The Decision
                               
Poverty is a tragedy by itself, to overcome it one needs to put in time, work, focus and determination. Do not allow it to be your shadow that moves with you every where you go, the only way to kill that shadow is to shine a light on it. 

Money is the root of all evil and a bunch of mind disturbances. Advice is part of the spirit that leads you to good life, at times you may have an ultimatum to choose between them. But the truth of the matter is money without advice is meaningless. 

This story took place in the life of a well-known hunter who was beset with poverty till nothing else mattered to him besides hunting animals so that he and his wife could eat. He was such a hard working man, patient with lots of potential in seeing his dream come through. He never gave up in his struggle, whether the day brought meat or not, his head was always up for a better tomorrow, for every disappointment to him was another step to move forward. His wife was committed to him always and gave him comfort when it was needed.

One bright morning, he woke up and sat under the tree where he usually sit to plat his mat. While platting his mat, a thought ran through his mind to take another step in life and try something else. Immediately he called his wife and sat her down and began to tell her his next plan of action in fighting poverty.  

"I am sick and tire of the way we live, no food, no money to take care of my domestic needs. Poverty is a sickness, no one needs to tell me that I am affected with it, 'cus when you are affected with it you will know, I don't need pastor, prayer bank, native doctor to tell me the root cause of my problems when I have not made effort in solving them. Since life in this village has not agreed with us, I am going to take a risk for our lives."

He told his wife everything he had in mind and made her understand that the journey he was about to embark on was for the betterment of their family. With a heavy heart he said, "I am traveling to the city, Monrovia, to hustle; I will be gone for eighteen years (18), please take care of yourself while am away. My decision is irreversible, because I have thought on it and my mind is made up." 

His wife was confused about the prompt decision which her husband had taken; but she has nothing else to say than to accept the decision which he has taken. The hunter's wife was three months pregnant and he never knew about it. She was afraid to tell him about it because such news would make him stay, and she never wanted him to go back on his word since it was for their own good, therefore she decided to keep it to herself. 

A week later the hunter left for Monrovia in search for a job, after a month of hard search, he found a job as a gateman. He told the house owner, his bossman, that he wanted to work for eighteen years (18), In that term, he told his bossman that he didn't want his salary till after the eighteen years. It was surprising to his boss, confused at the fact that a young man would want to work for eighteen years without monthly salary. The commotion in his mind couldn't allow him rest, so he asked the hunter, "Why do you want to work for eighteen years without a monthly salary until the eighteen years elapse?" 

The hunter told him that he was a family man and he wanted to show his wife that his labour was not in vain. And also he didn't want to waste the salary given to him every month, so to avoid using the money on things that will not benefit him and should be kept for the rightful purpose, he wanted the boss to keep his money. His bossman was shocked to hear such a thing from a young man of his kind, so he accepted to do what the hunter had asked. Because of his generous act, his bossman offered him the job with a monthly salary of 300 United States Dollars and a place to stay for the eighteen years. The hunter worked tirelessly to see his dream come through. He serve his bossman with honor and lots of respect, and his bossman was so proud of him each time he saw him opening the gate and closing it.

After the eighteen years has elapsed, the hunter went to him and told him that he was about to go back home. His bossman was so delighted with him for the time served, and he sat him down, brought out his eighteen years' salary which came to the amount of 64,800 United States dollars. His bossman had his money in full but didn't give it to him right away. 

He then asked him, "You have worked and served me for eighteen years now. You were too humble in your service, now this is what I have. On the table lies the eighteen years' salary for which you have worked. But I can give you three pieces of advice instead of the salary. So now the choice is yours. You will have to choose between your eighteen years' salary and the three pieces of advice which I have to give you."

The hunter was confused and thought that the old man was playing a trick to avoid giving him his money. But it was a decision where he was not forced to choose. The hunter thought for a long time, and with a deep breath he said, "I will take the advice." 

The old man asked him again, "So you want to tell me after eighteen years of hard work, you value the piece of advice which I have more than your salary?"

The hunter looked in the eyes of the old man with grief and said yes. 

So the old man took his money back inside and gave him the advice. "Listen, he said, 1. Never take the short cut in life, 2. Never sleep in a strange land, no matter the time, and 3. Do not allow your anger to control you, always seek the face of God before taking action."

