They call it the mist path. At about the halfway point, there’s this rickety bridge that takes you from one side of a small gorge to the other.

At first, they thought people were getting confused in the mist and falling over the edge.

They began to add barriers and protective measures.

Still, bodies kept turning up.

Those of us who had crossed that bridge and survived knew better than the authorities did.

There was something in that mist. Not a monster, though I’m told some may have seen jaundice-yellow eyes staring at them in the distance.

A hallucinogenic substance that disorients and confuses is my guess, but we’ll never know for certain what lurks out there in the mist.

I barely made it out alive. I thought the bridge was engulfed in flames, and I was choking on the smoke. The ash was falling like rain. Except my friend was sure we were going to drown.

I was with it enough to know that both couldn’t be true. I got us out as my friend shrieked like a banshee and thrashed through imaginary waters.

We survived because we traveled together. If you ever find yourself alone in a creepy place, turn around.

There are things in this world we will never understand or explain. You don’t want to be another casualty of our ignorance.

J.A. Steckling

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Per usual, inspiration struck late at night, and I wrote this without checking if it’s under the 500 words for flash fiction.

Not that I’m overly wordy as a writer, but writing shorter pieces has always been a challenge for me because I just have so much story to convey. I’m very proud of its brevity, even if it doesn’t qualify!