The Monsters of Faggot Forest

Hello.

Did you go to the big Fourth of July party last summer?

Were you one of the BAD guests?

Did you "TAKE, BREAK, and BAKE by the LAKE"?

Well, something horrible would like to speak to you about that.

You're fucked.

The Monsters of Faggot Forest

The rusty, burnt-orange sedan flew down the dark and treacherous wooded back roads at well beyond the speed limit. The dry-rotting tires had barely enough tread to pass the car's state inspection, but now they were being subjected to yet another challenge they should've rightfully failed: keeping the car from hydroplaning off the road and slamming into a tree.

The city of Timbersburg was experiencing warm temperatures in the middle of January. It wasn't exactly an uncommon occurrence, since it happened every single year at around that time, dating back to before weather records were even kept. Folks in the area could always count on the January thaw to give them a brief respite from the relentlessly brutal cold, and constantly rising, cabin fever-inducing, walls of snow that turned going to work in the morning, or simply running a few errands down- town, into a nightmare of stress and tension. For two or three glorious days, the life-threatening snow would become life-threating runoff, and going to work in the morning, or simply running a few errands downtown, would be a nightmare of stress and tension. But at least the cold was much less cold.

This year was different, though. Due to whatever cause one wishes to credit or blame, the mercury had risen to 69 degrees on Thursday, 76 degrees on Friday, and on Saturday, the present day, the temperature had miraculously (or perhaps diabolically) risen to 80 degrees. The citizens of Timbersburg knew their good luck couldn't last for much longer, though, so everyone in the region took maximum advantage of the day to go out and enjoy themselves. The temperature even stayed in the mid-seventies after sunset, making it the perfect evening for a long, enjoyable drive to nowhere in particular.

On that night, a few hours before the area surrounding Timbersburg would become known as the biggest paranormal hotspot on the North American continent, four male high school students, all between sixteen and seventeen years of age, piled into the orange sedan and headed out into the warm, soggy darkess, ostensibly to cheer up one of their number, Kenny Miller, a young man with a miserable home life who had just suffered a terrible beating administered by his father. The real reason for the night ride, however, was known only to the driver, and the only person he intended to cheer up...was himself.

"Careful!" Mike Pearson cautioned from the rear driver's side seat of the orange sedan.

The speeding car had driven onto a section of road that was covered with runoff. Grant Anders grabbed the wheel and turned it into the skid. A wall of water formed to the right of the vehicle, and the interior of the car was filled by what sounded like the undercarriage being blasted by a thousand pressure washers. But just when the car was about to go off the road and into a ditch, they reached dry pavement. Grant was able to steer again, and he corrected their course just before disaster. It was an excellent display of good emergency driving, if it weren't for the reckless speed of the vehicle, ....as well as the fact that Grant hadn't been the car's driver.

"Got it," Tom Daggen informed Grant as the lighter finally produced a flame instead of a spark. Tom lit his cigarette, put the lighter back into the pocket of his jeans, and nonchalantly put his left hand back on the wheel. His right hand, his dominant hand, couldn't be on the wheel, as it needed to be free to demonstrate the effortlessly natural (but highly practiced) flourishes he could do to enhance the cool way he smoked. Tom's choreographed puffing would've actually been impressive to watch, if it weren't for the painfully obvious ways he called attention to it, like almost killing the intended spectators in a fiery car crash.

Grant sat back in the filthy passenger seat and tried to appear indifferent to the fact that Tom had just endangered his life over a smoke. Tom hadn't slowed the vehicle down, nor did he tell Grant to take control of the car. He merely took his hands off the wheel, retrieved the cigarette from behind his ear, and directed the entirely of his focus towards lighting up. If Grant hadn't been paying attention, and if he weren't such a skilled driver, everyone in the vehicle would've been either injured or killed. But for Tom, it was worth the gamble. Now there would be another "Crazy Tom" Daggen story circulating through the school, building his legend and feeding his ego. Grant knew he was the one Tom expected to tell that story, so Grant vowed that he would never speak a word of it, and neither would Kenny. Kenny tended to do what Grant told him to do.

Tom took a deep, thoughtful drag that gradually turned into a cocky smile.

"Cigarettes killed your mom, right Grant?" Tom asked, clearly setting up a grossly inappropriate joke.

"Yeah," Grant replied, dreading Tom's answer. Tom was technically Grant's friend, but more and more, Grant wondered why he bothered to continue hanging out with him. Tom was always pushing him, always testing their friendship, always trying to establish dominance over Grant. And now, once more, Tom was putting him in a very awkward position. Whatever Tom was about to say about his dead mother, Grant would have to quickly decide whether he could laugh it off, or if he'd have to respond, because if Tom started telling everyone in school that he'd insulted Grant's mother, and Grant didn't do anything to defend her memory, Grant would be viewed as weak, thus setting himself up for the kind of abuse HE tended to heap on those whom HE considered to be weak.

"Well they almost killed you, too," Tom finished, taking another drag and then blowing it in Grant's direction.

"Good one," Grant responded with fake geniality as he cracked open his window to let Tom's smoke out. Grant wanted to divert Tom's antagonism somewhere else, so he looked back over his left shoulder and said: "I can't believe we actually managed to hydroplane with YOU back there, Mike. Your fat ass should've kept the tires mashed into the asphalt!"

Mike Pearson ignored the remark and cracked his own window. (Lord knew that Tom sure as hell wouldn't.) Grant and Tom had been peppering him with lame fat jokes ever since they'd left Tom's house, and although Mike had come up with some razor sharp comebacks, he didn't bother to say any of them. Tonight was supposed to be about helping Kenny, the final occupant of the car, and up until seven months ago, Mike's best friend.

Mike had gone to check on the well-being of his former friend, only to end up taking a roadtrip with him and his new and better friends, who happened to be two bullying assholes. During a few of the periods when Mike and Kenny were silent due to Tom and Grant clogging the air with loud, impenetrable bragging and locker room talk, Mike found himself wondering why he'd agreed to come along. Boredom, depression and loneliness, he supposed. But the truth was, it had more to do with Mike's self-loathing wanting him to bathe in the misery of witnessing how effortlessly Kenny had replaced Mike and moved on. Kenny wasn't the only one in the car who was in pain.

"Are you feeling okay, Kenny?" Mike asked, keeping his voice low so that Tom and Grant wouldn't be able to pick apart everything he said, scouring his sentences for insult potential.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

This was a lie, of course. Kenny's face and lower arms were covered in bruises and welts, the worst of them being Kenny's closed, puffy, blackened right eye, and the swollen bruise on Kenny's left cheekbone, which was colored black, blue, and a sickly yellow.

"All things considered, Kenny got off pretty easy," Mike decided. "His father didn't add any new permanent facial injuries to Kenny's collection."

Over the years, Kenny had been beaten so frequently that permanent injuries were bound to happen from time to time. As a result, Kenny's right ear was cauliflowered, his nose was misshapen from having been broken twice, and he was missing the lower half of his left front tooth. But in spite of Don Miller's best efforts to make his son as ugly as he, Kenny was still a very attractive young man, inside and out. He wasn't a very good friend, as Mike finally realized, but he still had a good heart. Kenny would never be a monster. Not like his father, at least.

"Is your hip still throbbing?" Mike inquired, referring to the only injury Mike knew about beneath Kenny's clothes.

"No, it still aches pretty bad, though, especially when I put weight on it."

Slowly and painfully, Kenny reached into his pants pocket and fought to take out his cellphone, which had gotten trapped in the lining. Mike could've easily spared Kenny the pain by doing it for him, but after what happened on the day their friendship ended, Mike made three vows, one of them being that Mike would never, ever touch Kenny for any reason, especially anywhere that came even close to his crotch.

After Kenny finally freed his phone, Mike assumed he would check his messages or something. Instead, Kenny held it in front of Mike's face.

"No!" Mike protested, closing his eyes and turning his head away from the screen. But it was too late. The image was swallowed by Mike Pearson's ravenous visual memory, where it would now remain, in absolute clarity, for as long as Mike lived.

"Sorry," Kenny said, withdrawing his phone, "I thought you wanted to see it."

Mike put his hands in front of his eyes and pretended to have a headache. The truth, however, was that he was fighting off rage. The photo showed a huge, black bruise on Kenny's hip. The problem was, Kenny's genitals were in the photo, too. Kenny was cupping them loosely with his right hand, but regardless, they were there....in a goddamn photo! And to make matters infinitely worse, it wasn't a selfie. The photo had been sent to Kenny's cellphone by Grant's cellphone, meaning that not only had Kenny willingly exposed himself to Grant and allowed him to take a compromising picture, he also trusted Grant not to send it or show it to anyone else.

When Mike was ready to put his hands down, he never doubted for a second that Kenny would be staring at him in confusion, just like he did every single time he thoughtlessly plunged a knife into Mike's back.

Mike had promised himself that he wouldn't bring up the past. When he arrived at Tom's house, he ordered himself to just focus on Kenny and his injuries, nothing else. But since Kenny had just forced Mike to break his fucking SECOND vow, his vow to never look at Kenny unless he was fully dressed, why not go ahead and break ALL his goddamned promises to himself?!?!

Mike grabbed Kenny's cell and composed a text that Kenny would hopefully understand. Sometimes, Mike's gifts were a blessing. Other times, they were a curse. As Mike effortlessly recalled Kenny's last words before ghosting Mike for seven months, "curse" seemed more appropriate at that moment.

