Daily Sketch
“So, how’d you end up back here?” Sarah asked.
Jason was still having trouble believing that the beautiful woman he was talking to was Sarah Wessinger. He hadn’t seen her since they both had been at this very same camp almost twenty years ago.
“Well, I, uh,” Jason looked down at a tree root. “I had a bit of a nervous breakdown, to tell you the truth.”
Sarah punched him on the arm, laughing. “Jason ‘King of Cobra Hill’ Ellison had a nervous breakdown? No, really, come on, what happened?”
Jason looked up the trail. “Hey Milton!” he shouted. “I saw you drop that Doritos bag. Pick that up or I’m going to pour bear musk all over your head when we get back to base!”
Milton shot back a ‘make me’ look, and then scrambled to pick up his trash when Sarah half ran toward him. “I got your back, Jack” she said over her shoulder, waiting for him to catch up.
“But seriously, what happened?”
Jason scratched his nose. “Seriously, I had a nervous breakdown. I got sucked into some Ponzi scheme masquerading as one of those late night infomercial ‘20 Secrets to Start Your Startup Right’ kinda deals, while I was trying to pay off student loans and find a real job. They had us pressuring old folks into forking over their life savings.”
“Yikes.”
“You said it. The worst part was they had me over in retention so I had to sit there and tell them it wasn’t possible to get a refund and read the same god damn fine print back to them over their screams and their sobs. ‘Due to the terms and agreements whichyou enteredintoof yourownfreewilland’ yadayadayada. I’ve got the bloody thing memorized. Couldn’t take it. I just started screaming one day and pushed my computer through two inches of drywall.”
“Two inches of drywall? Talk about some serious upper body strength, amirite?” She squeezed his biceps.
Jason chuckled, despite himself. “Anyway, I came up here as a counselor a couple of years ago as part of a Court-mandated thing, but I stayed on because office buildings still give me some pretty hardcore claustrophobia. How about you? How’d you end up back here.”
“My grandfather lost his entire savings to some shyster get rich quick salesman...Kidding,” She said, seeing Jason’s stricken face. She winced. “Too soon?”
“No, it’s all right,” Jason said, smiling. “Clean, solid hit.”
“No, it was too much,” Sarah said, running her fingers through her hair. “I feel like we’re twelve years old again and I just slipped out of the Zipline harness and slammed into you all over.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jason said, without a single muscle in his face twitching.
“Oh come on. It was the single most embarrassing thing to happen to anyone in hundred and fifty years.”
“I don’t remember.”
“How could you not remember?”
“Well, you did hit me pretty hard,” Jason said, smirking.
“Ass,” Sarah said, shoving him.
“That I do remember,” Jason said laughing.
Sarah shoved him again, this time hard enough for him to lose his balance. Jason grabbed at Sarah and suddenly they were both falling... right off the path and down into a gorge.
The last thing Jason remembered before blacking out was the sight of Sarah Wessinger hurtling at considerable speed to slam bodily into him.
Both Jason and Sarah came to at about the same time. “We have got to stop meeting like this,” Jason muttered.
“Stop it. No more jokes. I think I bruised some ribs.”
“Some ribs?” Jason asked. “My whole body is one big bruise. Where the hell are we?”
It was pitch black. All Jason knew for sure was that one of his pantlegs was damped - he hoped with water - and there was something sharp wedged fairly deep against his shoulder blade.
“Hang on a sec, let me grab my phone and we can use the flashlight app,” Sarah said. Jason heard a faint crinkle, as the powdered remains of an expensive smartphone glass screen might make. Sarah was volubly not happy about her broken phone.
“Here, I’ve got a flashlight, I think.” Jason said.
He reached down to his hip and miraculously, the heavy-duty stainless steel flashlight was still there, and even more miraculously, it still worked.
He fired it up, and they both staggered to their feet.
“Oh no, my shoes!” Sarah moaned.
Jason almost held back from rolling his eyes. “What, were they Lewis Vuittons, or something?”
“Oh, no, my shoes are all ripped up and I’m going to have to walk barefoot through the wilderness, not oh no, my shoes are all ruined and they cost seven hundred dollars. And it’s Lou-ee Vuitton, jerk.”
