The Preserve

A horror tale of hog heaven

1

On my last of day of twelfth grade, 1986, instead of running out of the door with my middle finger held high, my piss-poor academic performance dictated that I would have to take American Government in summer school to acquire the diploma for which I cared so very little. I’d failed the regular Government session big time. To be fair, the teacher did have a goddamn metal plate in his head and foamy white shit in the corners of his mouth, both of which were not conducive to learning. On top of that, his voice had an affectless slurring drawl. None of this had any positive educational influence whatsoever on my weed-addled mind. He might as well have been speaking in tongues for all the good it did me. So yeah, I failed the class like a boss, and consequently found my ass dumped directly in summer school, post haste.

To my surprise, I actually ended up liking my summer school teacher. Better still, I even learned some things about the government. The only issue with that class was that I was partying every night until the wee hours and then coming to back class the next day a semi-conscious vegetable.

That’s where I met JD.

JD was a short but lanky, disturbingly stinky kid with a raging five-o’clock-shadow. Think swarthy troll. He wasn’t the only kid around with facial hair, but he was the only one I knew who looked like he owned a back-alley butcher shop.

One day, while being shown a movie in class, JD and I started talking, eventually meandering to the topic of how tired I had been. JD reached into his greasy mechanic’s shirt pocket and whipped out a little tin.

“Store bought uppers,” he said, grinning like a lunatic. This was my first real introduction to caffeine. I wasn’t really a coffee drinker yet at that point, so as you might imagine, the number of pills he suggested had me bouncing off the walls, half mad. I was still tired, but now there was scant chance of my dozing off for several hours.

I told him that he’d given me way too much, and that I needed to calm the fuck down. So, he suggested I join him for lunch and go “Spark up a jay,” as he so eloquently put it. I jumped all over the offer as I was feeling an oncoming caffeine-induced panic attack.

The daily “jay” quickly became a routine. Every lunchtime, we would take away to a nature preserve, just a short drive from the school. Then, we would take a quick walk into the dense marsh and get uproariously high.

After we smoked, the preserve would appear to me like a magical place, with strange sights, sounds, and smells. I found the uncanny sense of otherness to be almost almost overwhelming. It was as though there was something supernatural out on the fringes, present just below the surface, accessible only by these altered states. That feeling, no matter how crazy, was intense and felt very real. It was so strange, in fact, that it scared me.

And then, the next day, we would arrive at the preserve, sober once again. But by the time we’d trekked deep into the mire and smoked ourselves back into a nice heavy stupor, the magic would bleed back in, as if it were taunting me from some invisible vantage point.

Once, I made the rookie mistake of trying to explain all this to JD, but I might as well have been looking into the empty, soulless black of a shark’s eyes. There was no sign of comprehension in there whatsoever. I would have had better luck with a wheel of cheese. So, after that I kept that shit to myself. Let someone else try and thread that needle.

A couple weeks later the class ended and I went back to my full-time job of being a complete degenerate. Miraculously, I had passed the class, which meant I was able to finally get my diploma and be done with grade school for good. Boner City.

I quickly established the following routine: sleep all day, get high all night, drink, drop acid (when it was available), eat everything, and then repeat. Hey, it worked. Why fix what ain’t broke?

My buddy Forbes and I had our own little two-man pot cabal in his mom’s aging but cushy townhouse. She was never around, leaving the place to Forbes and his doings. We were like the Mystic Order of Suburban Potheads, a group so deeply occulted even we barely remembered we were in it. All told it lasted years. It’s amazing how time flies when you’re perpetually stoned.

Not long after summer school ended, JD started coming around Forbes’ place fairly regularly. We had made the mistake of asking him over on one of the occasions when our own dealer had run dry. The thing was, neither of us really liked JD. He was dumb as a stump, and really fucking creepy. Not that we were a barrel of laughs, because we damn well weren’t. But we were a very specific breed of moron, and the rules of our engagement were obscure and peculiar.

At first JD might show up here and there with a bag, and we would selflessly help him smoke it—all of it. It was benign enough. And really, if you compiled a list of the shitty things drug users put up with just to get a buzz, hanging out with a dolt was far from the worst. In time, though, it seemed like that suburban werewolf was always around. It just became too much.

Knowing well the risks, we summoned him during a particularly nasty dry spell, only to find out that he was out of weed too. Forbes had cash, however, so we asked JD if he could take us over to his dealer to buy a half ounce of whatever he had. He said he’d have to feel the guy out over the phone because the guy was kind of weird about strangers. Because of course he was. That a drug dealer was weird was a shock to no one. Every dealer I’ve ever known was a freak of some variety or other, including the ones I actually liked. It’s a freak’s job. So, no one skipped a beat when he tried to warn us about this guy. He even went to the living room just so he could make a private call to the dude. It was all hush-hush, which had already pissed me off from the jump. It’s weed, in the late ‘80s. Everyone smoked it. And while it wasn’t exactly plentiful, it was absolutely common. It wasn’t like coke. That was a whole world all its own. You had to be careful who you bought coke from, because those guys were usually beholden to some genuinely scary people you did not want to cross. Plus, most coke dealers were also coke addicts, and that was just a hornet’s nest all its own. Weed was a safe buy, and a safe sell.

So when JD got all cagey about his guy, my warning signs went off. But,m in the end, he set the deal up after all, and before long the three of us loaded into Forbes’ Suzuki Samurai and were off.

The guy worked at an Italian restaurant that had been in his family since they opened over a decade prior. We all knew the place because we’d all grown up eating there. It was the “Congrats, you didn’t fail!” spot, or the “Cheers on the fourth place season!” destination. They made a decent ravioli, and some mostly edible pizza, nothing special, but you know, serviceable.

On the drive over, I realized that I hadn’t been to the place in several years. It’s funny to return somewhere you knew in one world, now approaching it from another. If you spend enough time living in one location as a kid, you eventually experience the deepening layers of weirdness which are barely contained beneath the shiny plastic surface. The wholesome Italian joint with the pot dealer who works out the back door. The nature preserve with the hidden otherworldly aspect. The seemingly respectable homes hiding the wife beaters, the cheating spouses, the serial killers, and the potheads. It fanned out like an incurable infection.

Once we arrived, JD reminded us again that this guy was dicey about selling to people he didn’t know, and then he added that because of this, he wanted JD to make the buy alone.

“Hold up, man. Why are just telling us now? I’m not cool with that,” I told him, irritated that he’d held out until the last second.

“I didn’t think it would be a big deal, man,” JD muttered, tail between his legs.

“Dude, I don’t trust this guy either. You’re just gonna go in there with our money. . .”

“My money,” Forbes said.