Uhhh....you want me to.....uhhh....I'm sorry, Mike, but

that's a little....umm....no-no-no-no, it's okay, it's

okay! We're good! I DID say 'anything', but I didn't

mean something like THAT....and it's not that I'd be

afraid you might show it around, because I know you'd

never do that....uh....look, I really gotta go. Don't

like...read into this or anything, but I'm feeling kinda

...well...uncomfortable right now. It's not your fault,

really! It's just, I gotta go. I'll call you tomorrow.

Mike handed the phone back to Kenny and watched as dismal comprehension gradually dawned on him. Mike had been tempted to get revenge by turning off Kenny's Airline Mode, so that Kenny would be forced to listen to all of the notification dings for all the angry, threatening, hateful messages his parents had doubtlessly sent by now, but that would've been far too cruel.

"That bruise looks pretty bad," Mike stated, just to cut Kenny off before he said something stupid about Mike's text in front of Tom and Grant. "When we get wherever we're going, if you can't walk on that leg, you're going to have to call your parents."

"Yeah, I guess so," Kenny stuttered, not realizing in the slightest that Mike just slapped him with a harsh realization to repay Kenny for the knife in Mike's back, which hadn't stopped hurting yet.

Instead of going on some unknown outing, the car should've been transporting Kenny directly to a care clinic or the emergency room. Mike knew this, but sadly it wasn't an option. Kenny ran out of his house with- out his wallet, which meant he did not have his insurance card. But even if whichever option could find Kenny's information without the card, he'd been hospitalized so frequently over the years that Kenny was certain to be questioned about his injuries. Without his mother there to "guide" the interview, Kenny would accidentally blurt out the truth, which would result in yet another well-intentioned, but ultimately fruitless, investigation by Child Protective Services.

Kenny's mother, Gayle Miller, had spent decades amassing social influence through her church and charity work. The woman loved power, and she loved to trick people into doing what she wanted, so it was easy for her to pick up the phone and derail any investigation into her horrific parenting. She would feign aghast astonishment at the allegations, employ her weaponized Christianity against the case worker, and finish up with a fuck-ton of guilt-slinging and the suggestion that she might sue for harassment. By the end of the call, Gayle would usually receive a heartfelt apology.

Long ago, as rumors started to swirl about her and Don being unfit parents, Gayle Miller realized that she could turn the tide by telling everyone how bad her children were. They weren't bad, of course, but by packing the Timbersburg gossip mill with lies about Kenny and his brothers, not only would Gayle receive the sympathy and pity she craved, she also insured that if her children ever spoke about the abuse, either no one would believe them, or people would think they deserved it. Ruining her children's reputations was a nonexistent price to pay in exchange for the feelings of empowerment, confidence, and self-satisfaction Gayle received for proving that she was a master at manipulating people.

Thus, if Mike took Kenny to seek medical aid, he'd be condemning him to even more abuse once Gayle found out that Kenny had gone for treatment at all, let alone without HER to answer any probing questions the staff might have, as well as to keep people from getting the unwanted impression that she didn't care enough about Kenny to bring him in herself.

Over the next few weeks, more beatings would follow, one for each of the endless stream of medical bills that would arrive. Therefore, all Mike could do was pray that all of Kenny's injuries would heal by themselves. And the only thing that Kenny's new and better friends (and Mike) could do for Kenny was to take him out and try to help him forget just how fucked he was.

"How did you find out about what happened?" Kenny timidly asked Mike, trying to keep conversation flowing between the two of them. Kenny wanted to win Mike's friendship back, but it wasn't going well. He couldn't even get Mike to relax. During the entire trip, Mike had been forcing him- self to keep to his side of the back seat, which, considering Mike's size, was difficult. And whenever Mike DID relax, and his knee or arm accidentally touched Kenny, he would jolt it back as if Kenny were made out of electricity. Kenny almost asked Mike to please just stretch out and stop worrying about touching him (even if Mike put pressure on some of Kenny's injuries in the process), but considering what Tom and Grant would say in response to that, Kenny thought it best to just keep his mouth shut and let Mike continue to make himself uncomfortable.

"Paul called and told me your mother and father completely lost their shit on you," Mike replied, referring to one of Kenny's two younger brothers. "He didn't know why, and your dad almost hit him because he wouldn't stop asking.

Usually, Kenny's father didn't need a reason to start beating on him. After a bad day at work, or a good night at the bar, he'd find some- thing to get worked up about. Then his mother would get involved on his dad's behalf, and the two would feed off of each other's negativity until Kenny's dad exploded into a violent physical rage, punching and slapping the shit out of his son while spouting off random justifications. This time, however, there was a damned good reason. But as much as Kenny wanted to tell Mike, he couldn't, and as much as he didn't want to tell Tom and Grant, he would have to. Kenny wasn't proud of the fact that one of the reasons he'd asked Mike to come along was because as long as Mike was with them, he had the perfect excuse for not revealing the secret, and therefore he wouldn't have to deal with the consequences just yet.

"How did you find me, though?" Kenny asked.

"It's common knowledge that you're hanging around with Tom and Grant now," Mike lied, covering up the fact that he'd been secretly keeping tabs on Kenny for months, "but don't worry, I didn't tell Paul. Your family doesn't know where you are. And as a precaution, I didn't tell my family where I was going and why, in case your parents call mine."

Kenny ran his fingers through his dirty blonde hair, but stopped when he hit a sore area that he hadn't yet noticed. He wondered what his hair looked like at that moment. His cool blowout style haircut was some- thing that he meticulously maintained. Kenny didn't want to look in a mirror to confirm his suspicions, but he was certain that his hair, and the rest of him, looked pretty bad.

"Are Paul and Bill worried about me?" Kenny asked hopefully, "How did Paul sound on the phone, Mike?"

"You don't want to know, Kenny," Mike responded, feeling a pang of sadness for his former friend in spite of everything.

"He wouldn't have asked if he didn't want to know, Fat Ass!" Tom yelled back.

"Mike, please tell me," Kenny asked, ignoring yet another opportunity to stand up for Mike.

"They sounded entertained by everything. Paul couldn't stop gushing about how bad you got beat...how your mother was throwing all of your stuff out of your bedroom window, ...and how they'd never seen you bawl and plead like you did. So....yeah,....entertained."

"At least they were worried about me enough to call you," Kenny sighed dejectedly.

"Yeah, I guess," Mike concurred half-heartedly, trying to harden his heart against Kenny's billionth episode of family problems. For as long as Mike could remember, he'd helped Kenny cope with the physical and emotional consequences of his parents' abuse. And no matter how tiresome the role became, or how frustrated, enraged and powerless Kenny's situation made Mike feel, he was always there for Kenny, regardless. Mike was also always there whenever Kenny was bullied, or when anyone laughed at him for not being very intelligent. Mike was a good friend to Kenny. But on Mike's last birthday, when Kenny finally had the opportunity to console Mike for a change, Kenny failed miserably, and then made matters infinitely worse by ghosting Mike. So even though Mike was concerned about his former friend's well-being, he was determined to show Kenny as little sympathy as possible. Damn, though, Kenny wasn't making it easy.

"Mike," Kenny asked, preparing himself for an answer he didn't want, "Did Paul mention my guitar, the one my Grandpa gave me?."

Mike tried to take a deep, cleansing breath, only to inhale second- hand smoke. Paul told Mike that their Grandpa Andrew had died a few weeks after Mike's birthday, and each of his grandsons had been bequeathed several of Andrew's most treasured personal items. It wasn't surprising that Kenny had been given Grandpa Andrew's guitar, since one of the biggest joys of Andrew's final years had been passing his guitar playing skills down to his grandson, exactly like Andrew's father had done with him.

"Yeah, Paul mentioned it. I'm sorry Kenny, but your mom destroyed it, too."

Kenny grew silent and rested the top of his head against the back of Grant's seat, in spite of aggravating the sore spot. Kenny had asked about the guitar just to keep Mike talking. He never would've dreamed that his mother would actually smash something that had been passed down to Kenny from his dead grandfather -- from her husband's dead FATHER! Kenny looked at the floor of the car and watched his vision repeatedly blur each time a tear was about to drop to the floor mat.

Kenny eventually looked over at Mike, hoping to see a sympathetic smile. Instead, Mike was gazing out the window at the passing scenery.

"I have to get him to like me again," Kenny concluded with a swell of absolute determination. "All the bad things started when I screwed things up with Mike. If Mike forgives me, maybe everything will stop going wrong. All I need to do is show Mike how sorry I am about his birthday. But how do I do....maybe I should....."

Kenny quietly unbuckled his belt, making damned sure that the metal of the buckle didn't accidentally clink, which would tell everyone in the car exactly what he was doing.

"Anything out there worth sketching?" Kenny asked Mike while covertly unbuttoning his jeans, pulling down his zipper, and spreading open the front of his pants, revealing the pouch of his tighty-whities.

"No," Mike said listlessly.

"I didn't think your memory worked as fast as it did," Kenny admitted, immediately chastising himself for indirectly mentioning the photo of Kenny's bruise. Fortunately, Mike didn't seem to notice. Or, more likely, he'd heard, but didn't feel like replying.

Kenny lifted the waistband of his underwear and brought it under his scrotum, completely exposing his genitals to the warm air coming in through Grant's window.

"So you just glance at something for a second, then you can never forget it, right?"

"Yes," Mike confirmed, his annoyance causing him to stretch the word out and say it with two syllables, "it still works the same exact way it's always worked."

