This story was actually inspired and started by 
The air was cool and the thin sliver of the moon in the sky illuminated their van adorned with a smiling animated crawfish. Shroom was snoring loudly slouched in the front seat and Cryptonius was joking to himself in the back row about how "Any monsters wouldn't have to do much listening". He thought about what that hermit said, hogwash. "Superstitious happenings" they were just trying to keep us from the good crawdad spot" Cryptonius continued to ponder as he restlessless adjusted himself in the back of the van in an attempt to sleep.
Cryptonius tossed and turned. "Stupid coin" he thought. "The only reason they even left to this mountain range to go for crawdads was a coin toss, and now due to dumb luck they are stuck camping in this sardine can of a van by the famous "Lake Infinity, nothing but crawdads" he grumbled. "I swear that coin is weighted, always coming up heads.." he continued to speculate to himself.
"I can't sleep for shit" Cryptonius thought to himself as he stepped out of the back of the cramped little van for some air that didn't smell quite so.... particular. "Damn crawdads, Start reeking after a few days, eating and defecating in the same bucket. Who could blame em? We're going to need to sell these or get the refrigerator up and running again and get to cooking" he muttered to himself. Everything was falling apart, and now the silver lining of this whole business venture was they were stuck in the middle of nowhere with a run down van full of crawdads. 11 months they had spent on this food truck, "Living the dream" he chuckled as he got ready to go about another attempt at some shuteye, but before he could close the door he could've sworn the lake rippled a second. A trick of the light perhaps he thought.
"Next time it's rock paper scissors , by hell or high water" he assured himself as he drifted back to sleep next to the buckets of water holding their live bounty.
The dawn broke and Cryptonius awoke to the explicatives and laments of Shroom "God damn it, son of a bitch" Shroom was outside examining the van and red in the face. "Something absolutely SHREDDED our tires, tore the shit out of the sides, I have no clue what we'll do about the crawdads. What do you think a damn bear?". Cryptonius stepped out of the van to examine their arboreal surroundings anew and drew as pale as a sheet as he looked upon the path they had taken to get here.
"ummmmmm Shroom?" Cryptonius said.
"Yeah Cryptonius?" he replied
"Do you see those trees blocking the turnoff onto this bend?" Cryptonius pointed and Shroom looked. The pallor was soon mutual. The large trees that greeted them upon taking the turnoff were now uprooted and lying square across the only route remotely vehicle-traversable from this lake.
"Whatever moved those must be big, and smart enough to know how to trap us" Cryptonius said. "And I don't think it's no damn ghost"
"We can try and make some distance to the cabin" Shroom suggested.
"Yeah, but we have to go through the woods and it's already mid-day. If we are out in the wilderness whatever did this in the night will surely have us. The only thing that saved our hides this time was this bucket o' bolts, I say we stay one more night in the van and head for help tommorow instead of going through the forest in the evening"
"Fuck" yelled shroom, so eloquently. "Then I guess you know what time it is...."
"Don't you fucking say it" interrupted Cryptonius.
"It's time to flip a coin" Shroom finished as he pulled from his pocket the same accursed piece of currency that landed them in this predicament in the first place. Shroom covered the coin in anticipation for the toss.
"Heads we stay in the van, Tails we go to the cabin" Shroom said as his thumb launched the coin skyward and it spun with wicked speed. The coin landed in Shrooms palm and he frowned. "Heads" he said flatly.
Cryptonius and Shroom prepared for the night, they made makeshift traps, alerts, and weapons from fishing equipment and errant branches. The hours dragged on and soon the Sun began to become obscured by the distant treeline.
This was it, if something was coming they weren't going to make it easy. Once the sun started to fall the pair entered the van with their improvised fishing spears. The air was tense, the sounds of various crickets in the distance even felt on edge.
"What do you think it is Cryptonius?" asked Shroom as he looked from the passenger's window.
"Dunno, awful big though. Those trees were deep rooted they didn't come up easy" said Cryptonius as he adjusted and readjusted his arsenal of both tackle and weaponry. The ensuing silence seemed to suffocate them, until a low bubbling could be heard from the lake. Both of them tensed up and readied makeshift spears as they stared towards the lake at the frothing water. Gigantic mandibles and crustacean claws emerged from the froth as out stepped a ghastly horror. It had the posture of a man and that was the extent of it's human features. It resembled a large crimson crawdad but must've been at least a few meters high, not like any crawdad they had ever seen. Upon breaching the water it let forth a chittering wail and began slowly advancing towards the van. As it advanced the duo's captured crawdads fervently writhed in their respective buckets.
"I guess they were right about there being more crawdads than you could fish eh?" Crytponius said to shroom as he chuckled lightly.
Shroom said nothing and instead readies his spear and nodded, the bit of gallows' humor going without reaction. It was coming.
To be continued next time. This was fun, thanks for tagging me. Don't forget to follow if you are interested in more of this, or random stuff. Cheers.