It was a dark and stormy night.
A night, in fact, just like tonight.
Halloween night.
"Don't you think it's too cold to go skinny dipping Jimmy?"
Jimmy tilted the mirror down to look at Janie's cleavage, visualizing the effect cold water would have on her nipples. He'd gladly jump naked into a glacial stream to see those titties shaking and shivering.
"Naw baby, the lake stays warm late into the year. My uncle used to sneak us out here all the time when we were younger."
What he didn't mention was that the campsite had been abandoned for years.
"I don't think it's gonna stop raining in time for a dip." She bit her lip. She liked Jimmy. She liked Jimmy's jeep. She liked that Jimmy didn't button up his shirt past the second button. She liked Jimmies, and this wasn't her first one.
"There's cabins at the lake. Worst comes to worst we'll find something to do indoors..."
He smiled that slow, intentional smile, and looked her dead in the eye with one hand on the gearshift of his jeep, the other on the wheel.
She put her hand on his gearshift too, but not the one attached to the jeep.
"Drive faster Jimmy..."
He leaned in.
It felt as if the foot of God kicked the jeep like a tonka truck. Janie's head bounced the roof of the cab, her teeth nipping painfully down on the inside of her mouth as she came out of the seat.
Jimmy slammed on the brakes, but it was too late.
A small tree lay across the road, and the front right wheel of the jeep was visibly crooked.
"Baby, are you okay?!"
"Either that was one hell of a kiss, or you just hit something..."
Blood trickled from her mouth.
"I'm so sorry babe. I should have paid more attention. Hopefully the jeep is okay."
Jimmy hopped from his seat and walked around the jeep. He looked at the crooked wheel, pursing his mouth shut.
"I'm gonna call in a wrecker. I think the wheel's fucked."
They both pulled out their phones.
No signal.
They were 30 miles from the nearest town, but only half a mile from camp.
"What are we gonna do?" She was in shock.
"Maybe it's not too bad. I'll try to lump it into camp; we should find a phone there."
She breathed heavily, feeling her anxiety rise. She choked it down with gulps of air, trying to keep her composure. It's just a busted wheel. Jimmy had this all under control. She should trust him.
"Okay, okay."
The wheel lumped with every rotation as they crawled into compound. The wheel wasn't flat, though, so they eventually made it into the ruins of the camp.
"I though you said you used to go to this campground..."
"I did... when I was 9. I didn't expect it to be this far gone."
The banner to the campground was collapsed and illegible. There were a handful of small cabins, some of them with partially collapsed roofs. The railings were rotting, the the paint peeling off the woodwork in scales like a snake.
The headlights of the jeep highlighted streams of rain pissing down as the sun set behind the clouds.
"Look, Jimmy, let's just find a cabin. We're already out here, we might as well not waste the trip..."
The dried blood on her lip cracked as she smiled.
Jimmy's blue eyes stared back, rain slicking his chest hair and making his unbuttoned shirt stick to his body.
"Did I ever tell you I love you?"
"Just every day since the first day we met."
Jimmy checked a couple cabins, but they were all locked. He finally settled on one that looked like it still had a good roof.
"Janie, don't snitch, but I'm gonna do something a bit illegal."
"I trust you baby."
He sprinted through the rain again, his clothes beginning to soak as the thunder rolled across the sky like an angel's bowling ball.
Some things just can't be done halfway.
He kept his momentum and raised his foot, smashing the bolt through the frame of the cheaply built cabin door.
"I think I found the key!" he yelled playfully.
She laughed. Maybe this was going to work out.
He took his soaked shirt the rest of the way off, holding it above her head as a makeshift umbrella as he walked into the shadows of the cabin, their way lit only by the light of her phone.
Inside was a rough bed, dusty but dry, and a small kitchenette equipped with knives for cleaning fish.
She bit her lip, tasting the blood.
"So, what do you want to do?"
"I was thinking we could wait for dawn. The rain should stop by then, and we could go scouting for signal to call for help."
"Oh, and what do you think we should do all night in the meantime?" She purred, rubbing a hand across his wet chest as her own shirt turned transparent with water. Her nipples were every bit as hard as he'd dreamed they'd be.
"I guess we'll have to stay close to keep warm..."
He leaned down, smelling her hair, her face, feeling her...
Knife, up through his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. He collapsed, his legs twitching like a squirrel that had just become roadkill and didn't know it yet.
"Love me, do you?" She hissed through clenched teeth.
Only now did he notice the fresh saw dust on her socks. Only now did he think about the strange bulge in her brastrap.
"Jimmies. You always say you love me. You always LIE."
She sliced him across the face, opening the side of his cheek like a chicken carcass. His tongue was visible through the side.
"100 years, and nothing has changed with you Jimmies. Halloween, the year was 1918. DO YOU REMEMBER NOTHING?!"
He couldn't speak. The worst fell out of the hole in his mouth like a squashed duck.
"OH, YOU DON'T SAY YOU LOVE ME ANYMORE?!"
She sliced again, nearly severing a few of the fingers of the hand he held futilely in his defense.
"100 YEARS AGO. JIMMY SAID HE LOVED ME. I GAVE HIM MY VIRGINITY, AND HE SAID HE LOVED ME."
Jimmy writhed, a pool of blood slowly forming around his paralyzed legs. His mutilated mouth sounded like a clogged vacuum cleaner.
The light of the phone propped in the corner shined through her, the flesh in her face pulling back, withering.
"YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME, BUT THE NEXT DAY YOU TOLD ALL THE BOYS IN THE CAMP I WAS A WHORE."
Jimmy's one good arm struggled to push his body up, only to slip in his own blood pathetically again and again.
"THEY CALLED ME TRAINY JANIE. THEY PUSHED ME OFF THE PIER AND I DROWNED, 100 YEARS AGO."
She kicked him so hard his body slid several inches in his blood with impact.
"EVERY YEAR I KILL I GROW STRONGER, JIMMY. YOUR DEATH WILL ENSURE THAT I LIVE FOREVER."
He tried to tell her he loved her, but the closest sound he could make was that of a cat choking up a hairball.
She grabbed his hair, shoving her pale knife down his lying throat again and again, slaking her tits with his blood, laughing and cackling loud enough to drown out the thunder as the light of the cell phone drained and died.
-------
The next morning, a tow truck arrives into the reddish daylight as birds sang their final songs of the fall.
"How did you know there'd be good scrapper in the old camp, papa?" A young boy asks his grandfather.
"There's one every year. It's good money, and times are hard."
"But why papa?"
"Son, if you don't love a woman, never lie and say you do. And never, ever, go into one of these cabins, you hear me boy?"
"Yes sir."
"Good, now help me get these straps on. I don't like being here."
Wordlessly they drove back to the junker lot.
With 99 cars in it.
"One day I'll tell you the story of Great Aunt Janie, but not today son. Not today."
This is a song about death. It's on mandolin.
Hate is the first step to all solutions.
You will not end bigotry until you learn to hate it.