“Right. His money,” I said gesturing towards Forbes.

“It’s cool, man, really, it’s cool. I can vouch. The man has good shit.”

I mean, what choice did we have? Barge in there during dinner hours? That would go down well. So, off he went, ambling towards the back door like he came from the Shire. He knocked, the door opened just enough for JD to slip through, and in he went.

It seemed like he was in there forever, and I was beginning to give some serious consideration to banging on the door myself, when the door finally swung open and our little homunculus werewolf popped out of the door with a huge, shit-eating grin on his face. And as if on cue, he was dumb enough to take the bag out of his pocket and wave it around like a flag at a Memorial Day parade. I could have killed him.

Fucking idiot, I thought, “Get in the car, dude,” I said as he approached, raising my voice in annoyance. He hopped in back, and off we fucked.

We had an ornate, glass Star Trek Enterprise bong we’d picked up at an Austin headshop waiting for us back at the house, but for the drive, Forbes had brought a little aluminum one-hitter. They’re super portable, but you have to be careful with them, because if you get too excited and hit it too hard, the entire hit will go down your windpipe. It’s a particularly unpleasant experience.

Forbes took the pipe out of his pocket and I unrolled the baggie. I took a sniff, a ritualistic necessity, and immediately wrinkled up my nose. Right away I knew something was wrong. I looked at the contents of the bag, sniffed again, and immediately told Forbes to “Turn the fuck around.”

“Why?” Forbes asked.

“Because this fucker just ripped us off, this is oregano.”

I was enraged. And I blamed it on JD.

“You motherfucker, what the fuck is wrong with you? Do you think we’re stupid, like we wouldn’t know?” I shouted.

“Dude,” he said, hands raised, clearly on the defensive, “I didn’t know, I didn’t!”

“The fuck you didn’t,” I screamed, “you were in on it.”

“Dude, I swear, I . . .”

I interrupted, “You just better get our fucking money back.”

We returned to the restaurant, no one say a word. Once we arrived, JD hopped out and I followed. He saw me and turned to face me, putting one hand up.

“Whoa, whoa, wait, man, he doesn’t want no-one there with me,” JD whimpered.

'“Yeah? Well, tough shit. I’m not putting up with this. Let’s go.”

He let it go.

I accompanied him to the backdoor, and he lightly rapped on the door with his knuckles. I sighed and pounded on the door with my fist.

“Dude,” JD implored, his eyes clearly worried.

“Shut up, goddammit,” I snapped.

I was about to pound again when the door opened and this tall swarthy guy with a big nose and molestache, dolled up in a beige business shirt and clip-on tie, leaned halfway out.

Right away the guy looked at JD, irritated, “What the fuck, dude, I told you, no one else.”

I interjected, “Bitch, I don’t know who the fuck you think I am, but you aren’t getting over with this bullshit. Give me my money back or I’ll drag your bitch ass out here and shove you in the fucking dumpster.”

Suddenly his demeanor changed and he stepped outside, gently closing the door behind him.

“Okay, okay man, I’m sorry, here, take it,” and he reached into his ugly-ass chino pocket and gave my the bills.

I snatched the money out of his hand and counted it and then reached behind him, opened the door, and grabbed his dumb fucking tie and shoved him back inside, slamming the door behind him.

“I should leave your fucking ass here for this shit, let you walk home,” I said to JD.

“Dude, I’m sorry, I had no idea, I’m telling you.”

“Whatever,” I told, him, “I should have known you’d lead us to an imbecile. Get in the car, let’s go.”

Thankfully, our regular guy ended up coming through the next day, and then JD showed up that night with a bag real weed of his own. He also brought a Lucite bong with a Z-Rock sticker attached front and center. Z-Rock was a metal radio station that lasted a brief time at the end of the ‘80s. Ever the fucking bard, JD named it “Z-Bong.”

We smoked ourselves stupid, and spent much of the next morning behind blackout curtains, blasting Swans at punishing volume and playing catch with a tennis ball in the glow of a black light and a strobe. Highly recommended. Pun intended.

After that day we went to great efforts to avoid JD, weed offerings or not. If he called, I was always “out.” If he came by, he would be sent on his way, being told we “weren’t partying.” Thick as he was, eventually he got the message.

It was a couple months later that Forbes and I got our hands on a particularly strong tab of blotter acid, taking two tabs each and hurtling forth into a hell of a night. About four hours into the trip, with both of us well in the stratosphere, one of us—I don’t remember which—suggested we pay old JD a visit. He had moved into an apartment close by and had stupidly left his address with Forbes in case we ever wanted to “party” with him and his halfwit cronies. That was never going to happen. But, we did indeed pay him a visit.

At around 4AM we loaded into the Samurai and headed off. We really had no great plan other than we were going to JD’s place and that whatever we ended up doing once we got there was sure to be no good.

We pulled into a small two-floor apartment complex, maybe 20 units max, and parked. We were trying to be nonchalant, which is impossible when you're tripping balls and giggling uncontrollably at 4AM in a place we’d never been.

We climbed the stairs to the second floor and stopped at JD’s door.

“Now what?” I asked.

Forbes said, “Try the door.”

Wizard, that guy.

I was ready to knock, although I have no idea what we planned to do if and when someone answered. But clearly Forbes had the better idea. The door opened right up.

We stepped into a dark living room, reeking of weed, grease, and body odor. Z-Bong was clearly sitting right there before us on the shitty, coffee-stained table in front of the couch. On the couch itself was a young woman with choppy black hair sleeping with her back to us. I was about to grab Z-Bong when Forbes tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to find him pointing down at the sleeping woman.

“Joan Jett,” he whispered. And somehow I managed not to lose my shit and blow the whole scene.

Lying on the floor between the table and Joan Jett was a guy I also didn’t recognize. Even in my state I was struck to consider that neither of them had even stirred since our intrusion. They were, no doubt, operating on an heroic dose of THC in the bloodstream.

JD had a black velvet KISS painting in the dining room that he had endlessly bragged about. Forbes grabbed that out of sheer spite. And on the wall facing the couch, above the TV, was a huge satin tapestry of Bruce Lee in his infamous yellow suit. You better believe we took that. And of course we snatched Z-Bong. I’m fairly certain it was calling my name. There was a bit of shake loose on the tabletop, but we didn’t know where the rest of their weed was. That’s when I noticed a small cardboard box on the floor next to the couch. Inside the box was a gallon sized plastic bag stuffed full of pungent, sticky BUD. Jackpot! I grabbed the box, waved to Forbes, and then we hightailed it out of that stinky shithole post haste and climbed back into the Samurai.

