He said, “What’s the matter?”
“I can’t get anyone to like me! I even tried to be like one of them and they just made fun of me!” she answered.
“They probably don’t want another one of the friends they have. That’s why you should be your own person and ignore what the others say.”
Only one part of what he said stuck out to her and she was at her lowest point, so she did the unthinkable. When the girl she was pretending to be was alone, she killed her and hid her body in a place no one would find until years later. Now that the original was out of the way, no one could tell the difference between the original and the new. The girl now felt loved and wondered what else she could do. While she was in Hollywood, she killed and hid the body of a famous child star. Again, with her skill to mimic people, she tricked people that she was that child star and became famous overnight. Being a child star isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, so she stole another person’s life. That life wasn’t satisfactory enough and again, she moved to another’s. She continued to continuously move from one to another, from one set of positives and negatives to another, from fame to middle class, and from teenager to adult and back.
The legend of the Life Thief is this though some don’t know the real story because it is lost to time. What is known however is that random people every now and then will disappear and their bodies will reappear years later in a condition older than the start of their disappearance. People swear they saw the same person during that time, but they saw a false person. They saw…The Life Thief.
Yana and Umberto are on a bit of a vacation if you can call it that. They’re traveling the country and enjoy whatever they come across. Today, they’re exploring a deep forest, but first, they get stopped by a police car.
“Is something the matter officer?” Umberto asks.
“Yes,” she says as she gets her gun and points it at them, “Out the car.”
Not wanting to do anything drastic, the couple gets out of the car with their hands up while asking why they’re getting this treatment from the officer. The two put their hands on the car then the officer shoots the gun off into the air.
“Hahaha, I got you two!” she says.
“Don’t scare us like that! What’s wrong with you?!” Yana screams.
“It’s just a little prank that us officers from around here. We don’t get much action around here. Did you see the town that you just pasted? It’s a nice quiet little town where everyone knows one another. There’s no real reason it should have a police force unless some strangers cause trouble.”
Umberto says, “Trust me officer, we aren’t going to cause any trouble.”
“Don’t worry about it, I know you two aren’t troublemakers. You can relax.”
Umberto and Yana take their hands off the car and loosen up a bit.
“You two are going to explore the forest, is that right?” the officer asks.
“That’s right. You’ve seen enough people dressed like us to know what we’re going to do?” Umberto questions.
“That’s right. Try not to walk into the denser parts of the forest that’s where the most dangerous animals hunt. If you ever need help, take these.”
The woman officer gives the two, two flares and a transmitter.
“One is to send a signal to us that you’re in trouble and another is to show us where you are. Trust me, we’ve done this enough times to know this work.”
“Thank you, officer.”
“Safe exploring you two. Don’t be causing any fires or having sex in the woods. That’s what usually kills most people.”
“Got it.”
The officer drives off and the two continue their drive to a spot in the forest to park at.
“That officer was weird,” Yana says.
“I know. I bought a pistol in case something or someone dangerous tries to harm us,” Umberto says, “Hopefully, that won’t happen.”
Umberto drives them to a parking lot that keeps the vehicles of forest explorers safe and pays the guard. The two take their exploring equipment and rations and walk through the forest. There’s no particular direction they want to go to. Umberto and Yana just want to have fun together in the forest by exploring it. Smelling the forest air, enjoying nature and each other’s company. They climb trees and mountains, observe the creatures of the forest, and relax near a nearby lake and not swim in it because Umberto chooses not to. After realizing that it’s getting dark, the two decide to camp near the lake. Yana is in the mood for sex, but Umberto denies her this. He’s not a traditional man, he’s just not in the mood.
There’s unrest in the forest as a predator lurks in the darkness. The thing wears the knitted together skin of its prey and has two sharp steel rods as its arms and legs. It approaches the couple's tent and slashes at it. Umberto and Yana quickly get out before the blades get them. They run into the forest together as the predator chases them. As they are chased, Umberto throws sharp branches at the predator’s face. A couple of the sharp branches stick in the predator’s eyes, which blinds it and makes it crash into a tree. Neither of them stops running because of they can hear that the predator is still alive trying to take the branches out of its eyes. They come to a shack covered in forest debris and explore it. Inside, they find the prey of the predator with various coats of skin and masks. Some of the prey are animals while the rest is human. The intestines of the prey are kept in containers and their blood is bottled. There’s a cheap bed on the wooden flooring along with several pictures of people in compromising positions. Several sharp bloody knives and machetes are in a chest, some with skin still on it.
“So this is where that thing came from,” Yana says.
“I guess so,” Umberto says while trying to process all of it.
“What’s this?”
Yana finds a diary that talks about how a person became this predator of the forest after they lost a loved one to a stranger who passed through the town.
“That thing was a person from the town we passed?”
“I guess so. Keep reading.”
The contents of the diary continue to say that this person took inspiration from the legend of the Life Thief to do their killings. After a while, they believed themselves to be the Life Thief as the idea itself overtook them.
“Have you heard of The Life Thief before?”
“I have, but I thought it was the true story of a teenage girl. I didn’t think the idea itself could overtake someone. We should get rid of this person, so they don’t harm anyone else.”
“What?”
“We have plenty of weapons here and now that we know it’s just a person, we can kill them.”
“I don’t know.”
“If it bleeds, we can kill it, right?”
“But how?”
“We’ll make a lot of noise then stab them in the back.”
“I guess it’ll work.”
“Trust me.”
The two make a ton of noise in the forest then hide in the foliage. The predator comes out to investigate the noise and Umberto and Yana execute the plant perfectly. After they kill it, they find that it was an elderly man they caught a glance of when they passed through the town.
Yana looks over the corpse and says, “Some people are crazy, aren’t-”
She’s silenced by a machete through the chest. Before she dies, Umberto shows his chest and reveals to her that he was a she. The original Life Thief. After getting rid of their bodies, the Life Thief uses the transmitter to get the police into the forest. She kills the few officers that are sent including the previous female officer from before. Having never been a police officer, she makes herself look like the officer and takes her life. The bodies of the Yana and the officers aren’t discovered until years later when the Life Thief had gone far away from the town and into the life of another person. Such is the way of The Life Thief.
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