"Forest Nightmare Syndrome" is what they called it. Reports of soldiers seeing monsters in their sleep, and those monsters being behind corners when they wake. They sent them home, but the nightmares didn't stop. They saw the monsters in their waking life, too. Getting braver. Staying for longer. Getting closer.

Luckily, they disappear after around two weeks. I'm not so lucky. The base before mine was attacked and completely overrun by the hoardes of monsters from the forest. We haven't gotten supplies or been able to swap out in two months, and the monsters of Forest Nightmare Syndrome are as real as it gets. Dozens of men have disappeared, and many more have been found mutilated. Monsters have walked with us, some have even taken up duties. One guy even got a really horny one to suck him off every night. Lucky bastard.

It took some of us a few more weeks than normal to get our nightmares. We thought the dread of opening a door and not knowing if the man on the other side was dead or not was over, but it started up again a few days ago.

I'll be the next to die.

My monster doesn't speak, but I can hear what it's thinking. It's hungry. Scared. It sounds traumatized. Only I can see it, and it looks just like my old friend, but... Its hollow eyes cry tears of black, its spine is nearly separated from its back entirely. It looks like it has no meat or fat in its abdomen, just a hollow covering of dead skin. Its intestines are visible under the skin. It doesn't breathe, but their bones and organs pulsate like it does. Sometimes I stare at it, and their intestines puff up like they're filling with something. They start to spill over their pelvis and weigh down the skin after a while.

Everyone else in Base-fRSK has noticed how it's been affecting me. I haven't told anyone about it. They try to keep my spirits up like how I've been doing to them, but it's not enough. There's not enough jokes in the world to make up for what I see every night. And every night, it gets closer. Its vocal chords clack together like stones, crying to get me to notice it. It wants to be me. It wants me to hold it, to wrap it in my arms and tell it it's okay. It wants what I can do. It cries because I'm everything it wants in every way. Yesterday, I couldn't move after I got into bed. It walked into my room and begged me to be together with it. I write letters to all my old friends to get it off my mind, but it's begun to scream when I write letters to the person it looks like.

I'm probably dead by the time you read this. I've put this note into a metal box so the fire doesn't reach it. Tonight, I'm going to burn away my entire body in a fiery explosion. I am going to connect my very soul to the Darkest Forest and use it's power to finally kill this fucking thing. It doesn't deserve to live, or produce more of itself. It's horrific and needs to burn. I don't care if I die, I don't even care if the entirety of America is consumed in the blast.

This place needs to burn. Burn brighter and hotter than the hunger of the entire hoard of sunstalkers. Burn with more fire than even the sun itself.

I've already begun to hear the disappointed whispering of spirits and agonized screams of the dark monsters. The Dark Seal will burn with my wrath. The trees will cry gasoline. The Darkest Forest will never, ever, be dark again.