Planted Bodies

Chapter 1

"Jackson, wake up. Jackson wake up! I'm tired of you sleeping in my class get up!"Mr. Adams says sternly as he taps on my desk.

"Can you just leave me alone its the last block of the day." I say sleepily.

"Exactly you can wait until you go home to go to sleep. You always sleep every day in my class. I talked with the other teachers and they say you never sleep in their classes."

"Hmm. Well why do you think that? Oh I already know. It's because you talk too much and you're boring."I mumble as I try to go back to sleep.

The whole class then starts to laugh as they were watching the whole scene unfold.

"That's it. Jackson you're going to detention! You can have some time to take a nap. You can go there after school everyday until you understand that you cannot sleep in my class!"

Now I was wide awake. "What!? You're just kidding right because I won't sleep anymore. I promise, just please don't do this, man!"

The class erupted even louder with laughter at this and the only thing that fully shut them up was the final bell that rung.

I was so mad as I watched everyone happily rush out of the classroom since it was Friday. I had to spend an 1 hour and 30 minutes in detention on a Friday afternoon.

"Here's your detention slip, Jackson. Report to detention in room 603 and I will be there to check on you."

"But Mr. Adams-

"I don't want to hear it." He then walks out the classroom while I'm left to go to detention.

As I leave the classroom I feel a tug on my backpack. "Hey Jack why didn't you get out of class sooner?"

"Ohhh he has detention." One of my friends say as they saw the bright pink detention slip in my hands.

"What did you do to get into detention?"

"Guys just leave me alone." I say at my three friends Ryan, Elise, and Jimmy. I have been friends with them ever since I moved into this town 5 years ago where we all met in the neighborhood.

I decide to keep walking to detention until I heard what they were talking about.

"Hey you guys wanna check out the forest behind the school?" Elise says.

"Yeah sounds like fun. I don't have anything else better to do." Ryan says eagerly, he loves being around nature and he loves animals.

"I guess I'll come to."Jimmy says who just wanted to come since since he didn't want to go home.

"Well I guess we're leaving you, bad boy. Bye." Elise says as Ryan and Jimmy follow her. I start to hesitate before I crumple up the detention pass.

"Wait I'll come with you guys." They then smile as they see me walk towards them. At that moment I just realized that I made a mistake and it wasn't because I would get in trouble for not going to detention but for another strange reason.
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We then walked out of the school, where everyone was going to their buses or to the car pool lane. We always walked home from school where we didn't go straight home. Instead we would play games and sometimes steal from small stores. Well mostly it was Elise who stole from the stores and she would bring the snacks back to us.

Elise was one of the toughest girls in our school and one of the coolest to talk to. "You guys, ready?" Elise says as we all look at the forest that had a lot of decaying trees and dull-colored leaves that were falling. It was fall and it was pretty chilly outside with the clouds that were threatening to bring in rain.

"You know what guys. I think I'm going to go back inside. If Mr. Adams finds out that I'm not in detention then-"

"Then what? Is Mr. Adams your dad? Are you that scared to go into some forest?"Elise says with a smirk.

My other friends just broke out laughing. "No he's not my dad and I'm not scared of that stupid forest." I said abruptly.

"Okay that's enough guys. There's no need to argue about it. I have to go home since my mom just texted me." Jimmy says, who has a very overprotective mom. If she found out that he went into a forest then he would never be able to hang out with us which was why he didn't want to go home.

"Well I guess it's just us three." Ryan says as he runs straight into the forest.

"Ladies first." I say.

"Okay go on ahead then." she says as she looks at me.

"I am not a-'' I then heard noises and the crunch of leaves behind bushes where I start to jump since I was full of nerves.This gave Elise more ideas of names to call me as she pushed me further into the forest. That's when I had enough of it.

"Elise! Why are you acting like this?! Is it all because your boyfriend dumped you? I can see why, he probably couldn't stand you since you always try to act like you're one of the boys. But you need a reminder, you're a girl!" I say to her angrily where I knew I hit right at a soft spot.

I knew right there I had hurt her, I saw the tears coming from her eyes which scared me since I never saw Elise cry before. She then blinked them away where she turned stone-faced with no emotion on her face. "Elise I'm sorry."

She didn't listen instead she quietly walked out of the forest and I all could do was watch her leave. I knew that she was angry and probably needed space. Another thought that came into my mind was... Ryan! I suddenly remembered that he ran into the forest and I knew I just couldn't leave him.

So I began calling his name. "Ryan!" but not too loud since we were near the school. "Ryan!" I said as I went deeper inside the forest to find him. "Ryan!" I yelled I was getting tired so I sat down on a rock. "Why didn't I just go in detention?" I say. I then heard thunder approaching where it was getting closer to rain.

I also felt a pair of eyes staring at me and I mean right at me through the bushes. I then got up from the rock and started running. Behind me I heard the loud crunch of leaves where someone was running after me!

I was terrified but I kept running until I heard laughing, a familiar laugh. "RYAN! What the heck, dude! I was looking for you and don't do that. You know this forest is creeping me out."I said as I stopped running to face him.

Ryan just laughed. "Sorry I just thought it would be fun to scare you. I collected a lot of rocks for my rock collection," he said as he showed me all the new rocks he had found. "Hey where is Elise? Is she hiding and scaring us?" he asked while looking around the forest to make sure.

"Uhh no she left because-" I immediately stopped talking since the smell of something rotting permeated the air. Not the smell of rotting food but the foul smell of a decaying body. The smell got my attention where it seemed too familiar.

I then slowly turned around to see someone lying on the ground about a yard away. I walked over to to that area.

"Hey where you going? What's that smell?" Ryan says but I don't hear him since it feels like I'm trapped inside an event that happened in my past.

I reached that person to realize that it was a dead body of a guy who looked about 15 or 16. He was laid out in the open on his back where he only wore shorts and was pale white. There was no signs of any bruises or scars on him. However his mouth looked forced open since it was stuffed full of dirt with a tiny sprout growing out of it. His mouth acted as a flower pot for the plant.

When I saw the plant inside his mouth I couldn't help but scream out a name that I haven't screamed ever since then. "TRISTAN! No t-t-this can't be happening again!"

I said as tears came flooding my face. I was frozen with the same fear that had came back to haunt me. The scary thing was the boy looked similar to my brother who was in the same state as him five years ago when it happened in our backyard, in my old neighborhood.

I hadn't noticed but Ryan was behind me where he had tears in his eyes along with fear. "C'mon on Jack w-we have to tell someone about this." I couldn't say anything anymore. Fear had shut me up just like how it did back then.

So Ryan pulled my hand and walked me out of the forest as the rain began pouring down on us. I can't believe it the murders are happening again.