After the old man had given him the advice, he later brought out a very big piece of bread which we normally refer to as Egyptian pillow. He gave the hunter a very strong instruction to eat the bread with his wife when he got home, so that she may not feel bad about the wasted years. The hunter was very angry to hear that was all the man had to say. So he took the bread which the old man had given him and walked away in grief. 

 
On his way to his home town, darkness was approaching so he decided to take a short cut to reach home faster before night fall. But the number one advice registered in his mind, "Never take the short cut in life." He then decided to take the long road to reach to his home town. The road was too long and darkness caught up with him, so he wandered to a nearby town to pass the night. But he town which he went to had laws that strangers were not allowed to pass a night in their town. Any stranger who intended on sleeping in their town would be sacrificed to their gods. 

In no time, while the hunter was asleep, he immediately jumped up as if something were running behind him in a dream. The second advice registered to him, "Never sleep in a strange land, no matter the time." Without saying goodbye to the villagers, he left. 

In the next morning while the hunter was approaching his house with excitement, he saw a guy sitting with his arm around his wife's waist. He got angry, dropped everything he had with him and bashed on them with a cutlass. As he was about to cut off the heads of the guy and his wife, the third advice registered to him, "Do not allow your anger to control you, always seek the face of God before taking action."

He immediately dropped the cutlass and went inside to concentrate. Early in the morning, he called a few of his wife's uncles to tell them what their daughter had done. While judging the case one of the uncles told him, "Thank God you did not commit murder upon your arrival yesterday. If so, you would have killed your entire family." 

The hunter was confused and needed to know exactly what her uncle was driving at 'cus his temper was uncontrollable at the moment. So another uncle elaborated on it. 

"You left your wife three months pregnant before going to Monrovia. You were lucky you did not kill them. By now, you would have regretted killing your wife and son all in the name of jealousy."

The hunter was ashamed of himself, and on the other hand he was excited that the advice given to him by the old man had saved him and his family. So he apologized for his actions. After everything subsided, his wife then asked him, "After eighteen years of work, my husband, what have you brought for us per our agreement? The hunter was ashamed but courageous in saying, 

"What I brought with me, for us, is life. If it hadn't been for the advice which I let go of my eighteen years salary to take, by now I would have been a dead man, and so would you and our son. But all the old man gave me is bread to eat with you when I get home." 

He brought the bread out and gave it to his wife. She was too upset with him, crying, "After all these years, my husband worked for bread!" With anger, she collected the bread from him. The moment she broke it to pieces, she saw that his eighteen years' salary was lying in it. 

The hunter was shocked and confused, and in tears they packed up their money.

By: Jelvin S Gibson


Questions:

1. What do you think prompted the old man to do what he did?
2. Was the three advice helpful to him? If yes explain, if no, explain.
 
3. What would you have done if advice were given to you instead of your money?

1) Sunday Morning, 7Am (or So)


It’s Sunday morning, 7AM (or so),
and the coffee pot is whispering its little secrets
to no one in particular 
and the sky looks like its threatening to unload.

And, from the kitchen window,
we can see a burly tomcat
playing with something it’s caught,
down in the alley, behind the hardware store—
a cockroach or mouse, maybe;
 
joyously swatting and tossing it about

and then, 
suddenly, 
indifferently,
letting it go.

An absolution or reprieve of sorts—

Who knows?

Sometimes the world
is inexplicably alive
with such innocent, amoral
and otherwise misdirected mercies

when the Good Lord or Vishnu
or Great Earth Mother or whoever 
is momentarily distracted 
by some cosmic occurrence,
somewhere, and the focus of their energies
is suddenly shifted

from whatever the current object 
of their loving vivisection
happens to be 

(who knows; the cockroach,
the mouse, the cat, maybe you,
hell, maybe me).

But elsewhere, this morning,

we can see with the floating
magical eye of the poem,
a red-breasted robin preaching
from atop a piece of PVC pipe,

a pair of red shoes
dangling from a telephone wire,

a sky-blue tricycle
(on which so much depends)
beside four white plaster chickens,

and, Maple leaves, like propellers 
cut from brittle rice paper 
or sheaves of ancient papyrus,
spiraling down in little, meandering gyres
through the clean autumn air.

