31 Days of Halloween

Day Seven: Innocent Vacation

Before I begin my story, I should clear something up first. My friends and I...we can be stupid, sometimes. We play dangerous games like skydiving and that year we ran with the bulls. Jimmy is the brains behind the operation, but we all follow along, whether we think it's safe or not. Sometimes we don't have a good sense of what's too dangerous. But the story I'm about to tell you, it started off as one of our most boring trips ever. Really, we didn't think anything was going to happen. It was meant to be a relaxing trip, our last hoorah. But what it became...was so much worse.

It was the last summer before Jimmy and Allan were moving, Jimmy's wife tired of the suburb life and Allan got a promotion and had to change states. With our little group splitting up, we knew we wouldn't have another vacation together. Not an easy one. You see, we've been friends since middle school. When we went to college, we decided to go on every summer break together. One year we went to Daytona and another we went to Mexico. It was all downhill from there.

So, we all got together in Jimmy's living room and tried to decide on where we wanted to go. Jimmy wanted to relax on the beaches of the Maldives, but Patrick's rebuttal was the heat would fry his skin. Allan thought maybe a trip to Yellowstone, stay at a campground, but I quickly vetoed that idea. I didn't like the idea of flimsy plastic between me and a hungry bear or wolf. It was Jack, the most soft-spoken of us all, that piped up with a stay-cation. His grandfather gave him a hunting camp in the foothills when he died, and it wasn't far from Jimmy's place. We could drink beer and eat the unhealthiest food we could find and enjoy the wilderness.

The junk food got me on board; Linda never let me eat anything that had cheese or carbs in the name, mostly on account of my high cholesterol. Everyone else quickly agreed and that's how we ended up in the foothills of a mountain, the two cars between us loaded with food and alcohol.

"Hey, Martin. Help me unload some of this beer, would'ya?" I look over and see Jimmy struggling with one of the coolers. The idiot never thought things through all the way, and I'm guessing he didn't think how heavy that would be.

I take the other side of it and sling the small cooler over my shoulder. We manage to get the cooler to the porch and then Jimmy slaps my shoulder when he sets his side down. "Thanks, pal. Guess I should've waited, huh?"

"When have you ever been known to wait for help, Jim?" Jimmy gives a strong laugh and then we walk the cooler inside, shoving some extra bottles in the tiny fridge. I was beginning to wonder if we had too much when Allan strolled in with a big pack of water high on his shoulder. At least we had water.

Patty was upstairs making a racket, so I decide to go up and help him. When I get to the top of the stairs, I notice him in one of the bedrooms shoving furniture around. I watch him for a moment, smiling, and then knock on the door.

Patrick jumps, a sheet wadded in his hands. "Oh, Martin. Gosh you scared me, how's it goin' downstairs?"

I shrug. "We've got beer. Allan brought water, too, so we won't have to brush our teeth with lager, at least. I'm not sure about the food situation...what are you doing here?"

Patrick began to un-wad the sheet, smiling as he went about his busy work. "I was looking for sheets to go on the mattresses. We have our sleeping bags but it's still gross to sleep on a dingy mattress. Oh, also, it's just the mattresses, there aren't any bed frames that I can find."

I frowned, joining in on the search. "Does Jack know? Maybe we can find some cheap ones back in town."

"Nah, we should be alright with those. There's five and two rooms so we can split up however we want." Patrick folded up another sheet and I found one hiding under some boxes. Unfortunately, those were the only ones to be found.