The fawn’s ears suddenly perked. She heard something moving in the forest. The stopped and listened for a few minutes. She was a beautiful fawn. Young and innocent. That’s how all kids were supposed to be.
Unless the world’s ending.
The fawn finally found the source of the noise. A small animal in a tree. It didn’t seem like it could cause any harm, so she continued eating, but she kept an eye on the animal, curiously.
The animal wasn’t an animal at all, actually. He was a small boy. Leeroy Michaels. And he was waiting for the perfect timing to kill this beautiful fawn for his meal today. He had his stone spear at the ready, along with his slingshot. The fawn finally looked away, and Leeroy smirked in the tree. He jumped onto the fawn’s back and stabbed her in the back of the neck. Leeroy felt bad for killing such an innocent creature, but he had no other option. He had to survive.
He took the sharpened stone off of his spear and started cutting the fawn’s head off. After being in the woods for a week, and killing an animal every day, this no longer bothered him. Or at least, he liked to think it didn’t.
He finished severing the fawn’s head, so he had to start gutting her. This was his least favorite part. He hated that he had to pull the guts out of the deer. He reached inside the fawn and started taking out the organs and bones and tissue. He pulled out the heart and a tear ran down his cheek, remembering how the world’s ending, and he’ll never see his brother Lucian again, or his mother, unless he sees them in heaven. He knew that Lucian was going to Hell, though. He was a horrible person who could take over for the Devil.
Of course, his mother would have gone to heaven. She never hurt a fly in her entire life. She was the kindest mother a kid could have. Maybe she’d forgive Lucian, and convince God to let him into heaven as well. Leeroy hoped not. He never wanted to see his brother again.
Leeroy finished gutting the deer, so he walked into the woods a bit to find fire wood so he can cook the deer. He found a few thick branches on the ground and he tried to pick them up, but he was to small to carry them, so he had to drag them one at a time back to the deer. It took him at least twenty minutes to carry all the wood back, plus he had to cut it. He used the sharpened stone from the spear and started shaving the wood into little slivers, which would heat up easier.
He spent almost a whole hour shaving wood for the fire. Next he had to find his piece of steel, which isn’t in his pocket anymore. He decides he probably dropped it when he was in the tree. He walked over to the tree, but it wasn’t there. He moved the autumn leaves around, but it wasn’t anywhere around there. He decided to back-track. He followed his footprints to where he was earlier today, but it wasn’t anywhere to be found. He started to get anxious. His stomach was growling, and he needed to make a fire to cook the fawn, and to make fire, he needed flint and steel.
Leeroy purposely made his spear tip with flint so that he didn’t need any extra supplies. All he had was a small piece of steel, which he took from the house, his spear, and the clothes on his back, which is jeans, a t-shirt, and a jacket, and it was cold in autumn in Pennsylvania. He started to get goose bumps from the wet leaves. He didn’t have boots, he only had his sneaker, which absorbed the water instead of keeping it out.
Leeroy fell to his knees, feeling defeated. He couldn’t find the piece of steel anywhere. He knew that he’d eventually have to give up. He was only ten, he couldn’t survive in the woods by himself. He didn’t know how. “This is all your fault, Lucian!” He threw a rock at a tree in anger, but realization hit him. That tree had something carved on it.
He didn’t know what it could be, or how it could help him, but he stood up and rushed over to it. What he saw on the tree was strange, very strange indeed.
It said, “Leeroy” with an arrow underneath it.
