Who Dies First In 'My Wife And My Friend In The Forest'?

I just finished 'My Wife and My Friend in the Forest', and the death order hit hard. The friend goes first—brutally. It's not some off-screen thing either; the scene lingers on his desperation as something in the dark drags him away mid-sentence. The wife survives longer, but that just makes it worse. You see her unravel from grief and fear before her own inevitable end. The friend’s death sets the tone: no one’s safe, and the forest doesn’t play favorites. What stuck with me was how ordinary they seemed before things went wrong—laughing around a campfire one moment, screaming the next. The abruptness makes it feel real, like it could happen to anyone.

After analyzing the narrative structure of 'My Wife and My Friend in the Forest', the friend’s death serves as the inciting incident that propels the horror forward. He dies in Chapter 3 during a failed attempt to find help after their car breaks down. The prose focuses on sensory details—the crunch of leaves underfoot stopping abruptly, the wife’s choked scream when she finds his mangled backpack. His death isn’t just shock value; it isolates the remaining characters psychologically. The wife spends the next chapters hallucinating his voice, which blurs the line between supernatural threat and her breakdown.

The friend’s role as the first to die also subverts expectations. He’s introduced as the most capable—a survivalist who brought gear and maps. Watching him fail instantly dismantles the reader’s sense of security. The wife lasts until the final act, but her survival is worse in some ways. She witnesses phenomena the friend never saw, like the trees shifting positions at night or the whispers that mimic human speech. Her extended screen time makes the forest’s malice feel personal, like it’s savoring her suffering.

If you’re into horror that plays with tropes, this story does something clever with the death order. The friend—seemingly the ‘disposable’ character—dies first, but his death haunts every subsequent scene. The wife keeps finding his belongings: a pocketknife wedged in a tree trunk, his phone flashing with missed calls from his mom. These details make his absence heavier than a typical first-act kill. The forest even uses his voice to taunt her later, warping recordings she took of him laughing.

The wife’s death comes later, but it’s the friend’s that lingers. His final moment is left ambiguous—no body, just a trail of blood leading to a cave. That open-ended horror gnaws at you. Was he eaten alive? Transformed into something else? The story implies the forest feeds on hope, and his death crushes theirs instantly. The wife’s prolonged struggle almost feels like punishment for surviving him.