Sorry To Disappoint

"Got any good stories?"

I shifted a bit. The broken, rotting log wasn't much in the way of comfort. Still, it beat sitting in the mud.

"Like what? Stuff with girls, you mean?"

Randy poked the small, dim campfire a bit. In the light of the flames, his reddish beard almost blended with the rest of his face.

"Nah. I mean, sure, if you got a good one. I just mean, like, ghost stories. Scary shit. People with hooks for hands and arms made of gold or whatever."

That probably struck him as an odd request. After all, we'd been separated from the rest of the guys about two hours before and the night was about to go real bad if they didn't notice we were missing.

Randy looked to the Sun. It was just about to set. We both let out a sigh and returned to our half-blinded gazes into the fire.

"I guess I know some."

He squatted down a bit, then settled on a wide, flat rock. He kicked his feet out on either side of the fire and continued to diddle it with the green twig in his dirty hands.

"It'd be nice." I slapped a mosquito, squishing its corpse into arm hair, "I used to go camping all the time as a kid, and that's how we'd keep from getting REALLY scared. You get me?"

"Right, right."

Randy checked the Sun again. It was right where he'd left it.

"Okay, I guess there's a bunch of campers out in the woods. I guess there's some mental patient or whatnot who's escaped from the nut house…"

I chuckled.

"What's funny?"

"Nothing, sorry. Go ahead."

"Well this loony, I dunno. I guess he cuts them up or something."

"You have to put more into it. Part of the fun, I mean, when I was a kid and all, was in all the detail. Plus, you gotta make it original."

Randy cut me a look I'd only ever seen him give a deer. I would've given him some more slack, but it was his fault we were out there. He got us following some tracks and, well, suffice to say the dumb bastard ain't exactly half-Indian.

"Sorry." I shrugged. "Go ahead."

"No, now don't back off it. Original, huh?"

"Right. Psycho slashers and shit like that… kids watch that stuff, now. I went out with Missy the other day to get Tucker a Halloween costume. You know they got movie slasher outfits for, shit, age two?"

"Bullshit."

"No, really. That Hackwards movie. Got that guy, mask and a little onesie or whatever they're called. Comes with a foam rubber knife."

Randy glanced at the horizon one more time, then to the big, fat Moon overhead.

"You keep checking and it'll never set." I snorted, snapped a dry, dead branch from the log, and joined in antagonizing the fire.

"So what IS a good scary story?" Randy seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say for once.

"Shit, I don't know. Just nothing that's too popular to be scary anymore. Psychos, Zombies, Vampires, shit like that."

"You ain't scared by any of that?"

"Nope."

Randy sat up suddenly, the twig falling from his grip. His eyes focused hard on mine, in the sort of way you watch the final seconds of a big game.

"What about Werewolves?"

I chuckled again. "Nope."

"Well…" Randy said, baring oversized canine teeth for a second, his clothes beginning to tear away from the swelling mass of his body.

A single sharp, yellow claw pushed through the steel toe of his boot.

"…Sorry to disappoint."

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