And somewhere
(the picture is not as clear here),

in a motel room out near the highway, maybe,
or, in a westbound car, let’s say,
just now whizzing by that very same motel
(bound for Gnaw Bone, IA or Talala, OK),

or, in some drafty downtown apartment
above a hardware store
(that never seems to have
what you’re looking for),
the radio is torturing some
sad and desperate chump
with love song after merciless love song.

Otherwise, not much else is happening.


2) Territory


Ah, yes, the Konza,
that wily and patient old man;
he’s crossed the fence-line again.

Another modest victory
in his on-going campaign
to reclaim the land;

slowly staking-out each
newly won inch or acre
with ragged flags

of Leadplant and
Threadleaf, Bundleflower
and Blue Verbana,

Devil’s Claw, Soapweed and 
Wooly Loco, Snakecotton, Prairieclover
and Pale Comandra.

And all the while, he distracts us
with small, swirling storms
of wind and sand. 


3) The Tide


An almost perfect stillness
but for the passing
of a lone car on the highway,

as if the sleeping city were
slowly drawing in its breath.

It takes nearly a minute
for the humming of the tires
to trail off and melt away
into the soft Kansas landscape.

Suddenly a heavy silence
rushes in from the fields
like a tide, washing away
all the scattered barks and yelps
of farm dogs and coyotes,

all the clicking, buzzing night music
of crickets and tree frogs,

all the whispery gossip
of cottonwoods and cedars.

Of course we’ll be reported as lost at sea.
Families will worry and friends will search,

but, we’ll turn up sometime tomorrow
on some farmer’s doorstep,
foolish and grinning,
asking for directions.




4) Disconnected, or 
No Longer in Service



From the front porch, on this lonely hill-top
(where the wind never really seems to be still),
looking out, one can see the canopies
of oak, elm and linden that cover,
so post-card-perfectly, the far away streets
and homes of middle-middle America,
the sprawling networks of old farm roads
that wind and weave and mesh around the city,
like stitching, securing it to the earth.
And, through the churning quicksilver haze
of time and memory, it is easy to imagine
morning and the bright, sunlit room
of someone’s thoughts, from which
one can fall so easily somehow that,
without a final word or reliable account of events, 
a more than respectable semblance of love 
is reduced to a recorded message 
repeating itself into the hot Kansas night...	





First, a Few Things 
Concerning the Poet


First, it is essential
that the poet be
a failed something else—

sculptor, guitar player, bridge builder,
astrologer, cosmetologist, mathematician, whatever—

something that sounded
like a good idea at the time.

   (NOTE: anyone convinced
   that writing poetry is a good idea
   will one day make a fine
   mathematician, literary critic
   or iron-worker, even.)

Poetry, like drag racing or black magic 
or juggling knives, for that matter,
is rarely ever a good idea.

No, in fact poetry is, to the shock and dismay 
of those who would approach it, carelessly, 
or attempt to feed it, a half-starved, voracious 
and rather gnawed-at compulsion 

somewhere between doodling In the margins 
of library books and carving designs in your arm 
with a razor.

Poetry is a cosmic, meta-psychic-al occurrence
somewhere between a fifty-gallon drum suddenly
coughing-up flames in a vacant lot, late one night,
and a Grecian urn burning with wildflowers
on an unkempt inner-city grave …


Poetry is a deep, voice-like hum,
somewhere between bee’s-wings
and whale-song, thrumming and thrumming 
at the base of the skull— 

a voice calling out its pleas and directives
from the heart of the hive and the depths of the sea,
 
a briny ghost’s basso profundo 
that you can never quite be sure 
whether anyone else is hearing.

In fact, poetry is the confirmed poet’s 
dirty little secret—
like HAM radio operating, 
fantasy baseball league,
a phone-sex gig,
or, a good, solid smack addiction—

something the true devotee
(meaning here: one who has been turned)
wisely keeps hidden away (these days, especially),
on some grubby, candle-lit alter, let’s say, 
at the back of a closet, 
or in the corner of the basement
or, better yet, locked in an old bomb-shelter
out in the backyard.