“Well, I think we’re both a little less than one hundred percent after falling down into a gorge.”
“And whose fault is that?” Sarah asked, planting hands on hips.
“That,” Jason said, “Is a question best settled over a couple of mugs of kahlua-spiked hot cocoa when we get back to base.”
Sarah grumbled but accepted the sensibleness of this suggestion.
“Are your shoes really that bad?” Jason asked, feeling bad about his joke and a little anxious at having to make his way back up the gorge with a passenger on his back.
“They’re fine for now,” Sarah said. A little too bravely to Jason’s ears, but two could play the stubborn game.
Jason swept his flashlight back and forth. Everything always looked ten times creepier in the middle of the night when you were at the bottom of a gorge and bruised all over. Every rock seemed to have eyes gleaming out of a crevice. Every dry leaf picked up by the wind sounded like the skittering of too large insects.
“Jason?” Sarah said, voice plaintive. “My foot is stuck.”
Jason swept the flashlight back to Sarah. Sarah’s foot was indeed stuck in some kind of, well, goop. It had an oil-slick sheen to it so it was hard to pinpoint what color it was, and it was either Jason’s imagination or the thing seemed to be pulsing.
“What is this crap?” Sarah asked, a definite note of panic in her voice now.
“No idea,” Jason said. “Here.” He scooped Sarah up by the waist and pulled.
Sarah screamed. No. Sarah moaned. Something else screamed. Jason pulled but the stuff was holding firm. He pulled harder and harder and the stuff slowly started to stretch, like the world’s grossest wad of chewing gum. The screaming got louder. Sarah started to join it with screams of her own.
Jason paused for a moment, and then jerked Sarah with all his strength in one quick pull. There was a loud snap and Sarah came free, but this caused Jason to lose his balance and he fell over. His elbow landed in something sticky.
Jason yanked his arm free, almost punching Sarah in the teeth. He looked down at Sarah. He could see white sticking out of her calf. White, and red.
Jason tossed Sarah over his shoulders fireman style and tore up the side of the gorge. He didn’t follow a path. He didn’t pause to think about whether his feed could find purchase on the loose gravel. He didn’t notice the screams of protest from his thighs and his calves.
It could have been ten seconds or ten hours but Jason made it back up to the path. He dropped Sarah like a sack of potatoes and then collapsed next to her. They were both shivering though the night wasn’t especially cold.
When he finally caught his breath, Jason dragged himself over to look at Sarah’s leg. To his great relief, none of the strange goo was still sticking to her skin. Despite the bone poking through the skin, the break looked clean.
“I’ve gotta set the bone, Sarah,” Jason said.
“Uh, are you qualif-” Jason set the bone. There was a lot of unintelligible or else unprintable screaming after that. Jason used a couple of nearby sticks and a compression bandage he had in his bag to make a splint.
“Gonna go get help,” Jason said, after lifting her once more and placing her much more gently against the side of a tree. “Don’t put any pressure on that leg.”
Sarah grabbed at Jason’s arm. “What is happening? What the hell was that stuff?”
“I don’t know,” Jason said. “But we’re back at the top. The scary part is over now. Just hold on a sec, and I’ll be back with a couple of guys and the Camp doctor and we’ll get you all patched up.”
“Jason,” Sarah said. “Don’t leave me here. Please.”
“Look, I gotta - hold on. What as that.”
They heard something big coming through the underbrush. Jason aimed his flashlight at where he thought the sound was coming from.
“Milton!” Jason shouted. “You almost gave me a...” Jason trailed off. Milton was covered in the same goo they had seen at the bottom of the gorge.
A dry, creaky voice came out of Milton’s mouth. “Two rabbits in the wheel. The doors are knocking. Who speaks for the dust? Round and round. Round and round. No one weeps for the watchers. No one watches for the wisps. When will we wither without wanting? The dawn circles the drain.”
“Yeah, we’re getting out of here,” Jason said, half dragging, half carrying Sarah.
“What about the camp?” Sarah asked.
“Sarah, you saw Milton. The kid was covered in goop. The camp doesn’t need two beat-up, unqualified camp counselors. They need the army, or SETI, or the Pope, and I’d like to still be alive long enough to call them.”
