Red Wood

Grass swept above my calves, and it was so thick that it seemed to be begging me to stay. I grazed my fingers across the worn wood and felt the red paint chip off against my skin every so often. Memories flashed across my vision, and the breath I didn’t realize I had been holding in finally fell from my lips. I pulled the large door, and let it swing harshly into itself with a loud thud. Though it was pitch black I could make out every detail succinctly. It all looked exactly the same as it did that night twenty years ago. It was almost like I had never left, and the mere thought of it made dread tear through me so deeply I felt as though I’d regressed back to childhood.

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Sam and I were the best of friends. We loved to tease and prank each other relentlessly. Sam always made it a point though that the old barn about a mile from her house was off limits. I couldn’t remember the amount of times that I’d poked and prodded her and begged that we just go take a look. She would always just angrily grunt “No” and change the subject. I assumed that her parents had told her that she wasn’t allowed to go either. I never understood why, but figured she would tell me if she ever figured it out. Eventually it just became an elusive space that I daydreamed about breaking into.

The day finally came that I couldn’t bear the curiosity anymore. For all those years I had listened to her requests to stay out of it, and figured if I just went and explored without her there couldn’t be any real harm. By that time I was seventeen, and I had a boyfriend named Brian. Him and I decided that sneaking off to the barn might be the perfect place for us to find some alone time. We waited until about midnight, and using the moonlight we ran across the field from the opposite direction of Sam’s house so that there wouldn’t be a chance of her seeing us from her bedroom window. He swung the barn door open as I giggled and ran inside; pulling him in behind me. We grabbed the large door and shut ourselves in before grabbing our phones to use as flashlights. Shutting that door before looking around would become one of the biggest regrets of my life.

The stench was the first thing that caught my attention. It reeked like maybe a cat had snuck in looking for shelter before dying a few days before our arrival. I had just gotten my flashlight turned on when I heard the hard thud next to me, and saw Brian fall to the ground with blood pooling around his head. A deafening scream felt like it was bursting my eardrums, and I didn’t realize it was coming from myself until it caught in my throat. I waved my phone wildly trying to see what had just flattened my boyfriend, but saw nothing.

“I told you not to come here.”

I aimed the light from my phone to where the voice had come from above me, and saw Sam with a shovel. Lining the walls I saw what was obviously causing the smell. Various animal carcasses all ranging in size were surrounding the entirety of the barn, so much that there had to be fifty or more. I couldn’t stop myself from vomiting once the sight combined with the smell, and fell to my knees. I heard Sam’s footsteps come up behind me as she dropped the shovel a healthy distance away from me. I felt her hands gathering up my hair as she had done a million times before from our drunken nights in her basement. She quickly slid off the hair tie that I always kept on my left wrist in case of gut wrenching projectiles.

“You know you have a weak stomach. There was a reason I always told you that you couldn’t come here. You just couldn’t listen could you? I mean, you did so well for years, and then you get with Brian and decide you can just go in my barn? Honestly, it’s just not cool on your part more than anything.”

“You hit my boyfriend- in the head- with a shovel! He is laying in a puddle- of his own blood- and I don’t even know if he is breathing- because I can’t stop puking- from all the disgusting stuff in here.” I sputtered through bouts of gasping for breath.

“As I said, there was a reason I told you you couldn’t come here. Ever since you threw up from taking a bite of my beef ramen noodles when we were eight, I knew you wouldn’t be able to stomach being here. ”

“You were- you were in here doing this when we were eight!? How long has this even been happening!? What is this anyway?”

“My parents realized when I was really young that I liked to hurt stuff. I didn’t want to kill things necessarily, but eventually they would die and then I would be upset and I would do it again to something else. They kept finding dead animals in my room and smelling rotting things in the house, and they couldn’t stand it. When I was about six they decided to take me to the barn and tell me that it was my space to do what I wanted. They didn’t want to act like it was something actually happening, so they separated themselves from it. So, I have been keeping my nightly pastime a secret from everyone besides them for years. So, I do have a question for you though! Is the barn all you had hoped it would be? Was it worth it to come take a peek?”

My mouth was agape at everything she had just said. Sam had always been the most normal girl I’d ever met. She was on the cheerleading squad, and was on her way to being class valedictorian. How could she have been doing this with her nights? Over all the years of slumber parties, late night cram sessions, and sneaking out, how did I not notice anything was off? I fumbled to stand when I heard a scraping in the dirt.

“Hey, I’m really sorry, but I saw the look in your eye when...”

I know she said more, but there was a heavy thud along with a searing pain in the back of my skull that tuned it out. A flash of white covered my vision, and I was on the ground before I even knew what happened.

I woke up to Sam dabbing at my face with the makeup wipes she always keeps in her purse.

“I tried so hard to keep your hair out of your puke just for you to fall into it when I hit you. Don’t worry though, I’m cleaning you up. I already got most of it out of your hair. I’m just working on getting it all off your face now.”

“You hit me! You were in the middle of a sentence and you hit me Sam! What the literal f*ck!”

“You are in my playhouse. The one that I specifically told you not to go in. This is what I do here. I bring things in, mess them up, and then continue to mess them up until they either need to be discarded or become worthy of being on the trophy walls. I’m not entirely sure what to do with you though.”

“Not entirely sure what to do with me!? Sam, come on, you can’t be serious. We’ve been friends since we were seven. You have to let me out of here. We are best friends…”

I didn’t get to finish my sentence either, because while she and I were talking neither of us realized that Brian had grabbed the shovel. He swung it like he did his baseball bat when he was going for a home run while the bases were loaded. The loud cracks that ensued were no doubt her skull being crushed and then her neck being broken. Her crumpled body sat in an awkward position, and I felt my heart shatter as I saw my best friend lifeless on the ground. He used the clean part of his shirt to try and wipe his fingerprints off the shovel, and scraped our footprints out of the dirt before dragging me out of the barn.

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Standing here now in the old barn is surreal, and painful. I still remember the look that was on Sam’s face right before he hit her with the shovel. Her taunting and playful smirk like I should obviously know that she would never actually keep me there. It took them a week to find her, because I was too in shock to say anything to anyone.

I fall to my knees in the exact same spot I was the last time I was in the barn. I am still crying deeply when I finally stand up and convince myself to walk around to the back of the barn to finish what I started. The wheelbarrow is extremely heavy, but I force myself to drag it around into the barn. The large gas can is already spilling all over the place as I attempt to keep everything steady. I take the gas can all around the inside of the barn, and for good measure go around the outside as well. Finally, I dump the remaining contents of the wheelbarrow on the ground.

“You deserve to die on the ground just like she did when you killed her.” I say to Brian’s limp body that is now laying in the dirt. I pour the remaining gasoline over his body, and make a line out away from the barn. I pull the last book of matches that Sam ever gave me from my pocket, and light the gasoline. I don’t stay to watch it burn.