And, while not widely known,
the poet is, at the cellular level, a type 
of rogue alchemist or depraved horticulturalist
trying tirelessly, against all common wisdom
and better judgment, to breed
   
     monkeys with footballs,
     dragons with freight trains,
     flame jobs with blowjobs,
     newspaper tigers with tinfoil unicorns,
     white roses with rusty railroad spikes,
     donkeys with onions …

knowing full well that
99 times out of 100
he’ll wind up holding an onion 
with big ears …

but still, none the less,
he or she must burn 
the sacred, Mexican 
Votive Candle of Prosperity 
to the hope for that one piece of ass
that wrings tears from their eyes …

water from dirt, 
fire from the sky,
gold from lead,
chicken salad from chicken shit,
life from a furious, 
life-long struggle with life.


Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry,
six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders,
notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be 
(loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry 
letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. 

He is currently an artist-in-residence at both 
The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s 
and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor 
and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection 
of poems is The Great American Pyramid Scheme 
(co-authored with W.E. Leathem, Tim Tarkelly and 
Mack Thorn, OAC Books, 2022). He lives part-time 
in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red 
and a billygoat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere 
in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters. 

Infant

     The child, borne of passion, leapt into llamas, arms flailing in the watery womb and tentacles clinging to amniotic sac. He looked to the cervix and saw an opening chamber that’d lead to a vast wilderness of bird chirps, Led Zeppelin, curious cat eyes, mother-father fights, grandparent cuddles, strolling on sidewalk, passing houses and people in spring gardens, squirrels scurrying across the path, a passerby gazing down into stroller. Was there ever crying. 

 gods return

The rain takes pain 
to remind us of its downfall:
gravity’s water pellets 
cascading on luminous roofs – 
a termite with a million
cinder block legs?

Outside, droplets on skin, 
at first isolated then
new liquid skin forms
Clothes dampen
and deluged
The car ride, a windshield wiper
battle for clarity
Destination reached and
inside the gods’ heavy insect legs
barrel down upon roof

II.
There’s
a comfort in knowing
that the gods 
have returned
from intergalactic travel

gazes exchanged with
passersby confirm that 
we’re no longer desolate
amidst ice shapes, carving
cathedral spaces on websites
and requesting sunny days 
from Alexa



Deletion

“What’s happening?” asked Sheryl Marley.
“Sorry, it’s just not working anymore,” Mary Kelly said, peering into her laptop.
“But I’m interesting!”  
Sheryl glanced out from the laptop, took a pocket knife from her jeans pocket and rolled up her right sleeve. She pressed down on the blade and ran it across her forearm. Blood oozed out.

“See?”
“That’s just a flesh wound. It’ll heal in no time. And there’s nothing in the story that would drive you to do that.”
“We can make something up. Let’s brainstorm!”
Mary went to her office window. A postwoman had opened the mailbox and left a few envelopes inside. Mary raced outside and brought in the mail.

“Just as I thought,” she muttered, seated back at laptop and glancing at a piece of mail from Sheryl, with the return address: “City Library, Midwest, USA 12345.”
“How’d you pull that off?” Mary asked.
“What?”
“You know what. Sending me mail.”
“I have my ways.”
“That’s strange. It just shouldn’t happen.”
“Did you open it?”

Mary looked down to the envelope and hesitated. She thought back to the time Sheryl went into a post office in Chapter 4. It was first written it as a botched robbery that Sheryl witnessed. Mary changed the scene but never had the chance to clean it up. During the chaos, Sheryl must’ve conned a postal worker into sending a special kind of mail.
Mary opened the envelope. The header read:
“WARNING!!! YOU WILL BE EVICTED FROM YOUR HOME IF”

 Followed by, “you end working on the beautifully-written story of Sheryl Marley’s search for meaning and love.”
“Search for meaning? Really?” Mary asked, scrolling through the story.
“Yeah, I know you didn’t add that part yet, but I thought it would be a nice touch.”
“It doesn’t have to be about meaning. You could change me into a naughty school girl-type who hasn’t grown up yet…That would be fun.”
“For whom? You? You’re a quiet bookworm-type who’s always in the library reading medieval literature. You love Gargantua and Pantagruel – you’re not the ‘fun’ type.”

“I just don’t know if that’s who I really am.”
“You’re exactly who I say you are.”
“Who reads medieval literature? I don’t want to be a bore!”
“Well, it goes with the character.”
“Not if I have any say in it!”
“That’s the thing, you don’t!”
“Isn’t that authoritarian? I really didn’t think you were that person.”
“I can’t control anything else in my life, at least I can control you!”
Sheryl closed her eyes. Facing upward, she put up her hands, miming being handcuffed. 
“Fine, take me!”
“I’ll do exactly that!”
Mary highlighted the entire story and pounded ‘Delete’.