"Just checking," Kenny mumbled nervously, preparing to reclaim his best friend by sacrificing his modesty and personal privacy. Once he got Mike's attention, and Mike turned, a very personal image of Kenny would be forever etched into Mike's mind. Hopefully it would become a shared secret that would re-establish their friendship.

Kenny looked down at his unflattering, shriveled willy, wondering if he should do anything to make it more presentable. The instant he released it from its cotton prison, the warm breeze, or perhaps Kenny's anxiousness, caused it to contract, pulling itself vertical until it looked like a fat, two-inch tall stub. Kenny was tempted to leave it looking like that, since all guys have dicks that don't look all that impressive while dormant, but embarrassment forced Kenny to pinch the head, stretch it upward, and hold it there for a few seconds.

"Have you sketched anything cool lately?" Kenny inquired, giving himself a nervous thrill by indirectly referencing what he was about to do. As Kenny hoped, the question got his blood pumping, and some of it went exactly where Kenny wanted it to go.

"No." Mike replied half-heartedly.

Kenny let go of his dick. It flopped straight back down onto his uncommonly soft pubes, which were only a shade or two darker than Kenny's beautiful dirty-blonde hair. He didn't like that his dick looked as weak and lifeless as Kenny felt, but at least his father hadn't bruised him there, too. It was one of the few places that wasn't sending pain signals to Kenny's brain. Kenny gave his dick a light shove with his finger, just to stop it from looking like a short, dead snake. It rolled slightly onto its side, which was somehow preferable. Not being gay like Mike, Kenny didn't know anything about the aesthetics of male junk, but from what Kenny could tell, his wiener now looked artistic, but natural. And Mike was all about the artistic, but natural.

After miles of seeing nothing but bare trees and wispy darkness, Mike finally saw something worthy of sketching. They were passing a haunting, decrepit farmhouse that looked abandoned, hopefully. Better still, it was situated behind a large, swampy pond, whose waters perfectly reflected the image of the bright evening moon. The scene was so striking that Mike vowed to sketch it the next morning. He never would.

Mike felt Kenny's shoe nudge his leg, startling him out of his artistic reverie. It was irritating, since the only reason Kenny would do something like that would be to get his attention without alerting Tom and Grant. If their new and better friendship with Kenny was so goddamned superior to his, what would Kenny need to hide from them?

Mike turned towards Kenny and froze in confusion. For once in his life, he couldn't process something he was perceiving visually. Kenny had his pants open, and his flaccid penis was just lying there, completely exposed. And to cap it all off, Kenny had a hopeful, puppydog look on his face that seemed to say: "Are we good now?"

Mike's pity for Kenny evaporated, and he found himself wishing that Don Miller would've just beaten his son to death.

Mike's enraged mind flew back to the night of his horrible seventeenth birthday. The birthday that wasn't. The night that Kenny came over to be there for Mike, who had shattered into a thousand pieces.

"I'm sorry I couldn't buy you something to make you feel better," Kenny had said as they both sat at Mike's family's dining room table, amidst a ton of dirty dishes covered with barely-eaten pizza and cake. Mike was expected to clean up the disaster his brothers and sisters had left behind, of course, but he was feeling too depressed. Besides, when his mother and father eventually came home, he wanted them to bitch about the mess. He wanted them to give him grief over the fact that he hadn't cleaned up after the babysitting chore his parents were trying to gaslight him into believing was actually a birthday party for him. Mike had just learned exactly how little he meant to his family, and he needed his parents to cap it all off with ONE LAST OUTRAGE. Something that would etch the awful evening in stone. His parents would not disappoint. It ended up being much more than one.

The only things Mike had been gifted with on his birthday were a string of heartbreaking realizations. But his birthday wasn't over yet. He was about to receive one more.

"It's okay, Kenny. I'm just glad you were able to come over. I know I said I didn't want you here, because I knew just how bad this was going to be, but I...didn't expect it to be...THIS bad."

Mike locked his muscles to prevent himself from swiping the dishes off of the table. Mike wasn't a violent sort of kid, and he'd have to clean up the additional mess he would make, but Mike really wanted to do it anyway. Kenny patiently waited while Mike got himself under control.

"Besides," Mike said once his rage turned back into defeat, "I don't think there IS anything you could've bought to make me feel better."

"Want me to help you clean up?" Kenny offered.

"No. I'm waiting until my parents get home tonight before I start. It won't matter, but I WANT them to see the mess. I want them to see how much of "MY" pizza and cake got wasted by shrieking brats who took as much food as possible, FUCKED WITH IT, and didn't bother EATING IT! I want them to know that Ann and Aiden got diarrhea from grandma's cake, so I spent my birthday dealing with THAT! But dad HAD to get grandma to make me a slapped-together, single layer cake in one of her filthy, rusty, cobweb- filled, caramelized cakepans. Thank GOD he saved money by not buying me a birthday cake! And thank GOD my brothers and sisters took so much of it that I didn't get a single PIECE. And when I pointed that OUT to them, Mason got a BIG LAUGH FROM EVERYONE by telling me I'm so fat that I don't NEED ANY CAKE!!"

"Mike, your birthday isn't going to get much better if you wake the kids up."

"Always about them," Mike muttered, "and never about me. Mom's talking about having another one."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Kenny consoled.

"Yeah....me, too."

"Mike, are you sure there isn't...anything I can do?"

It was a weird thing to say, and Mike was just going to blow it off, but then he realized that there was something Kenny could do for him that would make him feel better, something that could miraculously turn Mike's birthday into a day that he would actually remember fondly!

As a closeted homosexual artist, Mike was captivated by the male form. He sketched nude men all the time, but his models were unliving, unmoving, non-breathing, two dimensional pictures on a computer screen. It wasn't the same as having an actual naked guy right there to position however Mike wanted. And "yes", it would be awkward for Kenny, but Mike didn't think about Kenny in a sexual way. He was just....Kenny.

So Mike asked, and Kenny responded by getting weirded-out. He could've just said "no", and stayed with Mike so that he wouldn't be alone on that terrible night. Instead, he babbled the words that Mike typed into Kenny's phone a few minutes before, and then left. Mike was devastated.

The following days were worse. Mike expected Kenny to call and apologize, or, as he usually did in order to avoid confrontation, simply act like nothing was wrong. But this time, Kenny just didn't call at all. And when school started up, and Mike finally saw Kenny again, Kenny avoided all contact with Mike, including eye-contact. Mike never had a lot of friends. Thanks to his intellect, no one could understand him, just like no one could understand Kenny due to his lack of intellect. Transitory friends came and went, but come what may, Mike and Kenny had each other.

But then, Kenny moved on.....and turned Mike into a very lonely ghost.

So, as Kenny sat in the back of Tom Daggen's filthy car while casually exposing himself to Mike, there was only one question to be asked:

"Why...the fuck...NOW?!?!" Mike mouthed at Kenny with deafening silence, so slowly and deliberately that even someone possessed of Kenny's spectacular idiocy could accurately lipread it. Kenny must've understood, because he mouthed the words back to Mike, but comprehending the words was not the same as understanding the meaning, and Mike's rage elevated into fury at the sight of Kenny's vacant expression. Mike desperately wished he could scream his thoughts into Kenny's sad excuse of a mind, if only to order him to put his fucking DICK AWAY before Tom and Grant saw what Kenny was doing, ...and for whose benefit it was being done!

Kenny just sat there displaying himself, trying to figure out why Mike was staring angrily into his face instead of taking the opportunity to look down and check out Kenny's junk. He was giving Mike what he'd wanted, wasn't he?

"FUCK!!" Tom yelled after the orange sedan slammed into a pothole. If Tom had been paying attention, he probably would've been able to miss it. But he wasn't....so he wasn't. The car took a massive jolt and Tom instinctively changed the narrative so that he could blame someone besides himself.

"IF YOU JUST DESTROYED MY CAR, YOU'RE PAYING FOR IT, FAT ASS!!"

"I wasn't driving," Mike informed Tom sharply. "How is it my fault?"

"BECAUSE IF IT WASN'T FOR YOUR FAT ASS, WE WOULDN'T HAVE HIT THAT POTHOLE!! WE WOULD'VE JUST SAILED OVER IT!! YOU FUCKING TON OF SHIT!!"

Mike looked over at Kenny, who had just forced himself to endure the excruciating pain of engaging his sore arms and making them quickly do up his pants, once again making sure not to jangle his belt buckle.

"Kenny are you planning to weigh in here?" Mike asked, waiting for his allegedly remorseful former friend to finally come to his defense for once.

Kenny's blank look and silence spoke volumes.

"Tom, stop the car!" Mike ordered coldly, "I want out!"

Instead of slowly coming to a stop, Tom made the childish decision to stomp on the brake with all his might. Exquisite agony flooded Kenny's poor, battered body as he slammed into the back of Grant's seat. Mike, whose reflexes were deceptively fast, straightened his body and crossed his forearms in front of his face before impact, determined to make Tom's seat absorb every damned Newton of force that his 310 lb. body was subjecting it to. And if the seat broke, Mike had no problem with Tom being crushed between the seat and the steering wheel. Mike wouldn't be paying for THAT, either!

The car was all over the road, alternately slipping and skidding as it fought to careen off of the roadway. Fortunately, Tom's tantrum had flooded his bloodstream with enough adrenaline to keep the steering wheel from ripping itself out of his hands and sending the car into the trees to their right or down the embankment to their left. Eventually, the car mercifully came to a jarring stop.

