Ye Who Camps Alone

A shriek echoes through the night…

You wake with a start, the last wisps of your ill-portended dream sinking into the murky depths of your mind as your senses slowly return to you.
*drip, drip, drip*
The only sound reaching your ears being a steady dribbling of water in your tent that you cannot place, for even the moon hides behind a veil of clouds on this gloomy autumn night. As you rise to get a better measure of your situation, your nose is assaulted by an oppressive stench you liken to be a mix of wet dog and rot, that causes the hairs on the back of your neck to stiffen with a primal fear you have never felt before.
Soon enough however, primal instinct and fear retreats before years of programmed rationality, and you reckon that coyotes must have taken shelter beneath the boughs of the forest you’re camping in, and before long, the biting autumn air and the fast-cooling sweat on your body urges you to crawl deeper into your sleeping bag and prepare for a long, chilly night.

If only you would be so lucky…