The man in the wood

I live in a small town in South Africa. Near my town there is a large patch of woods and since the outbreak of Corona virus, I haven't been in the woods for a long time. Until yesterday.

So my friend called me to ask if I wanted to join him and a few other mates to play a game of paintball in the woods and obviously I was keen. I got my paintball gear and gun and headed off to my mates place. There was 6 of us, Chayse, Liam, Matt, Joey, Steven and obviously me. We headed off to the woods but made a few stops to fill up on petrol and get some gas for the paintball guns. When we finally got the woods, we parked the cars, got in our gear and ventured out in the forest to find the perfect spot to paintball. Eventually we got deep enough and to an area with sufficient cover and space to play a good game of capture the flag. We played a couple of games and since it's winter, it got dark really quickly but we planned for this and brought our flashlights and decided to play a couple of night games which is extremely hard especially in the forest we were in.

During one match, Joey and I decided to sit out because we were both tired and just needed a quick breather and the others continued to play from a significantly good distance away from us. While we chilling, I was rolling up a joint (yes I'm a pothead) and Joey went to go take a piss a couple of meters away from me. While I was busy rolling, I had the flashlight pointing towards myself since there was no other light to allow me to see what I was doing and around me, it was completely dark, I couldn't even see 2 meters ahead of myself because of how dark it was. Suddenly I heard footsteps coming my way but I thought it was Joey and I soon realized I couldn't see any light from his flashlight so now I was more vigilant but still relaxed, thinking he is trying to play a prank on me or something. But the footsteps stopped a few meters away from me so I lifted up my flashlight and pointed it in the direction where I heard the footsteps and scanned the area but just saw bushes and trees and I just thought it might be Joey hiding in the bushes or behind a tree waiting to give me a jump scare then I heard footsteps coming in the opposite direction and when I looked, I could see it was Joey because he was holding his flashlight. That's when I stopped what I was doing and picked up my flashlight and paintball gun and when Joey reached me, I whispered, "Bro, I think there is someone over there" and Joey obviously didn't believe me and just said to me to stop being a baby but he soon regretted saying that because I decided to do one last scan of where I heard the footsteps and to my horror, I saw someone peaking and staring right at me from behind a tree probably 10 or 11 meters aways from us. I just shouted, "What the actual fuck?" and when Joey heard me say this, he looked at me and then where the man looked and instantly jumped up picking up his paintball gun also. We stared at each of at least 2 minutes but it felt like forever until he stepped out from behind the tree. He was a large man, at least 6ft, was honestly filthy like he hasn't taken a bath in years, he was wearing baggy ripped up jeans and just an old dirty zipped up bomber jacket plus we could see that he was on something or he was just bat shit crazy and he was holding something behind his back. He finally said, "What are you guys doing out here when it's so dark?", we couldn't even answer him because of the shock we were in. Joey stuttered with fear in his voice, "We were just leaving", but the man nodded his head in disagreement and said, "No you're not, your friends are still playing the game".

I felt a shiver down my spine.

"How about we play a game of our own while we wait for your friends?" and that is when he finally showed us what he was hiding behind his back and it was a large machete. That's when I knew we had to get out of there. So I aimed my paintball gun and in the toughest way I could muster up, I told him,"Leave now or I will shoot" even though I only had about 6 or 7 paintballs loaded and Joey did the exact same by aiming his gun at the man even though he had no paintballs in his gun but he didn't even flinch but did something that honestly made my skin crawl. He just smiled and said "The game starts now" and suddenly he just rushed at us so I told Joey to run while I fired up my last bullets at him and luckily I shot him in his head which caused him to fall so that was our chance to book it and link up with our other friends. As soon as we started running, we heard his footsteps again and he was actually gaining on us again. We could barely see but we couldn't slow down because we knew what would happen if we did so we just carried on sprinting our hearts out until we heard other paintball guns being fired so we knew were close. Joey started shouting to get everyone's attention and all of sudden, I heard a huge thud. Joey tripped and twisted his ankle. I turned around to help him up and when I did, I could see the man running full sprint towards us. In that moment I thought it was going to be the end for us, but our friends heard our screams for help and rushed to us and when they saw the man, they just started firing at him and he knew wasn't going to be able to take us all on and he decided to turn around and disappear into the forest. We helped Joey up, rushed to get our stuff and rushed to the cars. When we got to my friends place, we helped Joey treat his ankle and I proceeded to tell my friends everything that happened and they were all creeped out.

It's safe to say that the next I'm in those woods, I will be more vigilant.