Morbid

~~~

“Poke it.” Anthony said, looking at the rotting animal as it lay, quiet, motionless, and gruesomely mutilated in the middle of the forest. The young boys eyes transfixed on the corpse, almost mesmerized by the discovery.

“Ewww, no way dude! You do it!” Danny responded. Danny hated animals, and he hated gross things, so a gross, dead, animal wasn’t something he was totally interested in playing with.

“No!”

“Why don’t we just get a counselor to clean it up or something…” Seth, another boy, asked as he lazily leaned against a tree. He was only over here cause everyone else was, he didn’t actually care about the dead animal.

“Oh come on, Seth, don’t be so lame.” James, a fourth boy, said as he came around from behind the tree. “Don’t you want to know what kind of animal did this or what it was?”

“How does poking it tell us that stuffs?”

James shrugged, “I dunno, but it’ll be fun at least.”

“Guys! Guys! I gotta stick! I gotta stick!” Niko, the fifth and last of the group shouted as he ran towards the group, holding a long, crooked, and sharp stick. “Look!” He said, waving it in the kids faces.

“Stop it, Niko.” Anthony said, snatching it out of the air. For a moment Niko looked like he was going to say something, argue to get the stick back, but instead he just looked down towards the ground for a moment, defeated and saddened by his loss. But his head popped right back up as Anthony reached the stick toward the bloody mess, and the four other boys huddled around him
to watch.

Anthony stuck the stick inside of the carcass and began shifting it around. The skin, blood, and guts all began moving around with the flow of the sick, creating sickening motions and sounds as the stick sloshed around. “Thank God Andrew isn’t here.” Seth muttered as Anthony continued to swirl the stick around in the body. Guts began to slowly work their way out of it, falling into the dirt and turning an even more sickly mixture of red and brown.

“Are those bite marks?” James asked as Anthony shifted the skin around, revealing large and long gashes beneath the animals fur.

“Maybe.” He said, continuing to manipulate the flesh with the stick.

“Or, like, claws.” Niko suggested. The other boys just nodded, and Anthony hummed in agreement. All five of them were transfixed on the gory sight. Something about the mysterious flesh, the oozing blood, the sloppy body parts was fascinating to the boys. Maybe they were just all bored with camp and looking for something exciting. Or maybe they were just boys being boys and playing with gross stuff.

“What are you doing?” A different voice. An older voice. A feminine voice asked from behind them. All five boys eyes widened with shock as Anthony dropped the stick in shock. Quickly, the boys snapped around to face the voice, and were presented with a teenage girl, hands on her hips, and wearing a green shirt that read “Fireside C.I.T”.

“Nothing, Gabi.” Anthony said, noticing how his friends stunned silence would make them look even more guilty. Gabi, the C.I.T, careened her neck around and stood on her tip toes to get a look behind the boys.

“Are you playing with a dead animal?” She asked.

“Yes…” Seth was quick to giveaway. James nudged him to tell him to be quiet, and Anthony nudged him from the other side. Gabi just sighed.

“Look, get back to your table. Andrew’s not here yet, and Matt doesn’t have to know…” Gabi began, as she had chosen to give the boys a break. But just as she was about to let them go, she was interrupted by a loud howl.

“Doesn’t have to know what?” A boy, also wearing a green C.I.T shirt, asked as he walked over to Gabi and the boys.

“Nothing, Matt. It’s no big deal.” Gabi said. The boys all stayed silent.

“What’s not a big deal? What are you doing talking to my League?”

“I’m doing the job you’re supposed to be doing. You know, keeping your League out of trouble.” Gabi replied with intended snark. Matt was always too distracted by the other female C.I.T’s to be bothered by his League. She wasn't going to take any lip from him about how to do her job.

“Whatever, what were they doing?” Matt demanded, Gabi looked over at the boys and rolled her eyes, causing all five to snicker just a little.

“They were playing with a dead animal, using a stick.”

“What! Why!” Matt exclaimed, turning and shouting at the boys. “Do you know how disgusting that is!”

“Do we look like we care?” Anthony snarked back. Though he had been expecting his friend support, the other boys turned their heads too look at the ground after Anthony’s outburst, obviously afraid of Matt’s authority.

“Excuse me!” Matt said as he started to approach Anthony, “Are you kidding me?” He began to stomp towards the boy but before he could take even a single step, Gabi grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him back.

“Calm down, Matt, damn.” She said, letting him go only after she had pulled him back enough to get his attention. Gabi looked at the boys and commanded, “Samurai’s, go back to your table. Now.” The boys scurried off, thankful to be free of trouble and away from their annoying C.I.T.

“Thank you, Gabi.” James said as he ran by. Matt turned to look at the boys back and gave him a disgusted look before turning back to Gabi.