"GET YOUR FAT ASS OUT OF MY CAR!" Tom counter-ordered, once again altering the facts of a situation for maximum personal benefit. "Mike Ordered Tom To Let Him Out Of His Car" didn't work to Tom's advantage. But "Tom Stopped His Car And Kicked Mike Out In The Middle Of Nowhere" had a lot of potential.

Mike removed himself from the vehicle with such rapidity and grace that it almost seemed impossible for someone of his size. He stormed off in the direction illuminated by Tom's taillights, while putting his astonishing memory to work. He'd barely taken twenty steps before his mind reproduced a map of the surrounding area that Mike had memorized eight years ago. Within another ten steps, Mike managed to work out a series of shortcuts that would shave a few miles off of what promised to be a long hike. All without using using his cellphone.

In spite of Mike's weight, he was actually quite fit. Whenever he wasn't studying (or parenting his younger siblings), he was in the base- ment, walking on an old treadmill that his older brother Jeremy left behind when he went to college. Mike would routinely walk between five to eight miles a day, not that the Pearson family bathroom scale ever rewarded Mike's efforts. However, tonight it would finally pay off when Mike proudly walked the approximately fifteen miles back to Timbersburg.

"I wish Grandma still drove at night," Mike thought wistfully, evaluating his options. But the only other person Mike could think of was his older brother Jacob, who would never go out of his way to help Mike, even if he knew the danger Mike was in."

"You can wrap it, twist it, and turn it around," Mike said aloud, perfectly copying the ostentatious, folksy, fake southern accent his mother used whenever she recited her favorite saying, "But when you get right down to it, all you have is family."

It was a saying that Mike's family consistently proved to be false.

"Mike, wait!" Kenny yelled.

Mike turned to see Kenny hobbling towards him, grimacing with each step.

"Mike, slow down!" Kenny pleaded, "I hurt too much to keep up to you."

Mike was about to tell Kenny to go back to the car, but he was interested to hear what Kenny would say. Mike turned around and approached Kenny to save him a few steps.

"Mike, please come back," Kenny urged.

"I was told to get out," Mike reminded him.

"But you told Tom to let you out, and..."

Mike spun on his heels and walked his "fat ass" away from Kenny at a pace that Kenny couldn't even match on his best day, let alone his worst.

"Mike, PLEASE!"

Mike kept stalking away, even as he heard Kenny's sneakers scuffing the concrete far behind him. He figured that Kenny would give up sooner if he quickly put enough distance between them, so Mike began to run.

Mike stopped cold at the sound of Kenny suddenly yelping in surprise. Then came the sickening sound of Kenny's bruised and beaten body smacking horribly against the pavement.

Mike turned and saw Kenny rolling around in agony on the road. He hoped that Tom and Grant would get out of the car and come to Kenny's aid, but they both appeared to be involved in an animated discussion. Still, two of the windows were at least partially open, so shouldn't they have heard Kenny's fall? Mike considered yelling at Tom and Grant to get their attention, but he decided against it. They'd proven themselves to be worthless new and better friends to Kenny in the same way that Kenny proved himself to be a worthless friend to Mike, so the two of them would probably just ignore Mike and remain in the car as it sat there idling in the middle of the road.

"Can you get up, Kenny?" Mike grumbled after once again retracing his steps.

"Mike, please come back to the car," Kenny whined. "You'll never be able to walk all the way--"

"KENNY, CAN YOU GET UP?" Mike yelled, "A car could come over the rise and hit you at any time!"

Kenny moaned and strained to force his pummeled carcass to stand up.

Mike gave another contemptuous glare to Tom's car and then leaned down to assist Kenny in getting to his feet, angrily breaking his promise to never touch Kenny again.

"I'm helping you back to the car, Kenny," Mike stated dispassionately. "Don't follow me again."

"Mike, please! Just let me smooth things over with the guys. It's too dangerous for you out here."

"My fat ass will be fine."

"But it's dark! A car could hit you!"

"I have my pocket flashlight. I'll turn it on whenever there's a car coming."

"No...look, I'll...I'll do what you asked me to do on your birthday."

"My birthday was over seven months ago, Kenny."

"I know," Kenny implored, trying not to sound as gushy and desperate as he felt, "but I can make it up to you. After things get better between me and my parents, and all these bruises heal, you can come over some night and we can hang out in the basement. I'll take off my clothes... or you can...you know...strip me yourself, if you want. And...I remember you saying that you wouldn't ask me to pose in any....like....'weird' ways. Well....I don't care. I'll pose however you want."

Kenny could see that Mike was unmoved by his offer, so he quickly tried to sweeten the pot.

"I won't just let you see me naked, I'll let you touch me every- where....touch IT! Mike, as long as we keep it between the two of us, I'll even jerk off while you watch....or....you can jerk me off...or suck me off!"

"I only wanted to sketch you, Kenny. I never asked you to let me perform sex acts on you, and I NEVER WOULD HAVE!!"

"I KNOW!" Kenny pleaded, "But now I'm offering! If you go back to being my friend again, I'll do anything! Mike I need things to go back to the way they were before, and I don't care what it takes! Just let me get a good buzz going, and I promise I won't get...uncomfortable...like I did on your birthday."

"And once my hand touched you, I'd be retroactively proving that you made the right decision by running out on me on my birthday. No thanks. Unlike you, I value my pride."

"Mike, I'm trying here! What else can I do?"

"You can answer a question," Mike suggested. "Would we even be having this conversation if Paul hadn't called me tonight, or would you have kept on ghosting me forever?"

Kenny opened his mouth to speak, but it looked like he was having trouble articulating his thoughts.

"Here we are," Mike said, leaning Kenny against Tom's car. "You're right back where you belong."

Kenny opened his mouth again, but this time he seemed to know what he wanted to say. However, Mike put his finger to his lips and pointed to the open window. In case Kenny was too stupid to figure out what Mike was trying to tell him, Mike also cupped the back of his ear. Then Mike turned and walked away.

"I'll follow you again," Kenny vowed. "I'm not leaving you out here alone. A bear might-"

"It is January! The bears...are fucking....HIBERNATING!!!" Mike screamed at the top of his lungs, eliciting laughter from inside the car.

Kenny waited for Tom and Grant to stop laughing before continuing to speak with Mike. Kenny was often the target of ridicule for his lack of brains, so he'd learned early on that it was pointless to speak while being laughed at.

"Mike, I'm begging you to let me try to smooth things over with Tom," Kenny said, supporting himself against Mike's shoulder and leading him away from the car and off to the side of the road, "I'm going through a lot of bad stuff, and I'm not just talking about what my dad did to me. I'm hanging on by a thread, Mike, and I can't get back in that car if you don't come too. I just don't have the headspace to worry about something happening to you out here."

Mike snorted and shook his head in amusement. Kenny couldn't even worry about Mike's safety without having a selfish reason for doing so.

"Tom and Grant are a danger to me," Mike said pointedly, "I was stupid to get into that car ONCE. If I get back in, something bad will probably happen to me. And this time it'll be my fault for not learning from my mistake, and your fault for blackmailing me into it."

"They don't know you're gay, if that's what you're worried about," Kenny whispered. "And I won't let them hurt you."

"You're broken, Kenny!" Mike pointed out, dumbfounded at the very idea that Kenny could (and would) protect him against Tom and Grant. "And even if you weren't, how exactly would you protect MY...FAT...ASS?!"

"I don't...know," Kenny replied, "Just...please?"

Mike took another deep, cleansing (and thankfully smoke-free) breath of air and considered the gravity of what he was about to say. As damaging as the last seven months had been to Mike and Kenny's friendship, tonight had proven that there was still a "tendril" connecting the two of them, a lingering thread of remembered friendship that would haunt them both for years, frequently urging one of them to tug on it, via text, email, holiday card, phone call, or simply a nod of acknowledgement as they passed in the hallways at school. Mike decided that it was time to take an ax to that fucking tendril.

"In spite of my birthday and the last seven months, I idiotically went to Tom fucking Daggen's house to check on you. NOW look where I am! The only way I'll get back into that car is if you agree to CONTINUE ghosting me, permanently! That way, no matter how many more times Tom takes his hands off the wheel, slams on his brakes, or stops in the middle of the road without putting on his flashers, it won't bother me, because at the end of the night, I'll finally be done with this one-sided joke of a friendship! I'm not COMFORTABLE being your friend anymore!"

Kenny knitted his eyebrows and inhaled raggedly, prompting Mike to turn away.

"As soon as you left, I cried. I've cried a lot over the last seven months. No one was there...no one cared, so if you're going to stand there and try to guilt me with tears, you're going to fail."

"I didn't call because I didn't think you'd forgive me. And then-"

"Seven months ago, I would've forgiven you," Mike interrupted. "And I'm not doing this right now. It's over. You either accept that, or I walk. And if you stay behind, I won't take responsibility for you. I'm DONE taking responsibility for you and your bad decisions! If you want to be a little bitch and follow me, you're fucked! Neither of us have anyone to call, and with my weight and your injuries, no one's going to offer us a damned ride! And if you think I'm going to walk all the way to Timbersburg with you whining for me to slow down, that isn't going to happen! I'd come back for you once I reached dad's car, but if you force me to do that, especially if I have to drive back and forth to find you, I'll go from not liking you...to fucking HATING YOU!"

"Just...just let me go talk to Tom," Kenny choked. "Just give me a minute to....pull myself together."

"Whatever."

