Not Good

While I may be good at telling a real scream from a pretend scream, I'm not good at identifying the source of the scream. The woods out the back of the cabin were thick were trees and shrubbery. It was possible to see through them to some degree so I wasn't losing track of my fellow searchers but there were too many hiding spots. With the screaming now ceased, I had no good way to tell where I should be headed. I was trying to hurry but I didn't know to where I was hurrying.

Suddenly I heard Dave loudly call upon a deity. I located him, saw the look of shock and surprise on his face, and rapidly headed in his directions. I was the first to join him. I immediately regretted it.

Tim lay limply against a tree, the side of his face caved in and slashed. He looked very dead. Blood dripped, bone and gristle exposed to the air. It was a gruesome sight. In an unexpected manner, I had failed as chaperone.

His lady friend, Janet the cute girl that had apologized to me for him, was backed up against another tree facing him, wide eyed and trembling, clearly in shock. When Tina arrived on the scene, I did my best to steer her away from the body and towards the young lady, directly that she be taken inside. Tina's curiosity was strong enough that she fought for a glimpse of the body. The verbiage that spilled from her mouth wasn't pretty but neither was the sight before her.

Dave's shock had faded. Carefully, sadly, he checked for a pulse. The young man looked very dead to me but Dave knew him. Perhaps he felt that this could be a trick or maybe just needed to convince himself of the reality of the situation. Once Dave stepped away from him, I touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Is there a tarp or blanket we could use to cover him up?”

Dave nodded slowly. “We should take him inside. I don't want to let the critters get to him.”

I hesitated. “We shouldn't disturb him yet. This might be a crime scene. Let's get some more information before we do that.”

“Crime scene?” Dave echoed. “That's the work of an animal.”

“It might just look like an animal,” I informed. “We have someone who likely saw it happen. If she says it was an animal, I'll help you move him. Okay?” Dave thought about it but eventually nodded. I steered him away from the sight, moving him back towards the cabin.

Relationships is a Funny Word

“Sounds like a real winner,” Tina declared.

“He wasn't always like that,” I defended. “Most of the time he was a lot of fun. Very clever.”

“How bad was he when he was bad?” she questioned.

I looked at her blankly. “I just told you what he did to my car. That wasn't enough?”

She gave me a frustrated look. “Right but was he always like that when he was bad or was that something special?”

I hummed and hawwed a bit. “He would do some weird things but, at the same time, this was special.”

“Okay.” She relaxed a bit. “Cause it was starting to sound abusive. If he'd been your girlfriend, I'd say you should dump her.”

“Have you ever had a boyfriend like that?” I asked.

Tina shook her head no. “I've had... friends that had bad relationships and its hard, hard to see them when they're in them and hard to get them to end them.”

“Because you're not in the relationship you don't understand,” I added.

“Yes! Exactly!” she agreed. “And they are exactly right, we don't know the situation. Like your story, your mom giving you the advice but she didn't understand right? That one moment wasn't going to break up your friendship. It could have, maybe it should have, but it didn't.”

“You still see him?” Dave asked. I nodded. “Good times? Just sitting around reminiscing about old times, huh?”

I thought back on my last conversation with Eric and the circumstances surrounding it. “Talk about old times, yes. Fondly? No, not really. He's... insane.”

“So you're not friends anymore?” Tina checked. I confirmed this was the case. “Good! At least he's not dragging you down.”

“He tries, he just doesn't succeed.”

Our conversation stopped suddenly with the sound of a scream. I've been around trouble enough to recognize a serious scream when I hear it. For that first moment we froze, as if we were trying to believe what we were hearing. When we saw the look on each other's faces, we knew we weren't imagining it.

I was the first one out the door.