Trapeze

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. William waved the dull flame off the splintered match in his hand, making his way back towards the shaky table. Every time Sophie removed her bottle of beer the uneven legs would fight for balance.

“There,” William said. It was far from ideal, but a spontaneous night away from the world was one he relished in. Sophie, fresh faced and naive, followed this specimen of a 17 year old everywhere. Even then she couldn’t believe the star rower would give the quiet flute player the time of day, let alone couldn’t believe she’d let him bring her into the neck of the woods they currently were. She trusted him, to a fault.

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Sophie quipped, looking around the aged room, termites and time eating away at the wooden landscape surrounding them. Her lips missed the neck of her bottle and spilt amber onto her dress. Subtle, plain, ready for Sunday mass the next day.

“You know, I used to come here all the time,” William explained.

“And you didn’t think to decorate?”

William laughed, off-guard. He shook his head as he spun around a nearby chair, sitting on it backwards to face Sophie. “No, this used to be one of the cabins at the camp I used to go when I was younger.”

“Camp, eh?”

“You know how it goes, parents don’t want you for the summer so they shoot you off to the middle of nowhere, surrounded by other kids, supervised by barely any older kids…”

“That’s just another month of school, but worse.”

“It was okay,” William maintained. “We managed to get up to all sorts of stuff.”

The candle flickered in the light evening breeze. As it danced the glow waved over Sophie’s face. William took a second to take it in. There was something about those eyes. Familiar. Something clicked. The shadows cast on Sophie’s face morphed. Distorted.

He shook it off and gazed back at the innocence smiling back at him. Sophie burped and flushed immediately. Her eyes trailed away as she tried to pass it off, taking another sip into the bottom of the bottle.

“Did you go to camp?”

“Um, yes,” Sophie nodded, putting down the bottle of beer. Again, the table rocked under the weight of the glass. William reached into the hastily ripped-open crate of beer he had brought and pulled out another for himself. He pulled out the pen-knife on his keys and flipped off the bottle cap, hearing the jingle get fainter as it disappeared into distant darkness. “I went to band camp.”

William had his bottle raised to his lips and laughed into the narrow passage before he could even take a sip. “You went to band camp?”

“I’m good at the flute, of course I went to band camp,” Sophie played with the hem of her dress. “Don’t worry, I’ve heard more American Pie references than anyone else in existence.”

“What’s American Pie?” William shrugged. Sophie shook her head and lifted her bottle up again. The table shifted sides once again.

She took a sip and lowered the bottle. Sophie twisted in her chair. “No wonder you did so many things outside at camp, these chairs are the worst.”

William continued to drink, the creeping haze filling his mind and body. He watched as Sophie twisted and stretch, admiring her figure, before snapping back to reality as her bones began to crack.

“Oooh. That was a good one,” Sophie sighed with relief. William gulped into his beer. Part of him thought she had twisted or stretched too far. It wasn’t rare to see or hear a body be pushed a little too far as an athlete, let alone someone like Sophie.

“You okay?”

“I should really stretch more,” Sophie said. “I used to do yoga but I seem to get less and less time to do it.”

“My sister tried getting me into yoga,” William said. “It’s good for clearing the mind.”

William looked to Sophie. He studied her. The way she held herself, the way she delicately held a bottle to her lips, her eyes. There was something he couldn’t shake.

“Do you have a sister?” William asked.

“You know I don’t have a sister,” Sophie laughed. “It’s just me and my parents. You’ve met them!”

William deflected. “I dunno, it’s just…there’s something about you. Something that seems familiar.”

“Thought I wasn’t like most girls?” Sophie smirked. It dawned on William.

“Oh no, nothing like that!” William waved his arms, spilling beer across the cabin floor. “It’s just…Those eyes…”

Sophie smiled as William gazed into her soft, olive eyes. The gaze held just a little too long.

Her eyes flickered in the candlelight. Framed by her oversized milk bottle glasses. She pushed them back into her messy brown hair for an unfiltered look. William sat there, silent, observing. As the candlelight faded and the staring contest wavered, he thought he recalled the glimpse he was waiting for.

Then darkness.

William broke off another match and struck it to life. He dragged his feet carefully back to the candle and lit it again, illuminating the decrepit cabin.

“Are you okay?” Sophie asked.

“Yeah I’m okay, why wouldn’t I be okay?” William defended, sitting back into his chair.

“You were being real weird just staring at me just now.”

“Was I? I’m sorry, it’s just…”

He lost himself in Sophie’s eyes yet again. She responded with concern in her face. The colour, the shape, the look. William honed in on placing where it felt familiar. Then he got it.

“Trapeze.”

“What??” Sophie asked, before taking another swig of beer.

“Trapeze. You know, that big swing thing?”

“Are you trying to tell me you went to…circus…camp?”

“No, no,” William said. “It was like an activity they did at normal camp. Like a face your fears-type thing.”

“You’re afraid of the circus?”