The drive back to Forbes’ place was an explosion of elation, excitement, and conquest. I stood up in the back seat, the wind blowing like crazy, allowing the Bruce Lee tapestry to flap furiously about, while I screamed jubilant cries of unhinged joy at the top of my lungs.

We no doubt cast quite a sight.

The sun was just cresting the horizon; bright reds, pinks, and oranges spread before us like a massive cosmic embrace.

When we got back to Forbes’ place we laid our loot out before us like debauched buccaneers after a successful plunder. First things first, we pinned the Bruce Lee tapestry up on the wall, and then hung the black velvet KISS right next to it. These were our trophies. To the lysergic victor, the spoils.

I giddily took the bag of bud from the box and placed it on the table. Under the bag was a manila envelope, curved from being wedged into the bottom of the box beneath the weed. I pried open the metal tabs and pulled out the paperwork inside.

A quick glance showed a couple handwritten pages and a crude hand drawn map. At that point the acid was winding down. The tracers were fading, and the auditory hallucinations were clearing, making way for the encroaching day. In my still compromised state, the idea of a treasure map fit snugly into my deranged fantasy of our piratical mission.

“Load Z-Bong, I’m gonna need some of that before I read this shit, whatever it is,” I said, and Forbes hooked me up.

The bud was the strongest I’d ever smoked. It wasn’t even close. This stuff was pharmaceutical grade. In the ‘80s, suburban weed did the trick, but you could also smoke it all night long and still remain marginally functional. This shit was like a nuclear bomb straight to my brain. Even with the lingering effects of the waning acid, this stuff knocked me flat on my ass. It suddenly made sense why JD’s cohorts slept through our graceless intrusion.

“Holy fuck . . .” I slurred, “be careful with that, it’s no fucking joke.”

When I awoke, it was a full twelve hours later, night time again. I laid on the couch for a few minutes, trying to regain my bearings. It felt like I’d been hit in the head with a hammer. I realized that whatever record had played last was stuck in the locked groove, crunching loudly over and over. Groaning, I gingerly sat up. I was stiff from spending so many hours scrunched up on Forbes’ awful couch. I rubbed my eyes and went to go find him.

I followed the smell of butter burning and found Forbes in the kitchen frying eggs (the only remotely edible thing in the fridge).

“Hungry?” he asked, looking oddly chipper.

“Yeah, but are there any more eggs, because you fucked those ones up.”

“Nope,” he said, grinning like a dickhead. “This is it.”

He had a dozen eggs in a wok, and what must have been four sticks of butter. The heat was way too high and the butter was burning. The blackened edges of the congealed mass of eggs spread out to the sides of the wok. It was a huge, disgusting mess.

“Great work,” I said, “dumb fuck.”

The eggs were fucking terrible. Forbes had no business cooking anything.

“Dude,” he said, changing the subject, “you need to take a look at this shit.”

He was holding the papers from the manila envelope.

“What is it?” I asked, interest piqued.

“Just look,” he said.

The letter was for JD. It contained a rundown of odd things he was being ordered to enact. It was direct and forceful, and more than a little menacing. Whoever wrote it was not fucking around. From what I could gather, JD was supposed to make some sort of material drop off. In order to facilitate this, they wanted him to make a substantial purchase of something, and then haul said something out to someplace. The directions were explicit as to what time and date this whole thing was to be done, but completely vague as to what would be transacted. There were also multiple overt threats throughout the note, and it was clearly apparent that whomever JD was dealing with was operating way over his head. He was in deep.

“What did this dipshit get himself into?” I asked Forbes.

He shrugged. “Fuck if I know. But I do know that whatever it is, it’s not good.”

And then there were these strange references to “it” and “the woods,” and “his woods,” and all this creepily semi-religious stuff about “His coming,” and shit. The note also said how he’d better not be out there at night. It was weird, and it made me feel uneasy.

“What the fuck is this shit, dude?” I asked Forbes, doing a terrible job of pretending not to be freaked out by what I’d just read.

“Don’t know,” he said, “but JD is up to his fucking neck. Look at the map.”

It took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at, but then it clicked. It was a map of the nature preserve, the same preserve at which JD and I took our narcotic lunch breaks. There was a pathway written down leading down and then branching off of the main trail at the furthest end of the preserve. JD was supposed to take whatever the fuck it was they wanted, and bring it all the way out there in the middle of fucking nowhere, for some unknown reason. “You’ll undoubtedly need help,” the note said, “but if anyone breathes a word, you will pay dearly. I hope you understand the gravity of the situation. We are not flexible. Do not disappoint us.”

“You know, I don’t understand how that idiot would even get involved in something so fucked up,” I told Forbes. “I mean, who would trust that dipshit with a pound of extremely potent bud, for one thing? And then, who the hell would trust him enough to find his asshole in the dark, let alone follow a god damned map?”

“Maybe they figured a guy like him, living under the radar like he does, maybe they assumed that he comes with little risk of leaking stuff.”

“Could be,” I said. “It’s not like anyone would believe the idiot if he tried to sing about it. Whatever it is, that’s his dumb ass wrapped all up in it. Not my problem.” And then I ran to the bathroom and threw up the eggs in the sink.

As for the weed, we smoked it, but it took some time, because it was so strong. We’d smoke out and then be knocked out for hours. But we eventually acclimated to it, and then it was glorious. We kept afloat with it, as if in a fuzzy dream world. We were both bummed when it ran out, because we knew too well that our gravy train had run aground. But seeing as how we weren’t really in the position to take up a life of marijuana burglary, we were forced return to our usual dirt weed. As for the envelope, we tossed it in the back of Forbes’ closet and pretty much forgot about it. It was too weird to consider too deeply, and smelled like trouble.

Sometime later, I was outside talking to a pretty young neighbor who’d just moved next door to Forbes, when he rushed out of his house, his eyes clearly excited.

“Hey,” he said to the neighbor, slowing his pace, pathetically trying to impress her by using his cool voice.

“Hey,” she returned, clearly not impressed whatsoever.

He turned to me and took a deep breath.

“Dude, you uh, you need to come to come inside, like now,” and he nervously glanced at the neighbor, and then back at me. He didn’t want her to know whatever it was.

"“Later,” I told the neighbor, and followed Forbes inside.

“This better be good,” I told him.

“Oh please,” he said, “that was going nowhere. Give me a break.”

“Thanks, I appreciate your vote of confidence.”

On the TV was the local news, which Forbes liked to watch high for some reason that I never understood. There was a reporter on screen talking about how the bodies of three adults had been found on the back end of the easternmost trail of the nature preserve. The police were scant on details, “Pending investigation,” as the chief told the reporter in a canned segment that replayed every few minutes. The reporter was standing in front of the main trail head with the now ominous tall trees and brush looming behind him. I felt the hair raise on the back of my neck. Also behind the reporter was a 1974 barf green Ford Blazer. I’d only seen one of those around. It was JD’s truck.

