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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Bradegan_um on 2025-08-28 14:48:26+00:00.
Growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I was no stranger to roaming the woods. Ever since I can remember, I have been out in the woods building forts or terrorizing the small creek frogs I so desperately wanted to catch.
I lived right next to a thick collection of trees, where I spent countless years of my childhood playing pretend with the neighborhood kids or hide and seek in the forest.
My favorite part of it all was the animals. I would watch daily from my back porch, and deer, black bears, coyotes, and more roam the woods. Sometimes, I would bring out animal feed and place it in an opening. I stole it from my dad’s hunting gear. I could barely hold the giant yellow bag when I carried it out to the woods. So I would leave it there for the next time I came to look for the creature.
I hide under leaves or a log after spreading the feed over the woods to get up-close glimpses of the beautiful animals. I was inseparable from the nature that surrounded my home.
Eventually, the giant missing bag of animal feed was taken, presumably by my dad, who had been interrogating me thoroughly on my childhood antics.
The opposite could be said for my girlfriend, June. She was born and raised in the mountains, much like me, but her passion couldn’t be further from living in the woods. The classroom always called her, and nothing could stop her from learning as much as she could. She was top of the class throughout high school, and I was lucky enough to experience the last two years of it with her.
Since the day I got my license in junior year, I was a cocky hotshot at pickup lines. I talked to countless girls, all of whom I should apologize to for asking them to write their numbers down on my arm in the middle of the hallway.
Most of these attempts never went anywhere, of course. When I laid eyes on that beautiful, hazel-eyed, curly-haired June, I knew my attempt at talking was going to be like Sisyphus trying to push the boulder of another pick-up line up the back of my throat. It took me days to attempt, and when I finally did, I stuttered out the entire thing, making her fall over laughing hysterically. I knew she was the love of my life at that moment.
After she finally stopped laughing and wrote her number down on my forearm, ever since, we have been inseparable. I never knew what she saw in a hick like me, but I wish she were still around to ask her.
Things were great. We’d go see every home sports game that involved our poorly designed ram mascot, she’d help explain the basics of trigonometry to me, and I would take her to my favorite places on earth, national parks.
Of course, between the big events of hiking and sports games, we’d sit on the couch almost every night and watch TV. Sitting there, lying there in her arms, was the greatest feeling in the world. I could have grown old and fat with her right there, and my life would be content.
A few months into our nightly routine, a second feeling arose that most of the time was choked out by June’s skinny arms. The feeling was one of being watched. We would lie on my old, damaged couch right in front of a wide front window. Whenever the feeling came, I’d look out of it, trying to see if something was watching me back, but the reflection of the TV light always made the window cloudy.
Sometimes the feeling got so bad that even June’s presence couldn’t kill it. I’d always get up and close the front blinds, and whenever June asked why, I always said
“For some privacy,” before shooting her a smirk and launching a barrage of kisses towards her smooth face. Even during our make-out sessions, the feeling clung to the back of my brain like a parasite.
Being in high school, my parents still wanted us to get a reasonable amount of sleep before the next day of class, so our curfew was at 9:00 pm every night, no special treatment for the weekends, to my hormonal dismay.
So every night, we’d walk down the back steps to my house, around to the garage, warm up my dad’s old pickup, and I would drive June back to her house. Thankfully, I never had those feelings of being watched whenever we walked outside, that was until I first laid my eyes on it, even if I didn’t know it.
It was about a year into our relationship and 3 months until holiday break, when June and I would go on a skiing trip, something completely foreign to her, yet so exciting to me. I wrapped my jacket around June’s petite shoulders and walked her down to the garage. The feeling of being stalked had disappeared for a while, but when I was putting in the code for the garage door, it stabbed into the back of me like a knife.
I looked at June, who was scrolling on her phone, seemingly oblivious to the presence watching us, then I shot my head towards the tree line. The dim motion sensor above the door only illuminated maybe 20 feet in front of it, and the trees were about 250 feet out. The only light there was the light from the full moon ahead, which gave everything a sickly blue and gray cover through the cloudy night.
Thick oaks and pines had created a wall of bark, stopping any light that would break through the line. The few glimpses I could get past the trees only resulted in a darkness that filled in the background like a painting. I quickly pressed the code in and got June into the truck. I pulled out a little too fast and got her home quickly.
When I pulled back in, I didn’t dare attempt to look back out at the woods. I closed the garage door and quickly ran up the back steps.
The feeling came back the next night. This time, June felt it too. Again, as I was putting in the code to the door when I felt it. It was like a cold breath down the back of my spine. I turned to see June staring into the woods.
“You alright?” I asked, trying not to show any sense of fear in my voice.
“Yeah. I just thought I heard a noise.” She replied, without breaking her gaze towards the trees. I never heard anything; I only felt the sensation I had the night previous. I stared at her for a moment, studying the tree line. No movement, not even any wind blowing the leaves of the trees. Like clockwork, I quickly put in the code, and we both got in the car.
The ride was silent at first. Only the ambiance of a fall night could be heard. I quickly thought up some school drama she might be interested in so that we could both get our minds off the presence plaguing us. It worked, and soon enough, we were talking about how the math teacher, Mr. Teague, was selling pot to students in the bathrooms. The notion of being watched slowly drained away.
The next night, I heard the noise too. The feeling was absent until the sound of a branch snapping. It rang out in the quiet night and echoed in my brain as I jumped around. June was already holding her phone flashlight up to attempt to see if she could see anything, but its light was too small to make an impact.
The moon was still relatively full, giving the treeline an ample amount of light. I squinted, and a new shape had appeared across the tapestry of the forest’s edge. I started laughing the second I saw it. The laugh was one of relief and astonishment at my stupidity. June started to nervously chuckle, but was confused about what I had found so funny.
“Look right there,” I said as I lowered and pointed towards the outline of a small group of 3–4 deer. June let out a loud, infectious “awww” as she laid eyes on a mother deer and her baby. We stood and watched the deer for a few minutes as they grazed on the grass right before the forest. I had felt so silly, worrying over nothing. My feeling of anxiety was caused by a few dumb deer.
As we watched the deer dinner party, another deer with large antlers walked out from the woods behind the group. I saw him out of the corner of my eye while I was turning around to finish putting in the garage door code. At first, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the buck, but when I turned around to get a better look, he immediately brought back feelings of eyes being glued to me.
Even in the dark, I could tell something about this deer was ever so slightly off. It was a little chunkier than the rest, or more muscular; it was hard to tell from the distance we were at. Its lower legs were just a bit thicker than normal, and its head seemed to move on a swivel. Its back half looked like it dropped a bit further than the rest of the deer that surrounded this new one. The back looked like it slinked back and forth, like the hide was swaying on the bones, absent of flesh.
It walked like it took a few moments to think about each step it took, and when it did take the step, it walked with a limp.
June threw her hands over her mouth and gasped.
“Oh, Greg, was that one hit by a car?” she got out through her hands. June never spent as much time outside and around wild animals as I had, so she didn’t get the same sense of uneasiness that I had gained from viewing the animals.
I took a second to think about what she said. The other deer didn’t react with fear or uneasiness to this new one, and it did walk with a limp, so June’s conclusion seemed a good enough band-aid for the small gash of uncertainty.
“I think so,” I murmured. The pack started walking away, and the strange one took up the rear as they walked back into the forest. My answer to her question made her start to tear up, so I took her home and let her know that the deer would be okay and that we would see him again. How I wish I were wrong.
On the ride to June’s house, we named the buc…
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