Transmission

7:30am, my alarm goes off once again ready for another day at the office, but it's a nice office at least. I usually get to go outside into the woodlands of Oregon. And it's beautiful, especially now during the summer. I work as a park ranger at a place called Maisie's Pike. Who is Maisie? I don't fucking know. But it's a nice place to work, at least during the summer. But the place is large, very large, and we often get missing person cases. Luckily most of them turn up okay. It's usually just a case of bad parents not paying attention to their child and the kid just wanders off somewhere. Once the report is made and the parent is in tears, making up excuses and not taking responsibility for their child, we usually end up finding the kid a few hours later. Personal record, 35 minutes. And I'm proud of that considering how large this forest is. Usually if it's a case where we can't find the individual and have to continue the next day, we'll all stop in a lookout tower. We have plenty of these across the forest of course, and they're really nice despite some of them being a little rundown. 

I luckily have not had many bad cases here, but in my past 6 years of working here, only one disturbs me. Happened 3 years ago, it was the first time I ever saw a dead body. A little girl of about 5 went missing, and it only took us a few hours to find her, and I was the first one to spot here. But I kind of wish I didn't in the end. The little girl had been mauled. Flesh and skin ripped off and dangling like a yoyo, moving along with the breeze as it was windy that day. A huge claw mark on face just located where her left eye would have been, as that was missing to. But her right eye remained, just open. For a corpse, I could see through that one eye the fear she must have had right before she died. After an investigation by local sheriffs, it was obvious she was attacked by a bear; I'm not sure which breed though. Just the image of seeing that poor child's mangled corpse, ripped apart, bones and flesh exposed, the missing right eye, even her scalp was slightly exposed. Pieces of her hair on her corpse making contact with her insides. I can never forget it. And thank fuck I've never seen anything like that ever again. I thankfully have moved on and don't really tend to think about it. 

I've heard stories about the parents though, it's kind of something we park rangers do after a case like this, especially if it ends badly. We like to make up stories with each other about how the relatives of that deceased person are coping. With this girl, I knew for a fact they had moved away to Minnesota, away from Oregon in what I assume was to start a new life. But after that, they just disappeared. A ranger called Darren mentioned that the wife went crazy after moving away, became more abusive to her husband and everyone around him. Another ranger called Beck caught onto Darren's story and said that she even went as far as to kill the husband and is now locked up in a mental asylum, but I doubt that, well, hopefully. Usually most of the stuff my co-workers say is just bullshit just to try and scare the other workers, especially the new ones.

I followed my usual morning routine of scrambled eggs on toast and a light strawberry smoothie, the best combination for me. After some preparing, I got ready and started making my way to Maisie's Pike which was about a 15 minute drive for me as it was located around the edge of town. It was thankfully a beautiful sunny day so I was hoping the usual. Go in, hang about the cabins, or work offices to be exact, socialize with workers and even some of the families and hikers around the woods and make sure everything is okay. That's usually what happens on a normal day where no missing person cases are reported, and this is done until around 6pm in the evening, unless we have to do overtime of course which I hope wasn't the case today as I just wasn't feeling up for extra work.

I parked at my usual spot on the gravel, luckily the car park wasn't completely packed as it was a Monday morning, even though it was the summer holidays, the weekends were still always the busiest. I entered the main cabin where all the park rangers usually met in the morning to catch up. It was also the cabin where the manager's office was. A bloke named Gareth, pretty decent if you ask me. As I walked it, there was that tone in the whole cabin again. Usually everyone was playful, and sarcastic with each other, especially in the mornings. It's what I liked about working here; everyone always seemed to make sure everyone else was doing okay. If someone was feeling sad for whatever reason, then some other co-workers would attempt to cheer him or her up. It was a nice environment. Although this time everyone was practically silent, as if they had just been scolded by their parents even though they're adults. About to go have a chat with one of the cute girls of the cabin Amy, I heard shouting in one of the rooms. "PLEASE, JUST PLEASE. HE'S JUST A BOY!" a female voice screamed in tears.