After, we sat in Forbes’ dining room with the envelope on the table in front of us. Forbes was talking a bunch of bullshit.

“Man, this is fucked, this is so fucked. We need to tell the cops what we know. We need to show them this shit. I don’t wanna get in trouble, man,” Forbes sputtered, not thinking straight, as usual.

“Are you out of your mind? That’s a terrible idea,” I said. “That’s the best fucking way I can think of to get into trouble. As of right now, they have no reason to know that we even know any of them, if it even is them.”

“C’mon, man, three bodies at the preserve, and JD’s truck abandoned in the lot? After what we found? Get a grip.”

He wasn’t wrong. We sat there for a few beats, a palpable tension hanging over us.

“Well then, what do we do?” Forbes finally asked.

“We don’t do shit for now,” I said. “There’s no reason to put ourselves at risk. I say we keep cool, go on with our business, and if anyone asks, pretend we know nothing about any of it.”

So that’s what we did.

2

Eventually the police identified all three bodies, and of course we were right. There on the screen were shots of all three of those poor degenerates. in the snapshot of Joan Jett, her hair wasn’t spiky or black as it had been on the couch that night, but it was clearly her, just younger. The floor guy was slightly overweight and had blond dreadlocks. His picture was the spitting image, no doubt whatsoever. JD’s picture I recognized from his welder’s ID that he would have attached to his filthy, dank work shirt whenever he came round. JD had no family anyone knew of, and the other two turned out to be a sister and brother visiting from out of town. They were apparently old friends of his. Lucky them.

I felt pretty bad about it, but we still weren’t gonna say shit. Even we weren’t that dumb.

Aside from identifying the bodies on the news, there was no further information regarding their deaths. Their autopsy results were confidential, and the police department remained tightlipped. No one was talking. That in itself was odd. Normally someone would leak at least something, or there would be some sort of official word, but in this case there was radio silence.

As a result, after a few months, the story had stopped being in the headlines, and things were back to whatever the fuck normal was. I hadn’t shaken my dark fascination with the whole situation, though. I had become obsessed with an urge to go out to the woods and find the location noted on the map in the envelope. So, on a bright, sunny day, I rounded up Forbes, and we set off in the Samurai for the preserve. It took some convincing, but he came around.

The sky was cloudless and the air was crisp, but not cold. It was gorgeous. I was hoping that the nice weather might supersede whatever crazy shit we might come across out there. We parked by the trailhead and headed out into the woods. I couldn’t shake the thought of JD’s truck sitting there behind the reporter and the police tape

The woods of the preserve become dense almost immediately, and I have no doubt that without a marked trail, you could get completely lost in there within minutes. Fortunately the map led us along the outer rim of the preserve. It was a considerable hike, but we were young enough to handle it easily.

Along the trail, we smoked from a tiny pocket bong Forbes had just for “On-the-road use,” as he liked to say. He’d lost the one hitter, which we both hated anyway. And before long we were floating through the tall trees, high as balls. The air was thick with the smell of decaying plant matter, a scent which I personally have always loved. We passed some other hikers on the rim path, nodding with a strong tingle of paranoia that everyone was a cop. It’s kind of like the stoner’s curse. Whenever you leave the house, everyone is a cop. Children in strollers? Cops. That Korean lady at the convenient store? Totally a cop.

Near the back end of the preserve the trail thinned out and was partially overgrown, and we hadn’t seen anyone for some time. According to the map, we were to talk a small footpath into the woods about a hundred yards from the last official sign marking the tail end of the publicly accessible preserve.

The path we were looking for was so small that we passed it twice. Once we had branched off into the really dense growth surrounding the offshoot path, I was instantly glad that I had worn long pants. There are lots of spiders in those woods, and most of them are huge orb weavers. They’re fuck enormous, and they love to weave their webs across the trails right a face level. I wasn’t into having one on my face. Thankfully, I got pretty good at spotting them, and was able to avoid them.

The deeper in that we got, the thicker the growth, and what we were able to see was altered by the bright sunlight battling its way through the canopy, casting wavering shadow patterns on everything around us.

We stopped in a small semi-clearing and took a moment to look at the map again. By our estimation, we had to be pretty close to the spot where one of the tall trees surrounding us would be marked with a ribbon. But because the growth was so dense, it took us a solid ten minutes to find the tree. It didn’t help that the ribbon was almost the exact grayish brown of the trunks. But once we found it, there was no mistaking it. That meant that according to the map we had reached the first of four marked trees. The bad news was that it also meant we were probably only about halfway to the destination and whatever the hell lied in wait for us when and if we found it.

We trudged on, barely talking. Forbes starting smoking a cigarette, which I thought was ill advised considering how far we had yet to go and Forbes’ being a card carrying couch potato. This may come as a shock, but sitting around smoking weed and cigarettes all day does not do good things to your lung capacity.

On top of our formidable physical shortcomings, the undergrowth in this part of the forest was so thick that it was impossible to trudge through at anything more than a snail’s pace. The trees were very close together, and most of them were covered with a thick, woody vine which kept us to a miserable crawl. Eventually, I had to take my jacket from around my waist and put it on to protect me from the growing cloud of mosquitos buzzing all around us, because I was getting eaten alive.

The area we passed through edged up against an overfull bayou that expanded into a lake a short distance downstream. Occasionally, we would come in direct view of the brown, rank water, which meant we had to watch for alligators on top of everything else.

At some point, Forbes began to bitch and moan about the situation. I knew it was coming.

“Man, let’s just go back, this is fucked. I’ve got bites all over me and I’m fucking starving,” Forbes whimpered, putting a tremendous amount of effort into sounding extra pathetic. I was unfazed by his little performance.

“Fuck you, dude,” I snapped, getting irritated with what I knew would soon become unbearable, if I didn’t cut him off right away. “Just keep moving, goddammit. We’ve come this far, and I’m not going back with nothing to show for this shit. And let me just remind you that you were onboard a hundred fucking percent when we started this fucking death march.”

“Yeah, I know, but that was before.”

“Just shut the fuck up and keep walking,” I snapped, raising my voice a bit more than I’d intended. I’d never done that before with him, and it must have shocked him, because he piped the fuck down.

We walked in glorious, tense silence for quite some time, speaking only to acknowledge the discovery of another ribbonned tree trunk.

