No Justice

“The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.”

The silence was awkward, but Abram was the one who laughed first, a hard, hollow sound, loaded with sarcasm. Lank black hair hung in his face and with a cigarette between calloused fingers, he sneered,

“That’s bullshit, man! Fucking ‘candle in window’ nonsense. Not buying it, no way.”

“Awww, come on,” countered Lauren, rocking her body into his, trying to make his tense body give in a little. “It could happen. I mean people do put candles in windows sometimes. You just said, 'Tell us a story." You didn't say had to be, like, scary or anything.”

Abram scoffed again, taking a long drag from his smoke. His hands gesticulated his words and made shadows dance on the trees where the fire lit them.

“But like, who fucking cares about the window, the candle, or whatever lives in that shitbox place? It all starts with the candle in the window and then all hell breaks loose, some crazy fuck- it’s always the kid with no friends like big fucking surprise- and he has, like, a garage full of fucking chainsaws, and then he cuts up everyone and they scream and die, and I always think, ‘Thank God’ cuz I would’ve cut all their heads off before the screaming started, because fuck that shit,” punctuating “shit” by flicking his cigarette stub into the stumpy campfire.

Lauren looked at Abram’s stubborn face for a moment and stared at him in dismayed wonderment. Then she broke out in merry peals of uncaring laughter, laughter so loud it echoed around them, bouncing off the surrounding trees dimly lit by the fire.

“Jesus Abram, that’s more than you’ve said in days! I can’t believe it took this to make you start talking again. For a while there, I thought you’d gone totally nuts.” Lauren put her head on Abram’s shoulder and leaned into him a bit. She hoped he would put his arm around her after, but she wasn’t sure he had come that far yet. Maybe he would. It would depend on how the next part went. And that could go a number of ways.

But Abram unfolded himself from the log then, leaned over the figure on the ground, and kicked it hard with one dirty, scribbled on Converse. “Try again, fucktard. Try fucking again. One more chance to save your fucking soul.” Abram’s words jolted Lauren from her thoughts and refocused her to the task at hand. The task that sat in front of her, with duct taped hands and feet, wearing a dirty blind fold.

The figure, hair damp with the gore of her slain friends, sat with hitched breath, in silence. There was no energy left, the deep cuts on the wrists, ebbing away life into the cold dirt and crumpled leaves. They had asked her to tell them a story and she had only repeated the words her best friend’s boyfriend had said just a few hours before, when sitting around the campfire seemed like a relaxing activity to round out a pleasant day full of hiking and swimming. The two interlopers had come upon them the way a wolf tracks an unsuspecting rabbit- quiet, sudden, and full of violent fury.

The broken figure whispered hoarsely, “I’m sorry…it’s all I remember. The cabin…the candle in the…window.” Speaking words became impossible and gradually, she slumped over, dead before her head hit the ground.

“Goddamn it. Now we have to dig her fucking hole! Stupid fucking story too. There’s no good stories anymore! All the same shit- cabins in fucking woods and whatnot. No fucking justice, man, no fucking justice.”

Lauren resolutely stood, slapping away the pine needles and dirt from her jeans, ready to get to work, ready to finish today’s task. There would be no arm around her tonight, not when Abram had to dig the holes. "He's right," she thought glumly while helping him move the dead weight. "There's just no justice in this world."