Peter F. Crowley is an independent writer from the Boston area. His poetry book Those Who Hold Up the Earth was released by Kelsay Books in 2020. Other work of his can be found in Pif Magazine, Galway Review, Opiate Magazine and Counterpunch, among other publications.

If we were...

If we were Bonnie and Clyde,
Our lives could not have been wilder.
We never let things slide
And our arguments just got hurtful.

Oh, but how we loved
And oh, but how we lost.
We simply seemed to float above
Never actually seeing the cost.

We lived on the edge, I'd say.
Life on our terms was fast and hard.
The wind in our faces every single day.
But would end hand in hand looking up at the stars.

That day came when love just wasn't enough.
Our hearts grew cold and just gave out.
I guess we weren't  really so very tough.
As we lie here now, no energy to shout.

This Bonnie and Clyde
just didn't make it.
There were no machine guns from the side.
We just got tired and too eager to quit.
Our appeal to love was finally denied.

The task

I wrote a love song once.
I tried to send it to you.
I wrote down my feelings once.
I can't seem to talk to you.

So here I am drinking alone.
I try to laugh but tears come quickly.
This pain is my way to atone.
My soul simply wishes to be free.

Questions are no longer asked.
Because your face is all I can see.
The universe gives me a task,
I need to mend these memories in me.
Only then,
Can I find my peace.

GRACE FOUND in PRAYER  

 

Heaven a place where thy son reigns beside you. 

Jesus has given me life through his gentle presence. 

Grace has been with me since the initial sunrise. 

 

A choir of angels celebrates your Almighty name.  

Heaven awaits my precious soul with thy grace. 

Tears drop to the ground once again with joy.  

 

Prayers that have never forgotten you within me.   

A place within my soul within your gentleness.  

Love that has been reflected at the altar within me. 

 

 

 

 

Rock Stars Play Ukraine, Visit Mass Grave in Bucha


"if there is a dark now we shouldn't doubt,
and there is a light, don't let it go out"

--U2



The wounds of history opening again over their heads.
Where is love, true, beautiful, reliable, where is love?
Just a purple cast of light.

They open with "Vertigo," sick metaphor for a shaken country,
but they hope to bring ease, some joy, that could spread, rise
up the stairs to the grim, shattered land above.

Later they visit a mass grave by a church in Bucha.  Our tainted
past now our present, Falkenau the impossible, still possible,
still possible, how long, how long? still possible.

War is unthinkable, right above us, just around a sudden corner.
How long?  How long?  Still, there must be light, even if only one
small bulb, like still hangs in Picasso's Guernica, even if purple light

in an underground.  They won't let it go out, those old rock stars.



Duty


We all remember the castle work of mud-brick buildings,
their twisting byways a witch work of flowering bombs,
always leading to that backcloth of endless desert,
where sand and smoke of explosions clung to us
day and night

How we were shocked by the first death, not the next,
and the next, and the next, pruning us every
day and night

The guy ropes that held up the idea of our war snapped
quickly, but none of us left home to save a world.
Many died, some broke to shadows.  The truth is
war is just an endurance every day and night


Match


I remember the day the Afghans won
at Darulaman Camp, a dusty way station for us

into and out of the mountains around Kabul,

that day's unexpected legerdemain of feet,

jockeying of bodies.  We rolled in from an overnight

in Paghman to see those Afghans who ladled

food out in the dining hall, worked in the kitchen,

kicking a soccer ball between shifts in the brown

dirt-field center of the camp's jogging track.  And

as we climbed from the Humvees some young Afghan

danced the ball on his toes and called something

over to us in a sharp, cheerful voice.  One of those we'd

never heard from or spoken to, only one of the camp's

assigned minders, some American who'd mastered

enough words of Pashto, a hired translator

always in tow, had, but Sergeant Hines, brash

and, always, brimful of stupid courage, instantly

took his words as a challenge, some childhood dare.



Stripping off body armor, ammo pouches, 9-mil

with holster, he called on his friends, who were game,

to also strip to the brown t-shirt under every combat

uniform and follow him onto the field given grandeur

by a vista of snow-capped mountains.  Motioning

for the ball, he matched the Afghan's toe dances, passed

it back, Sergeant Hines who cared little for academics but

played two years of enthusiastic soccer for Georgia Southern.