By the time we located the fourth tree, both of had red welts all over our faces from bug bites. I had several small tears in my jacket, and even found some dried blood at one spot where I leaned up against a sharp branch edge and jabbed my arm clear through my clothes. Frontiersmen we were not.

We stood at the fourth tree, trying to regroup, and we went back over the map.

“According to this,” I said, pointing on the map, “we are supposed to walk about what I’m guessing is around, maybe, fifty yards in the direction we just came from, and then take a hard left and follow that direction until another footpath is visible. Then it looks like we walk that path there until the end of the line. And it says right here that we will know it when we get there, whatever the fuck that means.”

“Well, that’s suitably vague,” Forbes quipped.

I ignored him. But, once again, he wasn’t wrong. I just wasn’t going to feed his insecurity.

Unsurprisingly, we had a hell of a time trying to find where we supposed to turn off. In a stroke of self-declared genius, I thought to mark the point at which we made the hard left so that we would have at least a little chance of finding our way back. We had to double back several times when we would walk so far off to the left that we figured we had to have gone too far and were off course. Since the map was so intentionally vague about it, neither of us knew what we were looking for, which didn’t help things.

But finally we stumbled into a fair sized clearing. It was the first uncongested section of the woods that we’d been in for well over an hour. The problem was, there was nothing there.

“What the fuck?” I said exasperated, in a nervous and hushed whisper, out of breath. “What now?”

“You’ve got me,” Forbes said.

“Dude,” he continued, “what the fuck is that smell?”

It was a pungent and biting, acrid stench which filled my nostrils to the point of being overwhelming. It was the odor of an unwashed animal, that instantly recognizable sharp and dense zoo-like smell, coupled with the unmistakable reek of rotting flesh. That got my attention.

That was when I noticed that there were small shards of bones strewn about the leaf-covered clearing. Bones, and brown, gummy blood. I felt my stomach roll.

It’s times like these that I am glad to be such a hopeless pothead, because weed suppresses the gag reflex. And if I was was sober, I’m certain I would have chucked. Then again, if I was sober, I’d probably be smart enough not to go on this adventure in the first place.

And then we just stood there, apprehensive, but hyperalert, like the two idiots we were—exhausted, cranky, and a solid two hours from the fucking car.

That’s when I heard something rustle well above us in one of the trees lining the edges of the clearing. It sounded unmistakably large, and it startled the fuck out of us both. Reflexively, I recoiled in defense. Forbes did the same. And then we began to scan the edges of the clearing hoping to find the source of the noise.

It took a second, but then we spotted it. And it was too fucked up for either of us to grasp.

There, up about fifty feet in a tall pine tree, was a large metal cage hoisted and suspended by a thick rope arced over a high branch. There was something big inside that fucking cage, and when it shifted its weight, the cage would swing from its rope.

“What the fuck?!” I said, louder than I should have, because whatever was up there stopped moving the moment I spoke. It was listening to us.

Very slowly, we inched back far enough to see into the cage. What we saw was beyond anything either of could have ever imagined.

The creature was built like a gorilla, massive and top heavy, with giant muscular shoulders and limbs. Its huge body was mostly hairless, like a human, and its flesh was pallid white, thick and leathery like a thick, rotten canvas. Also gorilla like, it sat on its haunches and balanced with its two arms placed in front of it. The damn thing was looking directly at us. Its face was featured much like a man’s, albeit overgrown with a thick forehead ridge and jutting cheekbones. The effect was uncanny, because the animal looked like a horrible cross between a man and a gorilla, looking somewhat like each without looking too much like the other. With one of its pudgy, thickly-skinned, pink hands, it grabbed the crisscrossed frame of the cage and shook the whole thing with alarming strength. We both took several quick, short steps back and away.

Then the creature opened its giant mouth and let out the most horrible sound I’d ever heard. It cried out, bellowed, so loud I felt my eardrums distort. It was genuinely terrifying. The sound must have been audible for a great distance, which helped explain why it was hidden so far back in the woods.

There was no sane way of explaining whatever godforsaken thing was up in that cage. And it was so angry and desperate to get out of there and no doubt tear us both limb from limb.

I saw that the underside of the cage was stained dark brown with a disturbing amount of dried, congealed blood.

The beast turned away for a second, giving us an opportunity to get the hell out of there. But we were both so shit scared that we just stood there in shock. When it snapped back to face us, it had a bloodstained skull of what appeared to be a pig. The skull had floppy bits of flesh and sinew still attached. And even from our distance, I could see the cloud of carrion flies encircling the creature like a foul haze.

The thing tossed the skull down and then, increasingly agitated, tried to force apart the intersecting metal gridlines of the cage.

My god, I thought, it’s trying to get out. . .

I knew we had to run. I had no confidence whatsoever that this thing wasn’t capable of getting out of that cage.

“Run!” I screamed, and as I turned around and bolted out of the clearing I that saw Forbes well already ahead of me. I followed him until neither of us could run any further, and we finally stopped, gasping for air like two old men. I thought I might pass out, and dropped to my ass and took enormous lungsful of air. It took minutes to regain my breath. And Although I could no longer hear the damned thing, I in no way felt safe. We walked back to the main trail as fast as we could, stopping once because we both were feeling dizzy.

By the time we reached the car, it was twilight, and the eeriness of the parking lot lampposts cast a cinematic and menacing glow over Forbes’ Suzuki Samurai, by then the sole car remaining in the lot.

The more space we put between us and the preserve, the more our horror began to dissipate, until we eventually were cracking jokes like the two morons we were. Whatever the fuck that was back there, neither of us were prepared to acknowledge it had even happened.

Back on familiar ground, I realized that I was just then coming down from my pot stupor. Once we arrived back at Forbes’ place, I felt hazy but upsettingly sober. And in that piercingly clear sobriety, I couldn’t get the sound of that thing out of my head.

Attempting to reclaim some sense of normalcy, we smoked until sunrise, and just as the light outside began to turn that telltale blueish hue, we went to sleep.

When I awoke it was already dark again, and I was so disoriented that it took me a few seconds to figure out where the fuck I was, as well as what day it even was. As usual, Forbes woke before me, so I got off the floor and went to go find him. I finally found him outside in the backyard sitting on a bench, a cigarette in one hand and an oversized mug of coffee in the other.

“Get some coffee,” he said, and I did just that.

Without speaking, I took the open spot next to him on the bench. He was staring out over the lake spreading out behind his house, never once looking my way. We sat in silence drinking our coffee. I was glad that he made it strong (for once). He’d probably slipped up and poured more coffee in the filter than usual, for which I was thankful, because his usual brew was just this side of horse piss. When he finished his mug, he placed it next to him on the ground, and again without looking at me, he finally spoke.