“Stop doing my job for me.” Matt said, prepared for a big fight. But Gabi simply walked past him.

“Then start doing it yourself.”

Chapter 2

Andrew stepped off the bus and into the cold, morning air. The dew on the grass of the main field was producing a slight bit of fog as it evaporated in the sunlight. Andrew looked down at his clipboard and quickly wrote in the buses arrival time, “9:06” he wrote down, before placing it in the clipboard bin and leading the campers toward the Fireside Pavilion, a large open air pavilion with a stadium seating fire pit behind it. Andrew turned around, counting the kids on the bus in his head “Uno, do, tres…” he went on. He counted in Spanish for fun, and when he would do it out loud it normally lead to confused looks from younger kids, and annoyed looks from the older. It was only entertaining really to him, but that didn’t stop him from doing it.

After having to walk back onto the bus and personally shoo Ivan off of it, as the boy refused to leave simply to be an annoyance once again, Andrew faced the fields of Camp Fireside. Four, rectangular, long stretches of green grass filled his eyesight, bordered on one side by the main town road and on the other by the woods leading up to North Camp. Each field had some kind of defining characteristic. The one farthest from Andrew and too the left had a large patch of dirt smack dab in the middle that Gavin, the groundskeeper, had been fighting for years to get rid of. Every Spring he planted new grass, every Summer the patch would be gone, and by the time summer ended the grass would have been stamped back out of existence by a combination of children’s feet and rain water pooling in it. The field below it had the Shack attached too it, a very old building whose origins had been lost to the history of the land. The Shack was basically a large, wooden building with three walls, a roof, a porch, and a staircase down onto the field. Andrew himself was standing on the Flat Field, the only field which had been shaped by Gavin himself to be a perfect location for sports like kickball and baseball. The Flat Field was elevated slightly above the other three, and even provided a view of the Bus Circle, the small gravel driveway that buses used to enter and exit the camp from the main road. Separating the Flat Field and the Bus Circle was a very small, wooden fence. Really just a couple logs thrown together on top of each other and called a fence. The final field wasn’t so much a field as it was a crossroads for the various locations at camp. If you walked one direction you came to the bus ramp, another and you came to the athletic complexes, another brought you to the offices and indoor parts of camp, and the final direction brought you over a bridge and into the woods to North Camp. You could still play games on this field, but it wasn’t very easy or very large. The field had been given the nickname “The Divide” for longer than Andrew had even been attending to Camp Fireside.

Andrew walked forward towards the edge of the Flat Field, where the kids in all the different age groups were lining up to be walked to the various parts of the camp. Jaxon stood in line with the rest of the kids in his age group, getting ready to walk up to the campsite. All the different campsites for all the different age groups were up in North Camp, and Andrew and Jaxon were specifically part of “Strelka”.

“You ready for that hike today?” Andrew asked Jaxon as he walked up behind him. The young boys shoulders drooped and his mouth hung open.

“Again? Another hike.” He said, exasperated.

“Yeah, of course!” Andrew laughed, “It’s only the best thing to do at camp!”
“I hate hikes so so so much.” Jaxon whined, Andrew simply laughed again.

“You’ll learn to like it, trust me. It’s not that bad once you-“ He began before being interrupted by someone yelling “STARK.” Andrew turned around, annoyed look on his face, only to find Angela, one of the Camps Section Directors, walking towards him with a piece of paper.

“I don’t mean to interrupt you’re riveting conversation with a dumb eight year old, but I need you to run this envelope up to the office for me.” Angela said, presenting Andrew with a white envelope. Jaxon blushed and looked down at the ground, Andrew clenched his fist for brief moment, just to get a little bit of his frustration out.

“You know that kids not stupid, and he’s standing right here, right? Like, he can hear you acting like our conversation doesn’t matter. Plus I have places to be, find a CIT too do it or something.” Andrew responded, turning to walk away.

“Well I’m sure Brad and Monica would love to have a little addendum added to your review letting them know you hate to listen to authority figures.” Angela snarkly added, grinning with a mischievous smile. She made her threat as loud as she could, trying to attract the attention of other staff and campers without making it abundantly clear thats what she was doing. Now all eyes were on Andrew, both staff and campers, as they wondered how he would respond.

Andrew snatched the envelope out of Angela’s hand as quick as he could and began walking away. A triumphant smile began to form on her face until Andrew abruptly stopped and then turned 180 degrees to face her again. He raised his hand, which was holding his smartphone and an open audio recording app. “I’ll happily deliver this note to Brad and Monica.” Andrew said, “I’m sure they’d love to hear about the section director who bad mouthed a camper to his face. You know how much Brad likes to personally remove bad eggs from his staff.”

Angela’s mouth twitched with sudden frustration and she made a motion to move towards Andrew, but he quickly turned and walked toward the main office.