Sergeant Hines, who suddenly was playing informally

for Army, was star again as we leaned against the Humvees,

but his friends couldn't match the swift passes, quick steals

of the Afghans and after an hour passed and the scores

punched through the orange road cone goals were

one to three against us, the dust of camaraderie,

admiration of skill that blurs the lines between teams,

had risen over the field and spread over us too.  And

finally, Hines admitted defeat, with much shoulder

slapping and laughter from both sides.



And later in the pass-through food line, through

the glass sneeze guards separating Afghan servers

and Americans, there were, for the first time, smiles

from both sides.




Transcending Zero


Mummy's lapis and gold coffin

over fossilized death



Magician's behind the ear trick

of the coin



Aquarium-trapped seahorse's

poise



Out of defeat,

empathy



Przewlski horses returning

to Chernobyl



A hanging man

dreams

A US Army combat veteran, Steven Croft lives happily on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia on a property lush with vegetation and home to various species of birds and animals. His poems have appeared in Liquid Imagination, The Five-Two, Ariel Chart, Eunoia Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Synchronized Chaos, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Horrors at Summer Camp

Candace Meredith

“It’s not a good summer camp without the scary predator lurking in the woods is it?” Janelle said as she used her fingers to crawl spider-like down her sister Daphne’s spine. 

“Wait,” she laughed, “like Jason or Freddy…”

“More like lurking in the woods rather than our dreams…”

“Okay, so Jason…”

“Yeah. Like Jason.”

Then a sudden loud scream interrupted their banter. 

“Josh!” Daphne wailed. 

“What?” He laughed uncontrollably while the girls looked for their flashlights, thankful Josh had his where they could see his face.

Summer camp wasn’t the Yogi Bear resort for teens but a real trip away from home, nestled in the woods, staying in cabins and other nights in tents, and getting a real feel for the great outdoors. Camp City was called Camp Madness by the teens who go there because the whole experience was intense. Rocky owned the camp for the past decade; he built the place for teens who didn’t live much outside of their New York style condos. They weren’t all rich but many were; their parents sent them to camp when they were at their last resort; Rocky welcomed the troubled kids and made sure they learned a little about a hard knock life and a bit about survival. The camp was without electric, cell phone service and flushing toilets; Rocky had a thing for the authentic. 

Their day began when the sun was still down and the only running water was the nearby creek. They literally had to collect water and boil it to purify its contents. The girls, Daphne and Janelle, struggled at first but then Janelle got a real thrill at night telling horror stories. 

It was the first night Daphne stayed in her sister’s cabin when Janelle entertained the idea of the predator with the chainsaw. 

There were at first taps upon the window when Daphne began to stay there. Janelle rolled over in her bunk and snarled, “go away creep.” She knew Josh was always up toying with them. As the taps grew louder still she got out of her bunk to confront him; she opened the cabin door expecting that Josh would leap from the bushes at any minute but instead her piercing scream rang through the camp and Daphne awoke with chills down her spine. 

She went out first to console her sister who she fathomed had a nightmare; Janelle used to sleep walk as a child. Daphne’s bare bottoms of her feet touched the grass and moss to find that her sister was not there. The camp lights went on - mere lanterns that sat out the doorway for late night bathroom breaks. 

The campers filed out their front doors to find out what Janelle screamed about when Josh approached Daphne. 

“What happened?” He said groggily. 

“My sister’s scream.” She was familiar with that scream. 

Rocky arrived late. He peered into each cabin to find Janelle hopefully somewhere among them. 

The camp was a place of strict confinement for troubled youth. But Josh concurred that someone went too far this time around. 

When morning broke they formed a search party that spanned the distance of the camp ground. There were bear tracks that were seen pacing the camp.

“Must have drug her away.” A camper said when Daphne began to panic. 

“Shut up.” She scolded Ricky who shrugged. 

Some of the youth were callous as troubled as they were.

Ricky was one among them who dared to be so bleak and his impatience made Daphne want to scream back at him. 

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep searching,” Josh tried to console her. 

Rocky initiated a buddy system for going outside the cabins. A night duty was up through the night in the cabin’s office and a missing person report was filed. 

A search team was organized outside of the camp after the confines of the camp were thoroughly searched and Janelle was reported as not being there. 