“I can’t get that shit out of my mind. Ever since I woke up I’ve kinda been obsessed over it. I mean, what the fuck was that thing? Did we really see what we think we saw? It can’t be real. What, did we experience some sort of shared hallucination? Were we so high that we convinced each other that we saw that shit? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

I could see that he was shaken. Gone was the relieved humor we shared on the drive home yesterday. And I could relate, because I was pretty freaked out, myself. We had both seen it, had both been there. And there was no chance of us pretending it never happened.

“I have questions, dude,” Forbes said.

“Yeah, I’ve got about a million of them,” I told him. “For instance, beyond the obvious what-the-fuck-iveness of it all, how in the hell did JD and his goons get roped into this? And for that matter, who the fuck is pushing the buttons? Who the fuck would hang a caged man-gorilla in the middle of the woods and then get a halfwit to feed it a live pig? That’s beyond crazy.”

“And,” Forbes picked up the thread, “why are they dead, for fuck’s sake? Did that thing fucking eat them?”

“Think about it, man,” I said, “how would they have been identified if they had been fucking eaten? And who would have found whatever was left of them all the way out there in the middle of fucking nowhere? Wouldn’t that part of it be on the news? No, they died another way, and then were left on the trail to be seen. It had to be intentional.”

And the thought of that was almost as scary as whatever the fuck was up that goddamn tree. Whoever was behind this was no joke. The last thing we needed was to show up on their radar. Even if Forbes was dumb enough to tell somebody about it, it was highly unlikely that anyone would ever believe a word he said. I knew I would never talk. I was too freaked out already, and that was when I still had no knowledge of what was out there in the woods. That meant that we needed to stay mum about it and hope that it blew over.

3

That day we realized it was not blowing over, we were watching a dubbed VHS tape of Apocalypse Now for the millionth time, when the phone rang. It was around three in the morning, and no one ever called there that late unless it involved buying drugs.

“You expecting someone?” I asked.

He looked wide eyed at me and said, “No.”

“Then don’t answer it,” I told him.

“What, are you insane? I wasn’t going to,” Forbes said, as if I was now the idiot.

The ringing finally stopped. But then seconds later it rang again. This kept up through several rounds of calls until Forbes finally stood up, his sense of alarm replaced by irritation.

He snatched the receiver, “What the fuck do you want?” he blurted out, the moment it was up to his face.

I watched as his expression immediately turned. The rest of the short call Forbes just stood there, mute, the look of shock in his eyes. He hung up the phone and turned to me.

“What is it?” I asked. “What?”

Forbes took a deep breath and said, “They know.”

“They? Who’s they? Know what? What the f. . .” and it hit me. Whoever was behind the murders, behind the thing in the cage, they were on to us.

“Jesus man, what did they say?” I was mortified. But I would have bet that I didn’t look half as scared as he did. He looked like he was going to shit himself.

‘They asked me if we enjoyed our “little hike,” and if we were pleased to have met, uh, “him.” They said they were disappointed to know that we smoked all their weed and that we now owed them for it. And then they hung up.” He was blanched like a ghost.

“Oh Christ,” I said, feeling like the blood was draining out of my head. “This is not good.”

I wondered if they were on to us before we found the cage, or if our dumb asses gave ourselves away when we went out there. I figured it was the latter, since they would probably have contacted us back around the time that the murders took place, had we caught their attention then. Now we knew that they were on to us.

Worse, they knew things about us. They knew Forbes’ name and number, which meant we had to assume they knew mine as well. That also meant they must know where Forbes lived, and therefore could have been watching us since we left the woods. We were fucked. Royally. They had us by the balls.

“Alright, I need to think,” I said, trying desperately to calm myself down and figure something out. “Did they give any direction or orders or anything like that?”

“No,” Forbes said, “just what I told you.”

“Okay,” I said, “then we have to assume that we’ll be hearing from them again soon. We spent the rest of that day drunk off his mother’s vodka she had squirreled away in the back of their pantry, as if we wouldn’t find that it.

The next morning, bright and early, Forbes’ phone rang and I felt my stomach drop.

“That’s gotta be them,” Forbes said.

I was feeling like shit, still drunk from the night before.

'‘H . . . Hello?” Forbes said, sounding mortified.

I could hear a deep calm voice on the other line, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. So, I just followed Forbes’ responses.

“Yeah,” Forbes, said, “we’re both here.” pause “Okay.” pause “Umm, okay, what time?” pause “But how are w. . .”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

I heard that part loud and clear.

long, awkward pause

“Okay, we will, ok. . .”

audible click on the other line

Forbes slowly hung up the phone. He was paler than usual and starting to visibly sweat.

“Well,” I said, anxious and impatient, “what did they say?”

“Well, uh, because we smoked it all, they want us to sell a pound of their weed.. And we need to get $2500 for it.”

“And?” I asked.

“And, they said that if we smoked any of it that, things would not go so well for us. They also said that the next step will come after we sell the weed. And get this, we are to go to Mario’s and knock on the back door and ask for Frank, tonight at 10 PM sharp.”

“Motherfucker,” I said, “that’s got to be the sonofabitch who tried to fuck us with that bunk weed.”

At about 9:30 we headed out, not wanting to risk being late. We bickered on the drive up to the restaurant over who should do the talking. Finally, I said I would do it, reasoning that Forbes would probably fuck it up somehow anyway.

We pulled in to the back of the parking lot and sat for a couple minutes, not saying anything.

Right at 10 on the dot I got out and knocked on the door. Nothing. I was about to knock again, when the door opened and the same guy from last time stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

“Frank?” I asked him.

“Yeeeah,” he said, in a heavily accented voice, emphasizing the ee sound for some reason.

Frank was tall, just over six feet, and skinny as a rail. He smelled like stale food and cigarettes. He had dark brown greasy hair and a gross mustache. I knew his tie had to be a clip-on. It was obvious that this idiot was not a bigshot in this setup. Nobody would trust this jackass enough for that level of responsibility. No, Frank was a low level dealer, used as a front to conceal the identities of whoever was behind all this. Whoever they were, I didn’t want to meet them.

“So, like uh, you two boys sell this bag I’m ‘bout to give you, and you sell it at top dollar. A quarter is gonna be 40, a half 80, and so on. Do the math for the rest.”

The idiot cant count, I thought.

“Got all that?” he said in his pinched off nasally drone. He was a total fuckwad.

“Kill,” he said, though it sounded more like keel the way he said it. I think he meant to say ‘killer,’ but fucked it all up.

And then he dipped back inside for a minute, and then slipped back out with a large ziplocked bag in his hands. I recognized that stellar bud right away. This was the stuff.