“It was a thing! You had to climb up onto this platform, and then there was this trapeze that you jumped towards and grabbed onto to swing!”

“That sounds pretty suspicious,” Sophie shrugged. “Sounds more and more like you went to circus camp.”

William sighed and adjusted in his seat. “It wasn’t circus camp, okay!”

The cabin filled with silence. It was the first time they could hear the creaking of the trees outside. Their branches overgrown, clawing at the cabin roof. Wood pushed against wood, groaning and buckling.

“Okay. Trapeze. Why are you suddenly thinking about this trapeze?”

William looked over at Sophie. “Looking at you, here, just began to remind me. There was this girl.”

“Oh? Do I look like your girlfriend you had at camp?” Sophie leant forward, placing her elbows on the table. It danced before it was pinned into position.

“I didn’t have a girlfriend at camp,” William said. “I was a dick at camp.”

“What else is new,” Sophie chuckled.

“No, there was this girl,” William said. His mind began to wander as he filled in the gaps. “Her name was…” William closed his eyes, reaching back into his mind. “E..E…Emily. Emily…something, I can’t remember her last name.”

“And you were a dick to her?”

“We all were,” William confessed. “And I don’t know why. She didn’t deserve it.”

“No-one deserves to be treated like that.”

“I know. We were kids!”

Sophie sighed and shook her head. She knew that excuse too well. Even as recently as the other day she saw kids being kids, watching them throw cups of drink over other people.

William put down his beer. Sophie continued holding the table in place. He saw the respect Sophie had for him diminish a little. Even though it were years ago. Then he saw it again in her eyes. The flicker of life. Or lack thereof.

“We knew she had…anxiety or something. Put her in all sorts of situations. Locked her in the toilets, bugs in her sleeping bag, jumping out at her around corners.”

“Oh my god, William…”

William’s body continue to fill with the coldness of guilt. This was his first confession. “But it culminated with trapeze.”

“What happened?” Sophie sat back into her chair, the table jumping back up under her release, shooting William’s bottle off the tattered table. “Oh shoot!”

William scrambled for the bottle. Thankfully, it didn’t smash, but as he patted around the barely-lit floor of the cabin, it continued to spill out into the fragile wood, melting into the gaps, feeding the dead roots below.

He picked it up, staring into the bottom of the now empty bottle. William placed it in the pile with the rest of the empties with a clink, and began to crack open a new one.

“Where was I?” William tried to backtrack. Taking a big gulp, coating his throat in courage, William continued. “Oh, yeah. Trapeze. So we had all done it first. I go, my friends go, this girl’s friend go, it’s pure adrenaline. You have to climb this tall ladder, then clip into the safety, and then go for it.”

“Yeah, I think I did a similar thing one time,” Sophie understood. She began to fiddle with her necklace as William told the story.

“So it gets to this girl Emily’s turn. And it’s amazing that she’s put up with us this entire summer. We absolutely hounded this kid.”

“William…”

“So she starts to get up there. Rung by rung, mounting this ladder. And we’re down there, jeering. Yelling. You know.”

“Will…” Sophie’s volume continues to lower.

“And some of us start to shake the ladder…”

William’s memory begins to flood with colour. The daylight cutting through the trees. The rich greenery. The energy of dozens of kids at camp, all having fun, all fitting into a peer pressure-filled environment. The silence of the cabin has been replaced with the increased intensity of childhood memory.

He tilted his head up to the sky. The roof wasn’t there. The mangled trees were not there. There was just a ladder. It tapered up, towards a vanishing point impossibly high up. William’s mind exaggerated each detail.

He watched in this warped vision as the kids began to grab and shake the ladder. The smooth wooden pole it rested against creaking, wobbling. William’s ears filled first with the yelling of countless kids thinking they weren’t doing anything wrong. Each of them following the other in the most primitive call and responses.

The increasing layers and volume were cut through by another type of sound. A cry. A scream. The innocent protestations from the victimised girl on the platform above everyone. William couldn’t see her clearly, but he knew it was Emily above him.

“Will, are you okay?” Sophie anchored William back to reality. He looked back down to his level and he was back in the cabin. Alone, with Sophie. Concern painted all over her face. Again, the candle extinguished. Sophie took her turn to get up and light another match.

“So…” Sophie said, after the rough strike of a match. She held her hand over the flame, guiding it to the ebony wick of the candle in the window. Her face began to glow a golden haze that dimmed as she stepped back to her seat, enraptured by William’s tale.

“It’s my fault,” William said.

“What was? You were being kids,” Sophie comforted.

William looked at Sophie’s face. Back into her eyes. He watched as they began to glaze over. Eyelids loosened. Pupils fading.

“I led the chant,” William pulled himself back into his memory. He looked up at the impossibly tall platform above them. It wobbled, off-balance, as a lone girl stood above them all. Emily shook as she grasped at the carabiner clip in her hand. “Jump! Jump! Jump!”

Sophie’s lips parted.

