Just a game... Right?

Chapter 3

I hear a call back from one of the two a little ways off.

"UP HERE!" 

I looked up and around for the source of the response and located both Ty and Adam standing on a rather meager looking wooden platform in the tree that Mitch had pointed out earlier.

"Well, Adam was right. They did only manage to make something to stand on," I think, sighing.

"Come on up! We built a ladder up the side of the trunk!" Adam called.

Mitch and I headed for the ladder, which to be honest I was almost intimidated to climb because of how unstable it looked. I took a deep breath and set my foot on the lowest rung and began to climb. The ladder creaked with my every move, but luckily it seemed strong enough to support my weight. I quickly reached the platform, which to my surprise seemed very sturdy and supportive.

I looked back down the ladder to see Mitch hauling the pig corpses one at a time up onto the platform. I guess I totally forgot to grab mine and bring it up here. Whoops. Both Adam and Ty gave the corpses rather confused looks.

"Um... did you guys forget that we don't really have a way to cook these? I really don't want salmonella..." Ty stated.

Oh shit. How could I forget that?! Talk about dense on my end.

"Oops," I stammered.

"Actually, on a side note, we found this backpack not far off where we found you, Kirby," Adam  says, handing me a large black backpack. "We don't really know if it's yours or not, but hey, free stuff is free stuff right? Who knows, maybe there will be something in here that can help us cook up these guys." He smirks, gesturing to the pigs.

I unzipped the pack and dumped its contents onto the floor. Sorting through the pile of stuff,  I found they bag contained a crudely made stone pickaxe and shovel, a surprisingly large amount of stone pieces of assorted sizes, wood logs chopped up into smaller pieces, a couple of unlit torches, and conveniently, a pack of matches to light them with. 

"Well then, that seems to solve our problem," I say.

It takes a little bit of work, but I eventually manage to get a solid fire going near the base of the tree to avoid lighting our little - can you even call it a shelter? - on fire. I let the others handle the dirty work of you know, gutting.... the pigs. Yeah, I'm really not too fond of that sort of stuff, makes me feel like I'm going to throw up. 

After it was all said and done, we had enough meat cooking over my fire to last us for days, assuming these guys ate like normal people and not like starving castaways that hadn't had their stomachs full in months. We carried the meat back up onto our wooden platform in the tree, and dug in. A noticeably satisfied silence filled the air as our hungry stomachs were appeased with the meal.

Once we finished treating ourselves with the delicious pork, we realized once more that we literally just have a platform in a tree as a place to call our own. Deciding that it was probably a good thing for all of us in the long run, as none of us really want to die just yet, we discussed roles for one another and got to work at building walls and a ceiling around the wooden platform.

It took work a lot of work from all of us, and by the time we had finished the ground floor there still wasn't enough room for the four of us to comfortably do much without invading each-others large personal space bubbles, so we declared our work unfinished and built an entire second level to our newly finished treehouse in order to prevent any feelings of claustrophobia amongst us.

Once all the work was finally finished, I peered out one of the nearby windows (which for now was just a hole in the wall) and learned that we must have been working for hours, as the sun had just finished setting below the horizon, and stars faintly flickered in the darkening sky. With no more work left to do, I began to feel exhaustion seeping into what seemed to be every muscle in my body. I decided that it would probably be a good idea to call it quits for the rest of the night and get some sleep.