I reached for the bag, but before I could take it he yanked it back and said, “Uh, uh, uh, easy now, buddy, aren’t ya gonna give your old uncle Frankie a kee-iss?” and he turned his head facing his cheek at us.

“Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?” This fucking guy. “Kiss yourself, dickhead,” and I grabbed the bag from his hand.

“Manners, manners,” Frank said as we walked away, obvious pride in his voice, as if he’d really gotten one over on us. Without looking back, I flipped him the bird. I could hear his impish cackle as we jumped into the Samurai. He made my skin crawl.

Back at Forbes’ place we sat down and made a game plan for unloading the weed. We made a list of people who would not only buy from us, but would spread the word around pretty quickly. I knew that even at double the going rate, this stuff would sell fast. It was that good.

Forbes had his doubts.

“How the hell are we going to get twenty-five hundred bucks from this? We’ll never pull it off.”

“Don’t be stupid, man,” I told him, “it’s dry right now, even Dan is out. And besides, once the right people get a taste, this shit will be long gone. Have some faith.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said, sounding unconvinced.

I was right. It was gone in less than a week. And within an hour of us arriving back at Forbes’ place after the last half ounce was sold, the phone rang.

This time, I answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Forbes under the weather, is he?” the voice said, clearly taking the piss. “Good job, boys, We knew you could handle it. Now, here’s the next step. You’ve met our caged friend, and as you could see, he has quite the appetite. One might even say that he gets ravenous if he must wait for a meal. So, you two will take the cash from your sale, and go to the Wederling’s Feed Store on route 93 and buy a nice fat pig. Bring the pig to our friend in the woods. Tie the little swine off at the post with the chain. Lower your newest, bestest friend to the ground, and he will take sup on your generous, oh, let’s say donation.”

“I’m not letting that thing out of the cage, you’re insane,” I said.

“I didn’t tell you to let him out, friend. Were you not listening? We’d hate for to you to get it wrong. I’m certain that you wouldn’t like the outcome of a mistake like that. Now, the store opens tomorrow at 9 AM. Our friend needs to eat before noon or he will get unnecessarily cranky. Make it happen. You’ll here from us once it’s done.”

I was about to say something when the line went dead.

“What?” Forbes said. “What’d they say?”

“Time to buy a pig,” I said.

The next morning we showed up at Wederling’s right at 9:00 as directed. We sat in the gravel parking lot and watched as a white haired old man in coveralls hopped out of a faded and rusty 1950’s ford pickup truck and opened up the store. He looked like a hilbilly Santa Claus.

“Mornin’,” the man said as we walked up to the counter. “What can I do you folks for?”

“We need a pig,” I said.

“You need a pig?” he asked, as if he hadn’t heard me correctly.

“Yes,” I said, “a pig.”

“Alright,” he drawled, looking very much like he thought we were full of shit. “What do you want? A boar? Sow? Piglet?”

“Shit man,” I said, “I don’t know. A hog, I suppose.”

“They’re all hogs, my friend. And I hate to break it to you, son, but ain’t no way you’re getting a boar in that little Jap Jeep of yours. I got a gilt sow that’ll fit real nice in that there back seat.”

“How much?” I asked the guy, already hating him.

“Well that‘s the thing. I ain’t got no gilt sows available as of right now,” the old man said, and then giggled, causing his considerable gut to jiggle.

Maybe we should feed you to the fucking thing, I thought.

“Okay,” I said, “what do you have, then?”

“I just got in a fully grown adult male breeding Berkshire. A fine boar.”

“I thought you said a boar wouldn’t fit?”

“It’ll fit,” he said.

“Christ. Alright then, sure, great. Whatever. How much?”

“2,500 even,” he said.

On the fucking money?

“Sold.”

I knew he was probably lying about having a single pig available, but then again, I didn’t give a shit. I just wanted to get this over with. And besides, it wasn’t my money.

“Let me just say one thing, son. You’re the second group of greenhorns to stroll in here bright and early and offer twenty-five-k cash for a top breeding pig, for which y’all don’t know jack shit about. Don’t think I don’t know what you sick fucks are up to.”

He was giving me the stink eye something fierce.

“Oh, is that so, grandpa? And what, pray tell, are we up to, then. You know, since you’re so fuckin’ smart an’ all.”

I laid out that last bit with an overdone, mocking drawl. The man didn’t say a word. He just smirked from half of his mouth and touched the tip of his finger to his nose and nodded.

After considerable effort, we got the hog up in the Samurai. It was fucking huge, and not particularly friendly. We didn’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves with a giant fucking pig stuffed in Forbes’ car, so we drove to the middle of nowhere and tied the big boy up to a large live oak and fucked off the rest of the day getting high in the old tree’s shade. I tried not to look at the pig too much because knowing where we were taking it, I didn’t want to make friends with it.

Once it was dark, we went back and loaded the hog back in the car and snapped on the car’s plastic soft top so that it wasn’t too terribly obvious that we were prancing around town with a giant pig in a jeep.

The reserve was closed on Mondays, so when we pulled into the empty lot, I felt a bit better about our chances of not getting caught doing some shady shit. Needless to say, it would be a tough one to bullshit ourselves out of.

“Oh, this pig right here, officer? Why are we leading it into the woods? Uh, well, he likes nature?”

Yeah, no.

The pitch black trails were suitably creepy, but as we were walking them with a huge hog in tow, we were too preoccupied to be creeped out. The problem was that it took fucking forever, because the hog was stubborn and wanted to stop every ten feet or so and sniff around and dig and shit. By the time we reached the far end of the preserve, we had been walking for almost two hours. I knew the rest of the way was going to be a goddamn slog.

It was a total nightmare.

By the time we reached the final ribboned tree, we had spent another four hours wandering around in the dense brush. We would appear to be making progress, and then would realize we’d gone off too far in the wrong direction, and would then have to retrace our steps back, in the hellish night. The hog was not happy either, and he let us know it by stopping every minute or so as if in protest. Once we were approaching the clearing, there was little I wanted more in life than to feed this pig to that fucking caged thing and get the hell out of there.

When we were within earshot, we heard the heavy sounds of the creature banging around in its hanging cage.

“I think it smells the pig,” Forbes said.

“How could it not?”

Now that we were in the clearing, things were devolving rapidly into chaos, as the thing in the tree was half out of its mind. It was desperate to get down to the ground and devour the boar. We secured the hog on the chain as instructed, and then set to untying the boy scout’s knotted rope which held the cage aloft. Even with it leveraged on a rudimentary pulley set up, it took both of us to hold onto the weight of the cage, and with the beast maniacally thrashing around, I wasn’t so sure we’d be able to hang on for long. But I did know that if we dropped the cage and the thing got out, we’d be on the menu alongside our high-dollar porcine companion. And that idea didn’t excite me too much.