"You p-p-promise not to leave, right?"

"If you promise to abide by my terms."

"Yeah, okay," Kenny sobbed miserably.

Mike waited as an unbearable twelve year burden lifted itself off of his shoulders and hobbled back over to Tom Daggen's car. Mike still had either a very long evening or a very long walk home ahead of him, but whichever one he had to suffer through, at least he could bask in the knowledge that he'd taken all of the loneliness and pain he'd experienced since his birthday and shoved it straight down Kenny's throat.

After months of continual failures, Mike decided then and there to use every ounce of his brainpower to find a way to move on. He would make new friends, smart and interesting ones, who wouldn't drain him with their personal issues and then throw away his friendship over petty bullshit. All Kenny had ever been was another child to babysit, and thanks to Mike's mother, he already had more than enough of those.

"I'll wake up tomorrow and everything will be different," Mike promised, adding yet another doomed vow to his collection. Everything would be different tomorrow....but Mike wouldn't wake up at all.

Far above, suspended upside-down from a thick branch, a curious creature watched the drama between Mike and Kenny with keen interest.

It actually didn't regard itself as a "creature", so much as a "monster". The difference? "Creature" sounded relatively benign, whereas "monster" implied the possibility of murderous intent. And as this monster watched the scene below, it was DEFINITELY capable of murder. All it needed was for Mike Pearson to be left behind and forced to wander home, all alone, through the moonlit darkness.

If Mike got back into the car, everything would become much more difficult, but the monster would still seek its prey. It had to. The monster's mind had been eroding for months while it impatiently waited for the perfect moment, a moment that it angrily assumed would occur in late spring or early summer. But unexpectedly, the creature had been given a "godsend" in the form of an impossibly warm, almost HOT, January day. And better still, the gift of an isolated and remote location in which to kill.

But just when everything was going so well, Kenny Miller dragged his carcass out of the car, hobbled after Mike, and tried to encourage Mike to come back, potentially ending the monster's good fortune.

"LET....HIM....GO!!!!" the monster screamed down at Kenny as loud as it could. The monster knew that Kenny couldn't hear it, but the purpose of the scream wasn't to attract Kenny's attention, it was meant to vent some of the rage, stress and anxiety that were causing the cracks in the creature's mind to spread, spiderwebbing outward until they threatened to make the monster lose control, drop to the roadway, and butcher all four boys in the space of a few seconds.

"Tonight," The creature mumbled while trying to stop the tremors of rage caused by all of its superhumanly strong muscles being clenched at once. It was a futile effort. The monster wouldn't be able to relax them until his violent goals had been carried out. "It has to happen TONIGHT!!"

Shortly before, the monster had been following Tom's car from over- head, flying in its own beastly manner. "Flying" wasn't quite accurate, since the thing was not biologically equipped to fly at all. Still, flight was needed to track its prey, so it utilized its cunning to devise a make- shift way to pull itself through the sky. Even after weeks of practice, the flying technique remained both clunky and exhausting, yet sufficient skill had been attained to not only keep pace with Tom Daggen's breakneck and erratic joyriding, it had also managed to maintain itself close enough to use its unnatural senses to see and hear everything going on inside the car....and some of the things going on inside the minds of the occupants.

But then, without warning, Tom Daggen slammed on his brakes, putting the monster in danger of overshooting the car and being seen through the vehicle's front window, since in spite of the darkness, the waxing moon was reflecting brilliantly off of its pasty flesh and pale, pinkish, artificial wings. Fast action was required to avoid detection by the prey, but there were few options. Banking to the right was out of the question, since there was a forest in the way, and the monster couldn't gain enough altitude fast enough to soar over the tree tops. Banking to the left was even riskier, since a glimpse into Mike's mind revealed that he had an unnaturally high level of visual perception. Even mashed against the back of Tom Daggen's seat, the slightest glance outside might result in a sketch of the monster adorning the front page of the Timbersburg Times. That could not be allowed to happen. The punishment for such a thing was too terrifying to even think about.

The monster had only one option left that might allow it to remain unseen, .....but it wasn't a pleasant one.

The monster clenched its teeth and tensed all of its muscles in preparation for what promised to be an agonizing ordeal. That promise was kept. Using its supernatural might, the monster twisted its crude wings flat against the onrushing wind and allowed them to bulge backwards and fill with air, turning them into equally crude drag parachutes. The monster endured murderous strain as it fought to maintain this tricky new wing configuration in the face of an overwhelming amount of air turbulence. The monster's airspeed decreased rapidly, but the uneven wind forces threatened to wisk the monster off in some random direction.

The monster noticed a high, thick limb that extended across the roadway. Acting fast, the monster spilled the air out of its chutes, turned them back into wings, and swooped under the branch. As it passed beneath, the monster fired a long, violet strand from its hindquarters. The strand, which had roughly the same diameter as a drinking straw, reached up with viper-like speed and wound around the limb multiple times before suddenly securing itself by contracting and squeezing it with all the power of a different kind of lethal snake.

The monster grunted as the section of strand between the limb and the monster lost its slack and stretched like bungee cord, putting enormous stress on the monster's innards, but not nearly enough to hurt it. The monster was far too well-designed, as was the violet strand, which lost none of its thickness as the monster's momentum stretched it to a total length of about twenty three feet before the monster came to a horizontal stop.

At this point, the tension on the violet strand should have pulled the monster backward and slammed it into the branch. To prevent this out- come, the monster simply released more strand to dissipate the stored elastic energy. Once this was accomplished, the monster prevented itself from dropping into an uncontrolled swing by retracting the violet strand, winching itself up until it was hanging upside down from the limb.

Once the monster was fully stationary, it camouflaged itself and found a better and closer branch from which it could observe its prey. The monster dangled there, looking very much like a large spider, as it watched, listened, mind-probed, ....and waited.

Now, the monster listened as Kenny degraded himself in his attempt to convince Tom and Grant to allow Mike back into the car. It was even more embarrassing than listening to Kenny offer to whore himself to Mike in exchange for forgiveness.

The monster entertained the possibility that maybe Kenny would fail, and Mike would be left behind after all. But that wouldn't happen. It had seen too many flashes of Tom's thoughts. Tom would be an asshole about it, and make Kenny grovel, but in the end, Tom would allow Mike back in. When Tom banished Mike from the car, it had been a knee-jerk reaction. But now that Tom had time to ponder the situation, and talk things over with Grant, a plan had been formed.

But the monster had a plan, too.

A beam of light caught Mike's attention. He turned to his left to see that a car was coming over the rise. In seconds, they would encounter Tom Daggen's sedan sitting in the road without its flashers on.

"CAR!" Mike called out as he stepped over the guardrail and walked several feet into the forest. If the car didn't notice Tom's vehicle in time, it would probably swerve into the opposing lane, but Mike wasn't taking any chances. If the car swerved right, or hit Tom's car and then spun to the right, Mike could be crushed against the guardrail. It was a hell of a lot safer to be on the outside of the guardrail, with a couple of thick trees between Mike and a potential accident.

As Mike predicted, the approaching car passed on the left, giving Tom a blare of its horn. Tom opened his window, flipped the car off, and turned on his high beams.

"If that car comes back," Mike promised himself, "Tom and Grant can deal with the consequences. And Kenny better not get involved, because I'm not coming to his rescue."

But to Mike's relief, the car continued driving down the road.

Mike started to walk back to the road, but he was stopped by a sudden thought.

"If I just hide in the woods, they'll eventually drive off," Mike thought. "Then I can walk home."

Mike froze. That thought didn't feel right. It passed through Mike's brain, but Mike hadn't thought it. Being as intelligent as he was, Mike was intimately familiar with the concept of inspiration. He knew exactly what it felt like, and now he knew what it didn't feel like.

"That wouldn't work," Mike actually thought, noting how different the two thoughts felt in his mind. "Kenny would insist on searching for me in the forest, thinking something had happened to me.

Mike heard a thick limb creak loudly above him, causing him to snap his head back and stare upwards, but there wasn't enough moonlight filtering through the trees to see much of anything. Mike tried to convince himself that the creaking limb was just a meaningless, natural, common occurance, but as it often did, Mike's high-powered brain refused to sign off on what Mike wanted to believe, and instead force-fed him facts that contradicted whatever unsupportable theory that Mike was using to comfort himself.

"Wood creaks during the winter," Mike thought. "The wind probably shifted the branch just enough to cause the creak."

"Impossible," Mike whispered. "The limbs have been thawing for days, and if that branch is as big as it sounded, it would need its leaves, which it lost months ago, to catch enough wind to shift it. And also, there isn't any wind tonight!

"Even so," Mike heard in his mind, "in spite of this week's freakish weather, it's still winter. There's nothing out here that can hurt me."

Mike was becoming concerned. That thought definitely hadn't come from him. Mike knew of several non-hibernating animals that could possibly become a potential threat to Mike's safety. Mountain lions, for example.

"Mountain lions rarely attack humans," Mike definitely didn't think, "I'm safe here. Safer than I would be if I get back into that car, at least."

Mike cleared his mind, which was easy to do, since he was too terrified to think. All Mike was aware of was the sensation of his scrotum shriveling to the point of puckering. Something was in his mind, and it was trying to encourange Mike to stay in the forest and stray from the rest of the flock. Mike's brain absorbed this information, mulled it over for a tiny moment, and wordlessly informed him that there was something in the darkness..it was hunting him...it wasn't human...and it was probably right above him.

