Disappearance: Tabitha (author: ptddddd)

It was almost 3 a.m. when Tabitha, a tall, beautiful Asian woman with long, black hair that reached the small of her back, and who wore red-painted fingernails and sported a broad chest, hourglass hips, and long, slender legs, walked into the spa area of the Great Swamp camp. She was alone, having spent the entire day navigating the Central Peat Bogs, using the Bog Detector app on her phone to track down any bottomless quicksand pits that visitors (if they ever dared to venture into the Central Bogs in the first place) might encounter. Along the way, Tabitha herself nearly drowned in said quicksand pits three times, only being saved because Danica was accompanying her the entire day. As per the rules of the spa, Tabitha was fully nude, her tall, slender body shining in the dimmed lights surrounding the pool of deep, bubbly peat. Having finally gotten some time to relax after submitting her collected data to the TGS research department (itself a surprisingly time-consuming process), the naked, Asian woman was set on sinking to the bottom of the pool of peat in front of her, and spending who-knows-how-long there to unwind. Examining the pool from its edge, Tabitha saw in the corner of her eye a piece of paper, lying on the tile-patterned floor. The naked guide walked over and picked it up to analyze it. As she examined the paper, she saw it was 8.5 by 11 inches in size, much like your average piece of printer paper, which the guide assumed had somehow blown away from the main office. When she flipped it over, she saw that the entire other side of it was cluttered with text, seemingly written in pitch-black ink, the handwriting unfamiliar to its reader.

Suddenly, before the tall, slender woman could continue, the lights around the spa gave out, leaving poor Tabitha alone in the darkness. Even worse, even the moon was being blotted out by clouds that had unexpectedly rolled in.

Things didn’t get any easier, as Tabitha found that a thick veil of fog was slowly engulfing the area, threatening to trap the Asian woman within it. Yet still, she didn’t notice anything particularly weird about the whole endeavor, thinking it was somehow all either special effects or a malfunction with the building’s power.

It wasn’t long before the fog had vanished, and the clouds above the pale moon dissipated as well. As the lights around the spa lit up simultaneously, the Asian woman and her piece of paper were no longer visible.

Meanwhile, the fog that once invaded the swamp had transported Tabitha somewhere deep within the swamp, far away from camp, to the Northern Peat Bogs. Walking out into the treacherous bog in front of her and with only the light of the bright full moon illuminating her, the naked guide had sunk to her knees as, now that she regained some sort of light source (the moon), she cleared her throat before continuing to read the mysterious letter.

The moment after Tabitha uttered the words ‘final explorer,’ another mysterious figure appeared, silently watching from a place that Tabitha could not see (which, currently, could be anywhere that isn’t in front of the letter she was reading). This illusory, dark-skinned figure stood 5 feet 9 inches tall, had long, dreadlocked hair, and gray eyes, which were decorated with purple eyeliner, leering in amusement at the sinking Asian woman. Unlike Tabitha, this woman was clad in a shining, purple bikini as she continued to gaze silently at her newest show, waiting for her to be swallowed by the earth.

The strange woman giggled in elation, seeing her naked victim now down to her waist in the quaking bog, slipping past her belly button. At the same time, Tabitha’s attention still lingered on the mysterious letter, its origin a mystery to the Asian tour guide.

Tabitha continued reading, her eyes laser-focused on the letter as her mouth and nose disappeared one after the other.

As the mysterious ebony woman silently yet gleefully watched her prey, the tall, slender Asian woman slowly disappeared into the muck, and her soulless watcher observed as bubbles burst around her. Still fixated on the letter, which remained in her hands as she vanished, Tabitha continued to sink into the dark muck, uninterrupted and unable to be rescued.

After (somehow) reading the final line of the letter, it was at this moment that Tabitha finally snapped back to reality. The instant she realized she was currently about three feet under in a quicksand bog, her eyes widened in horror, as she gasped for air, deep, sticky peat filling up down her throat, up her nose, and into her eye sockets. Letting go of the now useless letter, she slid her hands through the concrete-like quickmud upward, futilely attempting to break through the surface. Yet, all she could accomplish was accelerate her descent with every cramped movement she made. Her ears filled up with the goopy mud, deafening her to everything around her, save for the squelching of the peat carrying her downward toward her muddy grave. No matter how much she tried to resist, she could only find herself sinking deeper… and deeper… until finally, her consciousness slowly faded from the lack of oxygen, as more and more peat slowed like lava down the orifices on her face.

Meanwhile, the mysterious figure only watched from afar in ecstasy, as her newest victim had been silenced, the surface of the peat now as silent as it was before Tabitha had entered it. Content with her latest victim, the figure disappeared into the fog, waiting for yet another victim to utter “her” name, so she could happily watch them meet their boggy end.

As Tabitha met her untimely fate, back at the spa, Fiona had seemingly given up her half-hearted investigation over the tour guide’s vanishment, having lowered herself to her chin in the center of the peat pool, her long, ginger braided ponytail trailing behind her, as she stared aimlessly toward the clear night sky. Seemingly lost in her thoughts within the silence the spa had provided, it wouldn’t be long before the camp’s gardener would be accompanied by Miranda, who entered the spa area wearing only her black-rimmed glasses.

To be continued!