Section 24
(Paul)
You decide to head left to the cabins, thinking that you’ll either burst in on some comfy irresponsible frolicking, or at least have a chance to unpack before you wander out into the night to find your friends.
You arrive without incident. The cabins are all dark, but your friends’ cars are parked outside. When you get out of your car, you can hear noises in the distance, coming from the lake. It sounds like your friends are having loads of irresponsible alcohol-fueled fun! Obviously you want to get down there as soon as you can, so you decide to forgo unpacking your stuff (except for a case of Natty Light—ah, swill!), and head down to the lake. There is a path marked LAKE DOOMHOLE, so you start down it. In your anticipation to reach the fun, you do not notice the small dark figure lurking in the shadows. This, of course, is bad. Your mother always told you to pay attention to your surroundings, but did you listen? Well, now it’s too late.
You haven’t got a clue where it came from but suddenly, with an animal shriek, something is suddenly not only wrapped around your face, but stabbing you in the back with a pointy stick. Your screams are muffled in warm, slightly smelly fur as you run frantically in circles, slamming into trees. Whatever is on your face is also screeching, although not so much in terror as in delight. In your agony and panic, you somehow latch upon an idea. The next time you run into a tree, you begin slamming your face against it as hard as you can. This seems a brilliant idea, since there is a hostile shrieking something currently clinging to it. Some part of your mind congratulates you on your ingenuity. Momma didn’t raise no fools.
It works. The thing detaches and can be heard scampering off into the woods. Bleeding, you slump to the ground to rest. You don’t think you’ve been too badly injured, but you want a bit of a breather.
A beer would help, you think. Beer helps everything. You’re pretty sure you dropped the case as soon as you were attacked, and you haven’t wandered very far from the path. You stumble back towards the trail and find the place where there are blotches of blood and a random galaxy of scuffled footprints. As near as you can tell, this is where you should have been when you dropped the suds. There is also a single beer can (empty), and another set of prints leading off into the woods. They are tiny and kind of cute, and accompanied by another mark. It looks like a case of cheap beer has been drug through the dirt. Something has stolen your beer! This means war. There is no doubt in your mind that the culprit is the same thing that just tried to kill you. You pick up a stick of your own, and set off a-huntin’.
Fifty paces into the woods, you hear a rustling noise. Then something small and round gleams in the moonlight right before it hits you squarely in the face. You collapse in a cloud of exploding beer foam. Stunned, you begin to try standing up, but you are again pelted by a high velocity Natty Light. Laying on the ground, you look up and glimpse something hopping among the branches above you. There is a blur of motion and another can pegs you in the face.
Twenty cans later, you are lapsing in and out of consciousness. Something lands on your chest. Through a haze of pain and blood, you can see it approaching. It wields a torn can in its…paw?
Is that a monk— you never finish the thought. Your throat is slashed wide open with the edge of the can and you bleed out quickly.
The only sounds now are those of your friends frolicking in the lake, and the contented guzzling of beer by something small and furry.
You are bizarrely, inexplicably, unjustifiably dead. And something is drinking you beer.
Go back to Section 9.