"Maybe I will just stay here and hide," Mike thought loudly, hoping it would shield his true intentions. "If Tom and Grant decide to leave, and Kenny is stupid enough to stay and look for me, I can always.... ....RUN!!!"

Mike shifted his weight, intending to turn around and sprint back to the road, but his right knee gave out, causing his left foot to slip in the mud and shoot out in front of him. Mike landed on his ass in the most embarrassing way humanly possible. However, Mike did manage to reclaim a sizeable amount of his dignity by instantly reaching into the pocket of his jeans, pulling out his flashlight, clicking it on, and pointing it at the canopy above with the speed of a gunslinger.

The limb creaked again, louder.

"Where are you...where are you...where are you..?" Mike whispered, forcing himself to focus through his fear and systematically sweep the beam through the tangle of branches. Getting up and trying to flee again was too dangerous. His previous attempt had ruined that possibility. Turning his back on his opponent now could be a lethal mistake, thus Mike dedicated himself to locating his foe visually while listening for more creaks, the "whomp" sound of something dropping to the ground, or worse, the sound of approaching footfalls.

"BEEEEEEEEP!"

Mike jumped at the sound of another angry motorist expressing their disapproval of Tom's obnoxious violation of safe driving practices, but it didn't stop him continuing his scan. There were no eyes looking down at him, nor any large masses, but his brain was telling him...something.

"What's going on there?" Mike wondered, exhaling the words almost inaudibly, just to make sure that they came from him.

Mike scanned the entire visible canopy, and everything seemed completely normal. However, there was an area that was just...wrong. The branches that passed through that section were a darker brown, and the texture of the limbs was a bit rougher. But the more Mike watched, the more the brown lightened, and the texture softened.

"Did I just make that happen?" Mike muttered to himself.

Mike continued to stare at the weird section, tracing its branches and scouring for inconsistencies. He didn't see anything, but he certainly felt something. Every time he swept the strange area, Mike received a painful series of pangs in the back of his head. Most people would've just assumed it to be a normal headache, but Mike had always been curious about his "gifts", particularly his visual skills, so he knew exactly which area of his brain was responding to the weird section.

"Why is that area causing my occipital lobe to ache?" Mike wondered, knowing full well that that part of the brain controlled visual perception.

"This is a stupid waste of time," Mike thought.

"This is NOT a stupid waste of time," Mike whispered.

Mike swept the beam across the section once again, but this time he noticed something else wrong: Although the beam was consistently bright throughout each sweep, the strange area just didn't seem to illuminate as much as the rest of the canopy. Everything within the zone just seemed darker, revealing fewer details about the limbs that were farther away. Outside of the zone, Mike could look between the branches all the way up to the moonlit sky, but within the zone, everything just turned black beyond the first few layers of limbs, like a 3-D video game with bad rendering issues. But again, the more Mike stared at the glaring inconsistency, the more it resolved itself. Mike watched as more and more layers of branches appeared. But just before the image finished trying to match the surrounding environment, Mike looked away and grabbed his head. His skull and eyeballs felt like they were going to explode from internal pressure, but the effort had been worth it. Mike now had enough data to figure out exactly what was going on.

"I'd better knock this off before I give myself a stroke or-"

"Who are you?" Mike mentally interrupted, momentarily creating cross-talk in his mind.

"..........."

"I don't know what you are," Mike began, "But I know you're trying to trick me with false thoughts, and I know you're in the trees above me. You're camoflaging yourself by forcing me to create and perceive either what you want me to see up there, or what I would expect to see up there, instead of what is up there. But that can't work on me! My visual acuity can't be fooled by anything less than perfection! And even I can't create instant visual perfection! I'm getting a killer headache just by attempting to do that! So stop trying to fuck with me, and just talk to me!"

"..........."

Mike picked himself off the ground and stared at the location of his unknown opponent. He briefly considered turning around, running the ten feet or so back to the guardrail, and then vaulting onto the road, cars or no cars. He couldn't. After enduring the endless boredom of a school system that wasn't equipped to challenge someone as gifted as he, Michael Pearson had been handed a seemingly impossible problem....by a seemingly paranormal foe. No amount of terror could make Mike forfeit a contest like that!

"Show yourself, or I will make you show yourself," Mike commanded.

"............."

Mike's headache had quickly subsided after looking away from the strange area. He didn't want it to come back, but he needed to monitor the zone for changes, or a sudden attack, so he turned his head and only allowed himself to observe it with his peripheral vision. After thirty seconds, a quick straight-on glimpse told Mike that he wasn't being taken seriously. The illusion was still active. It was time for Mike to follow through with his threat.

"Suit yourself," Mike said aloud.

Mike reached into his back pocket and took out his decade-old, hand-me-down cell phone. Whatever happened next, he sure as hell wanted some proof. He touched the screen recorder icon and pointed both the phone and the flashlight directly at the weird section.

Reluctantly, Mike closed his eyes, leaving himself vulnerable to attack. It was terrifying, but necessary. Mike continued to dedicate a portion of his mind to listening for creaking branches and approaching footfalls while he quickly initiated his plan.

"Everything is WHITE!" Mike screamed in his mind, "The entire forest is supposed to be WHITE! There is nothing but whiteness everywhere! Blindingly WHITE! When I open my eyes EVERYTHING WILL BE WHITE!!!"

If Mike was correct, when he opened his eyes, his opponent's camouflage would've turned completely white to match Mike's false expectation. Mike prepared himself to witness a pure white bubble floating in the air, containing something that couldn't possibly be human.

"NO!" Mike screamed.

Mike suddenly felt something wrap around his flashlight and cell phone, pulling both items out of Mike's grip with considerable force, and twisting the flashlight around and aiming it directly at Mike's eyes. Mike flailed at the air, partially to either retrieve or just deflect the flash- light, as well as to make sure nothing was attacking him. But in spite of this desperate tactic, Mike was subjected to the unmistakable, terror- inducing tickle of a huge snake tongue flicking against his lips.

"NO!" Mike screamed again, the circumstances robbing him of any capacity to say something original.

Mike turned and ran out of the forest, clearing the guardrail by jumping up onto it, then dropping down onto the roadway, fear almost causing him to stumble and recreate Kenny's flop onto the pavement.

"Mike!" Kenny called out from beside the car.

"What?" Mike replied, spinning around to face the tree line. He scanned for moving branches and listened for any sound that might indicate he still wasn't safe. He'd also memorized everything he felt while looking at that camouflage, so he paid attention for headache pangs or any of the other sensations Mike experienced while looking at it.

Logic told Mike that he was probably safe, now that Kenny, Tom, and Grant could see him. The thing tried to trick Mike, which meant that it probably singled Mike out due to his weight, identifying him, insultingly enough, as the weakest of the herd. By employing this cowardly tactic, Mike assumed that the thing tried to pick off the "straggler" because it didn't think it could take all four boys.

Mike was completely wrong...about everything.

"Please talk to me!" Mike thought...HARD. As horrified as he was, the only thing worse than being left behind on the road with...THAT, was driving away, knowing that for all of his intelligence, Mike's pathetic, uncontrollable fear made him FAIL(!!!!!!) to make contact with an inhuman entity."

For one horrifying instant, Mike realized that tonight was the most important night of his entire life, the moment that ALL humans have. The moment they would pay anything to go back in time and FIX.

...the moment that defines them for the rest of their life.

"ANSWER ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Mike screamed mentally with every ounce of brainpower he could generate.

".........."

".........."

".........."

"ANSWER-"

"STOP!!!!!!!!!!! HURTING!!!!!!!! MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"

Mike casually grabbed his head, when what he really wanted to do was slam his fists into his temples. Tom couldn't find out what was going on. If he did, he would either go into the forest and kill the thing, or leave Mike behind in the hopes that it would kill him. Until Mike could figure out whether the thing was a misunderstood creature or a savage monster, Mike didn't want cause its destruction, or his own.

Mike thought he'd covered up his distress fairly well, but Kenny noticed.

Kenny hobbled over towards Mike, but he motioned him to stay back.

"What's wrong?" Kenny asked.

Mike almost lied and said he thought he'd seen a mountain lion, but if Tom overheard that piece of information, he might be tempted to leave Mike behind as a "joke". And if anything bad happened to Mike as a result, well.....

"How can I help you?" Mike thought in a low whisper.

"STAY WITH MEEEEEEEE! I NEED TO FEEEEEED!" Mike heard, wincing at the sound of his own voice in distress.

Those chilling words made Mike's decision a lot easier. As depressed and miserable as Mike would be about it, meeting an unknown life form was not worth getting killed over. Mike was not equiped to deal with this situation in the slightest.

"Nothing's wrong," Mike fibbed to Kenny, fighting to control his mental turmoil so that Tom wouldn't sense his fear. Tom had to get Mike out of there, he HAD TO! "I slipped and fell, that's why I screamed."

"You screamed?"

"You didn't hear me shout 'NO'...twice?"

"Uh-uh."

"Then Tom wouldn't have heard it either," Mike thought, somewhat relieved, "but that's not possible. I screamed really loud!"

"What did Tom say?" Mike grumbled, struggling with all his might to sound casual.

"They said you can get back in," Kenny explained haltingly, "But they...don't want you to talk...or say anything at all."

"Fine," Mike said angrily, hiding his relief.

Wordlessly, Mike got in the back seat, shut the door and rolled up the window. If someone in the vehicle was going to get a snake tongue in the face, or worse, Mike preferred it be Grant.

