caring, given the right circumstances. 

The rain was pounding down, but didn’t seem nearly bad enough for a storm of the magnitude that it seemed to be when they’d first witnessed it.  Things only got weirder from there.  With them speeding through the forest, the dirt road didn’t seem slick at all.  It was as if it weren’t raining at all.  By the time they’d seen the cabin in front of them, even the rain had stopped.  The dark clouds were gone from the sky, as if they’d literally disappeared into thin air.  Richard started slowing down as they came closer to the cabin, a bad feeling in his gut.  There was something weird about this whole situation.  He didn’t know what it was, but something was off.

As the car rolled to a stop, right behind a small red car, they took a look through the now-dry windshield to see the situation at the cabin.  They couldn’t see any wet spots on the wood of the cabin or the car in front of them.  Richard raised an eyebrow as he took in the situation.  “This is…a little weird.  Wasn’t it just raining?  None of this makes sense.”  He took a deep breath as Cindy looked up towards the cabin.  She squinted her eyes as she looked up towards the roof.  Her squinted eyes soon widened again as she saw smoke coming from the top.

“Richard!  There’s smoke coming from the cabin.  It must have been struck by that lightning!  They might be right in the middle of that!”  Richard looked over and shook his head as he, too, saw the smoke Cindy spoke of.  Quickly unbuckling both himself and Cindy, he yanked the keys out of the ignition in agreement.  “You’re right.  We’ve got to get in there and see if they’re alright.  I’m sure that’s their car in front of us.  The door’s wide open, too.  I don’t like this, Cindy, I don-”

Richard’s statement was cut short when he tried to open the door.  The latch came loose, but the door wouldn’t budge at all.  He tried pushing on it to get it open as Cindy had already opened her door and gotten out with one of the bags she’d brought with her.  She looked in the window and raised her own eyebrow towards him.  “What’s taking you so long?!  They might be in trouble!  Hurry up, already!”  Thos intimidating words, along with the worries about Nick and Hannah was forcing Richard to push as hard as he could.  He checked the locks, but the door just wouldn’t open.

As he continued his struggle with the door, he had to stop to catch his breath.  Looking over, he saw a frustrated Cindy looking in at him.  He shook his head for a moment as he began to speak, aiming to let her know what was going on.  “It’s jammed!  I can’t get it open.  I’ll just have to crawl across and come out your sid-”  Richard was about to begin crawling across the car to get out on the passenger’s side when Cindy sent him a response, her frustration building up.

“Forget it, Richard!  You stay here and fix whatever you did to the door.  I’ll go and see if those two are alright myself.  I wouldn’t want to work you too hard!”  The sarcasm in Cindy’s voice was ever-apparent as she turned around and stormed away from the car, not even bothering to put her shoes back on.  Richard sat in his seat for a moment, watching her and thinking.  He really didn’t like this.  A seemingly-fake storm, smoke coming from the cabin, and now his door was jamming.  What did it all mean, if anything?  After waiting and catching his breath, he turned and went back to trying to get the door open, hoping that his two friends were alright.

Cindy, stomped through the cabin, the frustration of Richard’s door-jamming still up in her head.  Although some may not have been able to tell, she was terribly worried about her friends.  However, those two friends might not be seeing it that way, after they see how she was about to greet them.  She stomped through the house, her bare feet impacting the wood hard enough that even she could feel the vibrations she was creating.  She didn’t care, though.  She was upset, and planned to take that frustration out.

As she walked by the rooms, she stopped when she looked in one of the bedrooms.  The bed looked like it had been previously used.  Nick and Hannah might have been in this room.  She started walking into the room, her rage toning down slightly.  However, it didn’t last very long.  She set her bag down in the doorway and proceeded halfway across the room before she stopped.  She’d been looking downwards at the time and when she stopped, her feet were right next to one of the bed posts.

As she looked down at her feet, she saw what looked like two large bugs on the floor, right in front of her.  She stared at them for a second.  She couldn’t see, just, what they were.  The vision down there was a little blurry, but it looked like they were slightly moving towards her.  One of them nudged into one of her toes and she immediately yanked it back, in disgust. 

“EW!  BUGS!  This cabin is dirtier than I thought it was!  I’m on an important task, looking for my friends.  You are not part of the plan, so say hello to my foot!”  Within a moment, Cindy had gotten frustrated at what she thought were two tiny insects.  She began to raise her bare foot into the air, right above them, not even realizing that she was aiming to smash the very people she came into the cabin to find…