37 Kills

Chapter 1

I waited at home with mama, who was resting while I prepared our catfish for dinner.

It wasn't exactly what I would call fun, but my mama reacted badly when the fins would jab her arms, so getting it all "cleaned up" was my job. I didn't really mind doing it, either. It was God providing us with food, and we could never turn it down.

Fishing for the catfish wasn't exactly easy, either. A little down the road was a field, which led into some woods that contained a pond. This was the first pond.

We were never too sure how deep it was, except that it was deep enough to sink a car. A lady had been murdered here, and both her body and her car were pushed into the pond. The body, which floated up to the top, was easy to retrieve.

The car would have been harder to retrieve. Not only did none of the folks around here know how deep the pond was, but it was infested with snakes. Copperhead snakes. Poisonous.

'Course it never changed how we thought of the ponds, they were a source of food. We just had to be careful and avoid the snakes. 'Nless they get caught on your hook, of course. Then you're in trouble.

Now, further through to forest you came to a barbed wire fence which lead into a field. On the other side, more barbed wire, and then a small forest with another pond.

This pond was just as infested, but there was a new danger here. The cattle that belonged to the owner of this land used this pond to drink from, and sometimes the bulls weren't too happy about us being there.

Once you crossed over to the next land you would reach what we had referred to as the lake. It had once been a pond like the others, but the owners of the land made it bigger. The snakes didn't come here, for a while. In their absence me and my friends would go for a swim, but eventually the snakes invaded and it became too dangerous. But me and my friends had other things for entertainment.

My friend Chuck used to let me ride his horse when we were dating. He ended up breaking up with me, through a letter given to me by a neighbor, because he felt like I was more of a sister to him than a girlfriend. I was mad at him for a while but we remained close friends.

Once he bought a truck he would pick me up and we would go driving. No real destination, just driving, and it was fun.

Lots of times it wasn't just the two of us. My best friend, Tammy, would accompany us on our misadventures. One time she nearly drowned me in the lake on accident. I learned that day that she couldn't swim and that the lake reached about ten feet down.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door and after washing my hands off I went to answer it. It was no surprise, I had already guessed that Chuck and Tammy would probably want to go driving today.

I dried off my hands and told my mama we were gonna go driving and squeezed my way into the middle of the truck. I could hear my mama callin after me from the door way, "Treasa, you be careful!" as we drove off in the direction of quick hill road.