Kenny got back in the car and felt an incredible amount of tension, all of it coming from Tom and Grant. Mike didn't seem to notice. True to his word, Mike clammed up, not even responding to the snorting, head nodding, and all the childish, non-verbal antagonism directed at him from the front seat. In a weak show of support, Kenny tried to offer Mike a smile. It was a wasted effort. Mike was distracted, peering intently through the back window. Mike continued to stare, even after the car finally continued on its journey. Kenny assumed that Mike had simply seen something worthy of being sketched, but Mike's eyes suddenly widened in horror. Kenny followed his gaze and the two watched as something white emerged from the forest and stood by the section of guardrail that Mike had jumped across. The thing was difficult to make out in the moonlight, especially at that distance, but whatever it was, it was stark white. Kenny didn't know if he was looking at white fur, white scales, white feathers, or white hide, but he did know it was definitely white.

Mike turned back around, looking confused and concerned. Kenny almost asked Mike what they'd just seen, but Kenny realized that if Mike answered, Tom might kick Mike out again for talking, especially if Tom knew there was something outside that Mike was afraid of. It was exactly the kind of meanspirited thing that Tom would do, especially if it made for a good story. Whatever that white thing had been (an albino bigfoot? a huge owl? an insomniac bear?) Kenny didn't want Mike to be out there alone on the road with it. But, what was it? Kenny had to find out.

Kenny slowly and painfully reached back on the seat to retrieve his cell phone, aggravating a very recently torn rotator cuff muscle. Since you can't really start ghosting someone until you part company with them, Kenny wasn't really breaking his promise if he attempted to talk to Mike via texts. But before trying that, Kenny decided to bite the bullet and check his messages. He'd put his phone on airplane mode as soon as he'd fled to a safe distance from his house, because he knew his parents would probably start calling at any time in order to continue the fight. His parents did that whenever Kenny ran out of the house to escape from the physical and emotional abuse. They'd call up and scream at him to come back home so they could give him some more. And if he didn't, they would blow up his phone with angry calls, messages, and texts. It was as if Kenny's parents were incapable of getting themselves back under control. They HAD to terrorize Kenny, victimizing him remotely to compensate for not being able to victimize him in person. It had gotten so bad and so frequent that Kenny took Mike up on his offer to fuck up Kenny's voice mail settings in such a way that no one in Kenny's family, not even his tech-saavy brother Bill, could figure out how to fix it.

"Mike always did nice things for me," Kenny pondered sadly as he ignored six texts from his parents in favor of a text from Bill.

------------------------------------------------------------ Bill: Bro things R going fucking nutz! Mom got all mad again

and when you wouldnt pick up she tried calling U at

Mikes house cuz Paul told her UR there. She yelled at

Mikes mom 2 put U on the phone and they got into it

HUGE! Mom screamed that you shud just stay at Mikes

and not come home. Bro UR in so much trouble. ------------------------------------------------------------

"Entertained," Kenny said softly.

Kenny rested his achy and bone-weary body against Mike, enjoying the few seconds before Mike shifted and leaned forward, gently forcing Kenny to lean elsewhere. A sharp nudge would've accomplished the same thing, but as mad as Mike was at Kenny, he could never cause him any pain.

"Wish I could say the same," Kenny sighed to himself while rereading Bill's message. "I don't mean to, but I end up doing it anyway."

Kenny reached over and tried to hand the cell to Mike. Mike deserved to know what was going on. But Mike refused to acknowledge Kenny, even when he tapped the phone against Mike's shoulder.

"Mike, Bill sent me a text," Kenny said, trying to get Mike to take the phone without getting Tom and Grant's attention, "You're gonna want to read it."

All of a sudden, Grant spun around and grabbed Kenny's phone. To Kenny's horror, Grant read the text aloud, making himself and Tom bust up in laughter.

"You can stay at my place for a day or two, Kenny," Tom said, picking the worst possible time to clarify the limits of their friendship, "but that's IT."

"Yeah, I know," Kenny said weakly while retrieving his cell from Grant. Kenny looked over at Mike and saw anger. All Kenny could do was endure the jolt of pain required to give Mike a helpless shoulder shrug. He looked away from Mike's accusatory expression and contemplated the irony of now NOT wanting Mike to look at him.

Kenny pretended to check his other messages, just to escape Mike's glare. He could've read a text from Paul, but he didn't bother, since it was sent an hour before Bill's, and therefore probably didn't contain any- thing new. Also, Kenny wanted to pretend, if only for a little bit, that Paul's text was full of love, comfort and support.

Kenny composed his text to Mike. His plan was to get him talking about that white thing they saw. Afterwards, Kenny would apologize for the awful way he handled Mike's birthday request, and explain why he ghosted him. Mike would understand, hopefully.

Kenny: Mike what did we C back there

Kenny waited to hear the text notification tone coming from Mike's phone, but it never sounded. Instead, just as Kenny was about to set his phone down....

Ding!

Kenny stared at his phone in confusion. It was a message from Mike, but he didn't even have his phone in his hand. Kenny opened the text, and an icy chill went up his aching spine.

Mike: Give your phone to Mike, Kenny.

Kenny looked intently at Mike's right thigh. Earlier on, Kenny noticed the telltale rectangular imprint of the cellphone in the denim of Mike's right front pocket, but now it was gone. Had Mike switched it to a different pocket, or was someone else using it? But if Mike had it with him when they left Timbersburg, and Mike didn't have it NOW, he must've lost it at some point after he got out of the car. A hitchhiker or a regular hiker could've found it, he guessed. Whoever it was, Kenny hoped they hadn't encountered that...

"Wait. Is that....THING using Mike's phone?!" Kenny realized, far longer than it would've taken anyone else.

Kenny: Who r u

Mike: Tom saw you flash Mike. He told Grant. They both

know you're straight, so they think you did it

to make Mike happy. They're planning on bashing

him when you all get to where you're going. I am

not a threat to Mike. Give Mike your phone and I

will get him to leave the car again. If you

really care about him, LET HIM LEAVE!

Kenny stared at the words on the screen and tried to turn them into sentences. He couldn't. After watching his whole life fall apart in a matter of hours, his mind simply refused to accept more bad news. But little by little, the horrible message slowly filtered into his brain.

"I just wanted to fix things," Kenny whined in his head, "But I can't fix anything. I just keep making stuff worse! And it won't stop!"

A few hours ago, Kenny received a call from a man who identified himself as a private investigator. Kenny had no idea why a P.I. would be calling him, but being a friendly and helpful young man, Kenny just started answering the guy's questions. But as the interesting "conversation" continued, the man's tone changed, and soon, Kenny was being interrogated. Not being very sophisticated, Kenny kept answering, stumbling and stuttering as he went, until Kenny's mother, who'd decided to listen in when her son started getting flustered, grabbed the phone from Kenny and tore into the guy with as much self-gratifying rage as she could generate. When Gayle Miller ended the call by throwing the phone at the wall, shattering the phone and denting the drywall, Kenny hoped that his mother's rage had been spent and her emotional well had run dry.

But Kenny knew better than that.

Midway through his confession to his mother, Kenny's father arrived home. Gayle quickly brought him up to speed while Kenny stood there whimpering at what he knew was coming.

"I'm too old for this, ain't I?" Kenny thought in the split second before Don Miller's fist smashed into his son's left cheekbone.

Minutes later, Kenny's body decided that it was taking too much punishment, overriding his fear and momentarily reactivating Kenny's will, something that his parents assumed they successfully crushed years ago. But it was back, and it propelled Kenny's battered body down the sidewalk at a speed neither of his parents could achieve. They didn't try, of course, because of what Gayle feared the neighbors might think at such a sight, but her logic was laughable. In her disorganized, hyper-emotional state, Gayle forgot that she and most of her neighbors were taking advantage of the freakish temperatures by opening all of their windows to air out their houses. Several of those neighbors heard the majority of her latest melt- down. As they all had functioning ears, they couldn't help it. Gayle wouldn't have been relieved to know that none of those neighbors learned anything about the Miller household that they hadn't already known for years.

So in a few minutes, with one simple phone call, Kenny became instantly destitute at the age of sixteen. When Tom reached the limits of his charity, at which point winter had to return, Kenny would step out into the cold with no home, money, or winter clothes. He would also have to deal with the harsh consequences of the call he received. But in addition to all that, thanks to a well-intentioned but naive attempt to reclaim Mike as a friend, Kenny put Mike's safety, maybe even his life, in jeopardy. As bad as his dad's beatings could be, at least Don Miller knew when he had to stop. Kenny had seen Tom and Grant pick fights before, and he was certain that they, on the other hand, did not.

"Tom," Kenny said, placing all of his faith in a desperate ruse that would hopefully save Mike from all the dangers inside and outside of the sedan, "I'm feeling a lot worse. That fall on the road really hurt bad. Can we just go back to your house?"

"Just give me an hour or two," Tom replied impatiently with menace. "There's something I really want to do. It'll be fun. Then we'll head back."

"Oh, okay," Kenny said, disappointment flooding his broken mind, body, and soul. He wanted to beg Tom to head back, but that might alert him and Grant to the fact that Kenny knew what their plans were. Also, Tom's friendship with Kenny wasn't of the "touchy-feely" sort. In fact, it wasn't rooted in sentimentality at all. It was more of a toady-based friendship. Thus, Kenny wasn't going to remove Mike from danger by appealing to Tom's humanity.

"Where are we going?" Kenny mused miserably. "Why does Tom want to go there so bad? Why can't we just go back? Why is it so damned important?"

