Hot Springs Horror #NaNoWriMo2020

○e l e v e n○

Cliché—it was all just too cliché. I regretted using the word the day before, regretted how I'd mocked it and laughed. Because nothing was funny now; nothing.

We sat around the campfire, staring into the ashes, silent but for our heavy breathing. Millie had finally put pants on and had tugged a brush through her hair, though she cried every time she hit a tangle. She sobbed about Rob, she even sobbed about Aaron, and chided herself at having put out too fast. And then she laughed, realizing that at least they both died having had sex with a stranger in the desert, though none of their buddies would ever know about it.

Jenny was a different story. Her moods were in full swing, switching from rational and responsible, to paranoid pacing next to her car while biting her nails. Then she'd sink into her chair, talk about digging out her emergency stash of weed from her trunk, and smoke until her brain was numb.

If only I could say I was calmer than them, that I'd gathered my bearings and was thinking of a solution; but if anything, I panicked more. But I was better at internalizing it.

I kept checking my phone, desperate for service, for some means to contact my boss and warn him I'd likely not be in tomorrow. To call my mom and ask her for advice—because moms always knew, didn't they? Heck, I even considered calling my redneck of a brother to see if he'd somehow have a fix for eight slashed tires. But to my dismay, every time I dialed a number and pressed the green button, the call dropped.

Yesterday, we'd noticed other campers checking out the surrounding springs. We'd seen vehicles driving by and tents being erected and fires being started. Where were those people now? Had they left in the middle of the night, or had they woken before sunrise and gotten the fuck out of there? Were they aware of all those legends and knew better than to stay the entire night?

I constantly scanned the horizon, determined to locate that cloud of dust that signified a car approaching. I cupped a hand over my forehead and squinted, waiting, about ready to pray—and I wasn't religious in any form.

The sun soared overhead, and it was already noon. We had no means to get out of here; no means to contact anyone to help. Jenny had tried to call the emergency number that popped up on screen when no service was available, but the person on the other line hadn't believed her. And Millie's phone was—to add to the ever-growing cliché—dead.

"I should try the emergency line again," said Jenny, fanning herself with her book, that she'd left outside overnight. "Seriously, they're there for emergencies, yet they found it funny when I said we were three girls stranded in the desert? What the fuck?"

"It's because it's too cliché," said Millie, who turned to me and sneered. "You jinxed us, dude. Remember, yesterday? When you said our breakdown on the side of the road was cliché? Well would you look at this? Stuck in another cliché! Cliché, cliché, cliché!"

"Ugh, stop saying it, you're giving me a migraine." I pressed both my index fingers deep into my temples. "I didn't jinx anything. If anything you two did, with all your ominous feelings yesterday." I huffed. "And then you got drunk and high and boys showed up and suddenly all those scary warnings were gone! You didn't care anymore! And you made fun of Jay for believing in legends! Now would you look at this?"

Millie snorted. "Oh, and you're much better, consistently implying that burros murdered the boys?" Her eyes loaded with tears, but her snarl remained in place. She looked ready to bite my nose off. "Or with your weird theories that grasshoppers could be carnivorous or that we could have been eaten by scorpions—"

"—we could have!" I slammed my fist on the arm-rest. "And you don't know these burros. What if they're starving? What if they can't find food out here, huh? You don't think they'd start eating us if they were desperate?"