The Hunger

The Scream

When we came out onto the streets of my suburban home it was utterly quiet apart from the distant sound of cars driving across the highway leading to the city. 

I lived a few miles from downtown, in a place where only small families with kids lived and where you had to drive a while to get to the nearest convenience store. It was one of those newly built residential areas where everything was identical: Square lawns, toys discarded on the grass, blocky white houses with no particular finishes to them, topped plain tile roofs that were neat and cheap. Perfect for young people who were looking for somewhere to start a family.

We set out with no particular direction in mind, our breaths fogged in the chilly autumn air as we walked in a not so straight line.

We had come halfway around the block without talking, each of us enjoying the feeling of fresh crisp air. I was lost in my own thoughts until James asked "This is kind of liberating isn't it?" He looked at me with a big smile on his face. He strutted confidently toward the middle of the road as if he owned it. "Being outside and alone I mean. When you're alone, you don't have to be worried about making a fool of yourself. You don't have to feel the constant expectations that others have of you and you can be yourself without caring about someone else's opinion." With that he lay down in the middle of the dark asphalt road.

"I am myself... What are you doing?" I asked as I walked up to him and looked down. I wondered how he could be so comfortable in the middle of that hard and cold road.

"Enjoying the feel of having no responsibilities for the moment. No..." He gestured with his hands, trying to find the right word. "No limitations, worries, whatever. I just feel... Free."

I sighed "What if a car comes? And besides, I thought we were going to go searching for magic or whatever." I said a bit annoyed at him.

"No car is going to come, you know that as well as I. This place is dead during the night." He paused for a while. "Look at that sky. Utterly black and strangely frightening. Sometimes I imagine being able to see the sky as it is. Not just as a black stretch overhead, as if only a ceiling, but actually as an infinity, stretching eternally outward." He said philosophically.

"Are you fucking with me?" I asked, a bit amused despite my exhaustion.

"Yeah." He said with a laugh. "But this really is a cool feeling. Lying here, being in control of your actions. Doing something you just normally wouldn't. No place we have to go. Come, lie down. A car is going to see us better if we both lie here instead of just me anyways."

I shook my head with a smile and lay down beside him. I was tired anyways and was, to my surprise, a bit moved by his way of thinking. Jimmy could be weird sometimes and I felt myself wanting to be weird with him, but only for a little while.

We lay there, somehow enjoying staring up into that pitch black night sky and listening to cars driving on a distant highway. That was, until we heard something that wasn't part of the normal noises you hear at night. A scream. Clear and high-pitched. Frightened. Panicked, almost.

We both shot up from our positions looking around. My heart pounded against my chest. With the peacefulness of the moment gone, I suddenly felt cold and and a little scared, unsettled even.

"What the fuck was that?!" I asked in a whisper.

"I don't know... Probably nothing." He said lazily, eyes a bit dazed and unfocused at moving so quickly. He lay down again.

The effects of the alcohol started to dwindle slightly and I felt it being replaced with a sudden and warm adrenaline rush. "That was a woman's scream!" I said exasperated. "We should go check it out... What if she's getting raped?!"

"Out here?" He asked skeptically and looked around. "Only families live here..." He gestured to the dark and quiet houses as if to make a point. "You think a rapist is that stupid and rapes someone here? Rapists might be insane but they are not stupid. It's probably just some drunk people having fun while walking home. A girl getting a scare from her friends."

"Can we take that chance? Besides, it didn't sound like it was out of joy." I said "It doesn't hurt to just go and check it out. If it's nothing then we'll leave and pursue whatever you wanted to find out here."

"Fine." James said and got up. "I think it came from there" He pointed towards the dark woods that grew a small distance away from the houses.

And with that we took off, following a wide concrete path into the shadowy woods.