Daphne slept in her bunk entirely restless when her folks did not bring her home. They were hippies who were getting stoned and after the meth lab experience Daphne didn’t want to be there; she was being turned over to the custody of Social Services once the camp ended. 

The troubled youth mostly came from a troubled home. Rocky gave them a means to escape the life they were given. Boys like Josh and Ricky wanted the city but the camp gave them an alternative focus from the streets. 

Nothing out of the usual had ever occurred at the camp. 

“Can you tell us exactly what happened?” The officer asked Daphne.

“I heard her scream.” 

The idea of her sleep walking did not alarm the officers who were reported for duty and the open case made them restless as a coyote, bear or wolf could be near. 

That night without Janelle made Daphne feel restless when the tapping upon the window returned and she sat up in bed; for a cabin that sleeps six it appeared no one else heard the tapping at the window.

“Stupid bird.” Daphne assumed there was a woodpecker behind the pecking on the glass. The tapping continued and was too piercing to ignore and Daphne stepped out of her bed and tried to awaken one of the girls, “do you hear that?” 

Tessa shoved her shoulder, “no jerk.” She wasn’t fully awake. Daphne sighed and then she heard her screaming but no one was waking. 

Outside the wind whipped her face; the dry air made her feel like she was suffocating. She grasped at the base of her neck as though she had begun choking; she got down to her knees when she heard the breaking of twigs in the brush. She crawled to be back inside the cabin but she became weighted like an anvil, as if she were dragging her entire body through the muck, and she gagged. The air around her began to smell of raw sewage because she hadn’t known the scent of death and decay. 

Her sister’s scream continued still and she felt as though she were dying; as if she were being pushed into the dirt; as if the land before her would part and she would cave into the fiery pit called hell; she knew not why but she felt the eyes of a demon cutting through her and into her soul but she could not get the demon out of her. 

She choked more, trying to hold back vomit, as the stench of her sister’s rotting corpse permeated the landscape; her sister was all around her then. In the form of something demonic and gruesome. She thirsted for water as if that alone would lessen the intensity of the heat she felt.

This wasn’t Jason. It was something like a demon but this time it wasn’t all a dream; her demise wasn’t of flesh like Freddy; Daphne gasped for a breath but her lungs filled with a fluid - a substance like bile and blood that was curdled.

She didn’t know if the demon had taken her sister; she couldn’t see anything tangible but she felt it all like an all-encompassing evil; the stories in the books gave it no justice. 

She felt the skin on her back as it began to tear like knives for claws slit her skin in a smooth and rounded edge as her blood began to seep into the ground that was giving way beneath her body. The look of terror on her face was insurmountable as Josh went to her but she was feigning death as far as he could see when the air around her became more stagnant and she thought he was coming to her possibly in a dream - perhaps all she needed to do was awaken - why couldn’t Josh see her - or what did he see?

Her sister’s screams grew louder like a piercing hum from the reverberation of an old motor like metal on metal. Josh stood before her but as though he was looking through her when he parted his trench coat and from beneath the cloak was a pick ax and Rocky came to him from behind the brush; Daphne wanted to scream like her sister but this time her cries were stifled in blood and vomit. She wanted to call for help - there’s no fucking bear! She thought to herself in a mind that could be her own worst enemy. 

Could she awaken? Was it all a dream? 

Rocky took the pick ax from Josh and together they turned toward her and stopped as if by command when the force of a demonic entity seemed to enter her. 

She began to convulse and her eyes turned to a milky white when everything around her turned to a haze. Through the opaque lens in the complete blackness of night she did not become a voice; the sheer terror of hell’s inferno ablaze in her mind’s eye was the only moment of lucidity. 

The beast was the demon, or the hound of hell, she could not know the difference and her blood curdled from her mouth like a cheese in the mix of heat: the stench was putrid and Josh and Rocky were unfazed as they entered the dark night and said they would have their way again- this time the victim would be more alarming. 

“Must have been some bear.” Josh said from beside her hospital bed; but that hospital was unlike the others. She could not move from the straps that bound her to the bed and every night before sleep she heard the tapping of nails on the glass pane and the screeching cacophony of her sister screaming was beyond the nightmare. An intense scream that no one around her acknowledged. No one but her seemed to notice and so was the end of peace or life as she knew it. She was in hell.