Kenny looked around the car and came to some bitter realizations, chief among them being the fact that he'd thrown away a good friend in favor of two bad ones. Secondly, in spite of Kenny knowing exactly what Tom and Grant were all about, he selfishly brought Mike along to avoid telling them about the private investigator. Thus, everything that happened to Mike was all Kenny's fault.

Kenny felt an overpowering wave of hatred, but not for Tom, Grant, or his parents. All of his hatred was directed at the person he hated the most: himself. Himself, and wherever the hell Tom was taking them all. In Kenny's mind, whatever Tom's secret destination was, it just had to be the most terrible place on earth. A place as hopeless as Kenny himself. A cursed place where nothing good could possibly happen. A place where some- thing horrible was going to happen to his best friend, something that would set Mike's hatred for Kenny in STONE, and there was nothing Kenny could do about it.

"Mike?" Kenny mumbled softly, keeping his voice low enough that it didn't interrupt the conversation going on up front.

Mike didn't respond.

After the unsettling events back in the forest, and the distant glimpse of the thing responsible, Mike was lost in thought. He'd just had a frightening encounter with the unknown, but because of his present circumstances, he was forced to suppress his extreme emotional state and fake an appearance of normalcy. It was maddening! He had so many fucking questions!! What was that thing? Did he just narrowly escape death? Should he have tried to help that thing? Was it a ruse? Was it asking for food, or was Mike the food it needed? Should he risk the potential embarrassment of reporting what had happened? Would they believe him? Would they help it, if it really did need help? If Mike didn't report the incident, and the thing killed someone, would he be able to live with him- self? WOULD it attack someone else? Was it following Mike now? Since it had been inside his mind, did it know where Mike lived? Were he and his family safe from it?

"Mike," Kenny asked, praying that somehow, in some ridiculously unlikely way, the text had just been Mike playing a thoroughly unfunny practical joke, "Where's your phone?"

Mike made no effort to acknowledge Kenny's question.

"Mike, I need you to look at something." Kenny accidentally said too loud as he handed Mike his phone.

Tom snorted in amusement, and Grant failed to conceal his giggling.

The whirlwind of questions in Mike's brain instantly stopped as confusion turned to absolute dread. Mike turned towards Kenny and stared at him in bewilderment. Mike's brain had already figured out that Tom and Grant were suddenly aware of his sexual orientation, and that Kenny was texting with the thing from the forest. Now all that needed to occur was for Mike himself to come to grips with it.

Mike snatched Kenny's phone in case Grant tried to make another grab for it, and then scanned the messages.

"He outed me!" Mike screamed in his head, "HE FUCKING OUTED ME!!"

Mike wanted to give Kenny another enraged glare, but it was Kenny's turn to avoid Mike by staring out the window.

"Enjoy your sulk, Kenny," Mike thought bitterly. "You've earned it, you brainless jinx!"

It wasn't that Mike was ashamed of being gay, rather he just had no desire to be known as "that really fat gay kid". The few gay students he knew were superficial and elitist, and therefore probably wouldn't accept him. There were also a large number of homophobic students and faculty members at the school who would relish in the opportunity to make Mike's life a living hell. Mike's school life was already miserable enough, despite his stellar grades, and perhaps because of them, so he decided to stay in the closet and ride out high school, then address his sexuality when he went to college, preferably in a more open and accepting city. But now, that option had been taken away from him by Kenny. If Mike wasn't too badly injured by his Kenny-induced beating, he'd be able to go to school on Monday and endure his Kenny-induced coming out party.

"You've really gotta hand it to Kenny," Mike thought while listlessly preparing to have a text conversation with something unquestionably supernatural, "he can ruin ANY occasion!"

Kenny: This is Mike. I didn't mean to hurt you. Are you

okay? What are you?

Mike: Pretend you're about to puke. Tom will pull over.

Jump out and walk back to town. I promise I won't

come anywhere near you.

Kenny: Sorry, but I'm not going to strand myself in the

middle of nowhere and hope you don't come and kill

me. And what are you?

Mike: Mike, I'm not trying to scare you by saying this,

but if I wanted you dead, I could've killed you

in less than a second. You have nothing to fear

from me, so please get out of that car and get

away from the people you SHOULD be afraid of.

Kenny: If I jump out, Tom will just stop the car, put it

in park, probably without putting on his flashers,

and come after me. AND WHAT ARE YOU?

Mike: They won't. Tom is fixated on reaching his

destination. He would've let you walk away if Kenny

hadn't interfered, so he'll probably let you walk

away NOW. Kenny won't stop you now that he knows

what Tom and Grant are planning, so DO IT!

Kenny: Why aren't you telling me all this in my head?

Mike: Stop. Asking. Questions. YOU'RE IN DANGER!!

Kenny: Yeah, I know! An invisible, telepathic forest

creature is trying to manipulate me into becoming

easy prey.

Mike: I'm not the one planning to prey on you tonight!

Do you think I'm lying about Tom and Grant knowing

you're gay?

Kenny: Your telepathy has a very limited range, otherwise

you'd know that they just tipped their hand. They

know, but they don't know that I know they know.

And since they're not being open about it, I'm

guessing you're right. They're probably planning

to hurt me.

Mike: Then get out of there!

Kenny: I won't. I know what Tom and Grant want to do to me,

but I have no idea what YOU want to do to me.

I'd rather be beaten than eaten.

Kenny: Besides, if you really are just concerned about me,

You could've just talked to me! I would've been

scared shitless by you, but I would've gotten over

it! Instead, you tried to fuck with my mind! Why

would I EVER get out of this car now?! My heart is

pounding just by TEXTING with you!

Mike: Mike, not everyone is as smart as you are. I didn't

want to scare you or reveal myself, so I made the

mistake of trying to trick you. I'm sorry.

Kenny: Apology accepted, provided that you tell me what

you are.

Mike: If you get out of that car, and promise to keep me

a secret, we could meet someplace private in a few

days. I'll tell and show you everything about me.

Mike, I'm truly fascinating. You won't believe the

things I can do.

Kenny: You forgot to compliment my art.

Mike: ???

Kenny: Well, in just a few lines of text, you've flattered

my intelligence, piqued my scientific curiosity, and

proposed an irresistible social encounter that could

possibly lead to an unbelievable friendship. I'm a

really self-aware guy, so I know you've just offered

me everything I need right now. You're a telepath.

You were in my head. You're working me, and we both

know it.

Mike: I just want you safe, Mike.

Kenny: And there's absolutely no reason for an invisible,

telepathic forest creature to care about that.

Mike: Mike, what could I possibly offer you in exchange

for you getting out of that car?

Kenny: You could try telling me what you are.

Mike: Whether you live or die tonight, these words will

be read by the police, and probably the media. As

you may have noticed earlier, I'm not comfortable

with being dragged out of the shadows.

Kenny: Huh? If I'm alive and responsive afterwards, why

would the police need to examine Kenny's texts?

Mike: I can't answer that.

Kenny: Can you tell me ANYTHING? Like, WHAT ARE YOU???

Mike: I'm a human who was turned into a monster, twice.

The first time, I had no choice. The second time,

I was told I had a choice, but that was bullshit.

There was no choice.

Kenny: Can I get a name to go along with that riddle?

Mike: If I tell you my name, you'll misunderstand it. And

then you'll never get out of that fucking car.

Kenny: It won't matter. Even with a bright moon, it's still

pretty dark out there, and I don't have my phone or

my flashlight. Also, there's a self-identified

monster on the loose. So I really don't have a

choice either. Please tell me your name.

Mike: They call me Lure.

Kenny: Yep, you were right. Now I'm ABSOLUTELY not going to

let you "lure" me out of this car.

Mike: And I was also right when I said you would

misunderstand it.

Kenny: I don't suppose you'd be willing to send my phone

and flashlight back to me?

Mike: I'm an invisible, telepathic forest monster. We

don't know how to use the post office. Besides, you

managed to get some good video of me.

Kenny: I'd love to see it. Would you mind sending it to me?

Mike: ITFMs don't know how to attach video clips to text

messages. Let's just say that you really captured,

my kind, trustworthy eyes, as well as my hot, young,

muscular body. Sadly, thanks to you, I'm really

washed out, and my nine inch penis is out of

frame. All in all, though, I'd say I look "artistic,

but (super)natural".

Kenny: Now I KNOW you're working me.

Mike: Get out of the car and come see.

Kenny: No.

Mike: Good-bye, Mike Pearson. I'm sorry I failed to "lure"

you to safety. Tom is taking you to Faggot Forest.

Don't bother looking around when you get there. It's

an awful place, and you won't see anything you'll

ever want to sketch. I hope you survive. -Lure

Mike sent out some more texts, but Lure didn't bite. Their talk was over, leaving Mike to torture himself about all the questions he didn't ask, all the answers he didn't get, and all the tactics he was too awestruck to employ to get them.

Afterwards, Mike took a second to mourn his cellphone and flash- light, two items that were irreplaceable, owing to the fact that neither Mike nor his parents had the money to replace them.

"I wonder what Lure will do with them," Mike mulled. "Most likely, he'll destroy my phone....crush it in his huge, furry fist....or maybe his scaly claw.

"So," Mike thought, trying to redirect his attention to his most pressing problem, "Tom and Grant are going to fag bash me in Faggot Forest. How appropriate, if a bit on the nose."

"Is all this shit seriously happening to me?" Mike wondered.

End of Chapter 1