As we eased the cage lower, my arms began to shake from the strain. I didn’t have long before I couldn’t hang on anymore. And then I was hit with the worst stench I’d ever experienced in my life. It was like an accumulation of human body odor, the briny, biting stench of zoo animals, feces, sweat, decay, blood, iron, and other horrible shit I couldn’t even identify. It was so bad that I started gagging.

So did Forbes.

The next thing I know, Forbes throws up all down the front of his V-neck sweater, chunks of the gas station pizza we’d wolfed down earlier cascading down his chest in a disgusting chunderfall. After watching him losing his cookies in horror, I promptly did the same. It was too much. All of it. We had been pushed over the edge. And until that moment, I would have told you I had a strong stomach.

But the worst part of it was that Forbes let go of the fucking rope, which began relentlessly tearing through my hands, shearing off my flesh with searing friction. I couldn’t hang on to it.

The cage smashed to the ground with a loud crashing sound, and I could feel its dull thudding impact on the ground. A cloud of leaves, stench, white hair and bone fragments plumed out around the crumpled cage. The pig was thrashing and squealing bloody murder. To our horror, the cage had been fully compromised, and before we had time to react, the monster tore an entire side off the cage, threw it aside like it was nothing, and burst out of its confinement, crying out in a subhuman shrieking wail of glee and a lunatic bloodlust.

I wished I had lost my mind at that moment, because it was all too terrible to handle. I couldn’t believe that I was going to go out like this.

The thing grabbed the pig by the snout, and in a flash of immense strength, it tore the hog’s head off its fucking shoulders as if it was made of paper mache. I heard Forbes wailing like a kid goat, and realized I was probably doing the same and didn’t even know it. The pig’s squealing abruptly turned to a wet choking gurgle, its body fell to the ground, and for a few seconds all we could hear was the patter of the blood squirting from the animal’s gored neck hole, and the gnashing jaws and heaving breath of the ravenous beast.

To my shock, the thing suddenly dropped the pig’s head and turned to face us. I knew we had no chance of both getting away, but I figured the old bear chase adage might hold true here, in that I didn’t need to outrun the creature, I just had to be able to outrun Forbes. That, I had in the bag. Sure it was cowardly, but heroes die alone.

I turned tail. But before I could take a step, the creature leapt forth like a rabbit, and in one swift movement managed to pin both of us to the ground with little effort.

It was massive. Easily over 400 lbs. And it was impossibly strong. It smelled so bad, unlike anything I’d ever smelled before. I was so scared that I now thought I was going to be the one to shit himself.

Well, this is it, I’m going to be eaten by a giant albino man-gorilla with a pants full. it’s been a good run, I suppose.

The beast hunched over Forbes and leaned down until they were face to face. Its head was well over twice the size of Forbes’ already considerable noggin. I looked away. I didn’t want my final memory to be me watching Forbes’ face eaten off his skull like a fruit rollup.

But there were no sound of violence, no scream, no tearing. Only a tremendously deep and loud sniffing. I opened my eyes and saw that the creature was aggressively smelling Forbes’ face. And then it worked its head around Forbes’ body, smelling him all over. It paid extra attention to his crotch, grunting in what sounded grotesquely close to joy. This was no doubt a real treat for Forbes. And then the beast turned its head and I was faced with its semi-human, hideous, soulless eyes. It felt like time stopped as I stared into those empty orbs.

The monster began to take massive lungsful of my scent as it had Forbes. It was beyond horrible. And then, when it was done smelling me, it turned its head back to the dead pig, climbed off of us, and leapt back onto the quivering carcass. At first we backed away slowly, expecting the thing to pounce again at any moment, but when the thing didn’t turn to look, we began to run.

As the primal sounds of the creature’s feasting faded, the forest bled back in, until all I could hear was our feet tromping through the dense growth. Several times both of us lost our footing, falling to the ground. Our clothes were getting snagged and our flesh torn as we ran blind through the woods.

I kept expecting the thing to burst out of the background and annihilate the both of us, but it never happened. We ran until we couldn’t run any more, and then we walked as fast as we were able, given our severe exhaustion. We reached the Samurai in about ninety minutes, bloody, sore, drained, winded, filthy and stinking, but alive.

I scrubbed myself so hard in Forbes’ shower, my cuts reopened and began bleeding all over again. When I was done showering, I could still smell that horrible thing all over me.

Neither of us were able to sleep, and we spent the better part of the next morning waiting for the phone to ring. But it never did.

The following evening, we were watching TV and eating deviled chicken salad sandwiches (don’t ask). The ‘80s sitcom that was on was abruptly interrupted by a “Breaking News” report.

“We are here at the under construction Muddy Brook Estates subdivision, where we have just received information from the local police that the bodies of five men were found inside one of the houses on the corner of Blackwood and Poe. I spoke with Harold Brockman, the chief of police for Buckman County who told me that around 8 PM, a 911 call came in from a security guard patrolling the subdivision. The man reported witnessing “A large, bloodstained, ape-like animal with patchy white hair, running on its knuckles like a gorilla,” from this house that is directly behind me. When he got out of his car to investigate, the man told the operator that he had found a severed human arm lying in the front yard.

“That is all that the police were willing to share at this point. But we were able to interview the guard who requested he remain anonymous. He told us that inside the home he also discovered the bodies of five men, badly dismembered, one missing an arm, their various violently-removed parts all mixed together in a gruesome bloody mess. He added that it looked to him as if parts of the men had been eaten. He also said that when he came across the men, they were in some sort of control room with an array of television monitors and other surveillance equipment. According to the guard, there was a large, heavy duty animal cage in the living room of the house.

“As we were speaking with the guard, the Chief Brockman rushed up and led the guard away, telling us that the situation was still very fluid and that they would share more information as soon as it becomes available.

“To be honest, we don’t know what to make of this. But we promise that we will be the first to let you know as soon as we get more inf. . .”

Forbes turned the TV off.

He sat down next to me on the couch. Both of us sat there staring like idiots into the black screen, our reflections staring back at us. Whatever that thing was, it was now loose. Who knew what would happen now. I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t ever be captured without a hell of a fight. And it’s more than capable of causing serious carnage, if it ever finds its way into the outside world. If I was pressed, I’d guess that it wouldn’t be long before that’s exactly what happened.

But neither of us mentioned any of that, that night, or any other night. Instead, we loaded up the Enterprise bong and smoked out on the couch, until all the weed was gone. And then we did what we have always done. We went out and bought some more.