“I mean, that’s what we were shouting at everyone who went up there,” William defended. “Even when I was up there, that’s all I could hear. ‘Jump! Jump! Jump!’”

William saw himself on the platform. Ready to jump out. Ready to reach the trapeze. “Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump!”

He could recall the cheers the moment his hands touched the trapeze. How they celebrated as he swung through the air. He pure support and admiration of his peers. The feeling he’d continue to chase throughout the rest of his life.

“But with Emily…It was different.”

On the ground below, William started to yell. “Jump! Jump! Jump!” It was anger. It was aggressive. It was threatening. There was bile there, toxicity. The chants echoed through the rest of them. Piling on top of one another. Increasing. Spreading. A completely different energy created off the back of William’s influence.

“So she did.”

“Did she make it?”

William looked to Sophie. He saw Emily the way he saw her as she stood above her body. Her eyes, dead, piercing William in the way he’d always repress. Blood trickled down Sophie’s forehead. The candlelight continued to blur the lines between his memory and his present. The dead gaze of Emily began to speak. “Did she make it, William?”

William shook his head. Silent.

“Oh my god.”

It was Emily looking back at William. The ghost of his past. He could hear the cracks of her bones, He could hear the weakened tones of her breathing.

Sophie reached for her beer. William watched as Emily reached out to him, her bones piercing through her skin, blood trickling from the wounds. He could hear the scraping, the cracking. It was just him, standing over her. Silence. His peers nowhere to be seen.

Sophie took a drink. Emily’s mouth foamed. Spluttered. William tried to reach for her, but something inside him couldn’t do it. A beer pressed into his hand.

“Drink,” Sophie said. “It will make it all go away.”

William’s breath started to spike. His lungs filled and pushed attempts to calm through his body to no effect. With a shaky hand, he steadied the bottle to his lips and began to sip. More, and more, before the glass bottle sat empty in his palm. His fingers tapped along the length of it, feeling the foil label, flicking the edge away from the glass as he thought.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” William said. Staring into the distance between the sight of Sophie and the sight of Emily. The candle revealed the concerned girlfriend, the shadows revealed the dying victim of William’s unrelenting bullying.

“It’s too late for that,” Sophie said. She continued to play with the necklace around her neck as she watched William go through the entire spectrum of emotion.

“I’m sorry, I blocked all this out,” William said. The cabin filled with the whimpers of a child as the trees continued to smack across the cabin and the wind whistled through the holes bore into the abandoned building.

“Of course you would. You let a young girl die,” Sophie said.

“I didn’t say she died,” William said.

“When you jump from a height like that, surely you’d die,” Sophie reasoned. “And you saw it. And it was your fault. That’s okay.”

“No, what? That’s…That’s…” Panic washed over William. The consequences of his actions dawning on him. Repression no longer an option.

Sophie twisted in her seat again. The cracks caused William to wince. All he could hear is every bone of Emily’s breaking over and over again. The thud he heard when the body hit the ground. The way it bounced with such force among the dirt and branches and leaves. The cheers immediately silenced.

“You were a bully, William,” Sophie said. “But it’s okay. You changed. You forgot about her.”

She gripped her necklace before kicking herself up out of her chair. It skittered and tumbled away.

“I’m sorry. I…I…” William took deeper breathes. He exhaled slowly from his chest, trying to steady things. Nothing worked. The shadows continued to dance along Sophie. With each step he could see her arms twist unnaturally. Folding. Rocking. Snapping. Her legs splintered, bones popping out from under her dress. Blood shot out of each new opening maw, fractured ivory stabbing air.

“It was alright for you, Will,” Sophie said, her body contorted, flowing around as if strings holding her up were being cut one by one. “Kids will be kids. Boys will be boys.”

William breathing faltered. Broke. He began to become very aware that he was stuck in his chair. Unable to move. Unable to shift. Paralysed, by fear.

Or whatever was in that beer.

His hand loosened its grasp against his bottle of beer without himself knowing. It fell, this time, shattering on the floor. What little contents splattered across the ground. He looked down to it, at the broken bottle, as the candlelight danced across it was the sprawled body of Emily looking back up at him.

Sophie moved closer. Tears ran down her cheeks. In the shadows they changed. Blood. William could do nothing but protest. Close his eyes, only to imagine the nightmare in front of him.

He felt Sophie climb into his lap. It felt comforting. Her arms wrapped around him. It was all in his head. All in his head. He could feel the warmth of his girlfriend comforting him. It was just too many drinks. The intensity of revisiting summers long gone. When he’s run so far ahead in life since summer camp, of course he was going to trip up if he turned to look backwards.

“It’s okay,” he could hear Sophie’s voice cut through the void. William opened his eyes.

Sophie’s jaw cracked and snapped, twisting out of joint. Her limbs pretzeled. Blood trailed down from her crown and down William’s hands, coating them. Shattered bones stabbed into William’s flesh, infections grown around each break.

Her eyes gazed into William’s. Glazed over. Disappointed. Sad. Faded. Those exact same eyes.

“Jump.”