Girl’s Trip, Gore, and Goners.
I am lost.
Those are the first words Selene allows herself to think in nearly an hour.
It was around the time she lost her friends, though her eyes lied to her and caught glimpses of them in her periphery as she walks; she ignores this by paying attention to the burn in her thighs. It grew from an ache to a full-blown cramp as nothing released the tension.
No amount of distance can take the scent of viscera, dirt, and piss. The flash of two bodies collided through such force that they became one, with guts and organs spread like wings. A cruel mockery of the kindest people Selene knew, Tara and Jade, now only parts to be consumed and decompose. Selene tears into her biceps to rip the image out.
I have to find Jude.
🍂🍁🍂
Selene wrestled with the tent flap, trying desperately to corral it into a flat surface as the wind tried to flip it around; Jude fared no better with her end of the tent.
Jude groaned as the tent hit her in the chin, “Fuck this tent, man. Why is so big?”
“Did you want to sleep in a tent by yourself?” Selene laughed, knowing Tara was scared of the dark. “After I tell all the spooky stories tonight? You think you’ll,” They pegged the sides down and slotted the polls together, “be able to walk back through the darkness after that?”
Jade sighed from the fireside. “Y’know, I thought we could skip the stories tonight, unless they’re happy.” Her hands peal twigs away from branches with the hacket as Tara cracks firewood apart with the axe.
Tara wiped her brow and flexed her fingers, “Please, Sel can’t scare us, we know all her good material!”
The tent finally stood and barely moved from the onslaught of wind, Selene and Jude high-fived. “Hey, just because I stopped making new stories doesn’t mean the old ones suck!”
Jude filled her cheeks with air and blew it out, “well…”
Selene set her camping chair a good distance away from the fire, which was now smouldering, and bowed her head. “I’m a wash-out.”
“At 27 too, so young.” Jade pats her hands on her cargo pants and falls into her chair. “Misunderstood in your time, how ever will you recover?”
“Financially? Never.”
They share a laugh as Jude passed cans of soup around. “You’ll have to heat it up yourselves, I’m too tired to do mine.” Her blinks become drawn out and languid.
The trip to the woods was a long one, about seven hours from home and then another hour hike to their campsite. The trip was in that sweet spot; close enough to home to not get homesick, but far enough away to feel like an adventure.
They eat in silence, Selene finished first and unfurled everyone’s sleeping spads and bags. They clean up from dinner and get ready for bed. They are all tucked into their sleeping bags when Jade said, “You guys heard the stories about this forest, right?”
Tara shuffled and flicked the lantern on, “yeah, about the kid that went missing.”
Jude glanced at Selene, “he was found though.”
Selene remembered the article and news interviews broadcasted, impossible to ignore. She also remembered the look of the boy they found, covered in dirt and barefooted. But his eyes…”he was different. The parents were beyond themselves with relieve but even they said it would take a bit to get their son back.”
“I remember they took this long shot of the reunion but the kid’s eyes looked…”
They shared glances and then silence as they shifted to look at the zipper of the tent door. “Yeah.”
Tara scooched closer, then the rest of the women followed suit. “Maybe we leave the light on, just in case.”
🍂🍁🍂
Selene opens her eyes, not releasing she had stopped walking as well. Her heart kicked into another wave of adrenaline as she got up.
I wish the light wasn’t there, I didn’t want to see.
She remembered the pool of blood seeping into her boots, wetting her socks, then her knees as she screamed into the abyss. The woods watched on, waiting. She remembered looking at the ground and finding footprints, Jude’s, leading out of camp. She started walking, ignoring th ebuzzing of flies gathering.
The trail of muddy footprints ending a few minutes ago, perhaps that is why she stopped, and now Selene listlessly stumbled through the brush in pitch blackness, directionless.
To be Continued…
