The Portly Man
I'm sorry, sometimes I get depressed and don't schedule enough chapters. Here's a short story to apologize for the chapters that I missed. I intend to start sharing more short stories through my newsletter, so tap in with that.
The Portly Man
I
always wanted to go to summer camp, but my parents could never afford
it. When they approached me about Camp Grizzly, it sounded like so much
fun. Hiking, swimming, capture the flag and everything else I could
think of. The mood changed after I was dropped off and had said my
goodbyes. The counselors checked all of our bags for contraband. They
weren’t looking for knives or cigarettes; they were looking for snacks.
That’s when I realized Camp Grizzly wasn’t a regular summer camp. It was
a fat camp. Portly, chubby, husky, fluffy and every other adjective had
been used to describe me since I was born. I suppose with only two
years of high school left my parents thought it was time to do something
about it.
There are no ice cream socials, s’mores around the
campfire or even tater tots. There are plenty of daily activities, which
are just cleverly disguised exercises. A relaxing day at the lake is
just code for swimming laps. A scenic hike, is how they say five mile
walk up a mountain and another five miles back down. I’d complain, but
I’ve been too tired. Meager food rations and extensive exercise regimens
leave me drained every single day.
Tonight is different. I’ve
been here three weeks and I’ve heard one rumor over and over again. A
cave out in the woods where the counselors hide all the contraband. The
brownies, cookies, candy and juice. Sweet high fructose corn syrup
filled juice, just waiting to be captured. Kids who had weirdly been
here before or had family members who attended talk about it like the
holy grail. I didn’t believe them at first, but on our latest hike up
the mountain, I saw it. I saw the cave in the middle of the woods, and
it’s not far from camp.
Sneaking out of camp always seemed so
hard in movies and video games. I just walked out towards the woods, and
nobody tried to stop me. I didn’t need to hide behind the cabins or
crawl on my belly. I had a flashlight on the entire time. There were no
counselors playing lookout and if they were, they just didn’t care.
“Where
are you going,” a heavy voice asks behind me. I turn to spot Gabriel.
Gabriel is a fat kid. We’re all fat kids here but Gabriel is the worst
kind of fat kid. He’s a mouth breather, doesn’t smell great and there
are always crumbs of food on his face. I went to middle school with him.
He’s the kind of kid to bully others and then cry when he got in
trouble for it. He’s not really a bully anymore, but he’s still a
trouble maker.
“I’m going to the woods.”
“To find the goodies,” he asks liking his lips.
“Nope, just going in the woods,” I start walking, not wanting to be bothered.
It
doesn’t stop Gabriel from following and breathing heavy behind me. He’s
talking but I’m not paying it any attention. I’m only thinking about
how he set of firecrackers in one of the outhouses the first week were
here. Nobody can really prove it was him, but I just know it was him.
People can change, but I don’t see a single way he’s changed. He doesn’t
want to change because he doesn’t have to. His parents can always get
him out of trouble. Write a check, pull a string and the issue goes
away. In 6th grade he pushed a kid into the pool and he almost drowned.
His parents bought new uniforms for the basketball team and we never
heard about it again.
“The counselor told us a story about these
woods,” Gabriel whispers before spitting onto the ground. It’s already
creepy out here with just my flashlight and he’s wanting swap stories
about ghost and hatchet wielding maniacs. Noises that we don’t hear in
the day bouncing back and forth from the trees and making monsters that
aren’t real. Sometimes it seems like eyes are watching us even when I
know there’s nothing out here. It’s camp Grizzly, but there are no bears
in this part of the state. No mountain lions or anything like that, but
I’m a city kid. “Do you know about The Portly Woman?”
“It’s fat camp, we’re all portly.”
“No
this is different,” Gabriel assures me. According to Gabriel back when
the camp first open there was a counselor who was serious about making
sure every camper lost weight. Supposedly she started abducting campers
at night and using a machine to suck the fat right out of them.
Sometimes she would go too far and suck out too much. They would just
find a pile of skin and bones in the woods.
“Wow Gabriel, that’s such a scary story.”
“That’s not the scary part.”
“Oh, please tell me the scary part.”
The
fat is the scary part. The woman had to put the fat somewhere. The
story says she put all the fat together, and took care of it as her own
child. Eventually the fat came to life. Either through her weird
experiments or through her love. Eventually the kids stopped going
missing, the same time the counselor did. When they finally found her,
she was just skin and bones. Her own monster sucked all the fat out of
her. Gabriel does his best to make the story sound scary as he tries to
keep up with me. I haven’t been at fat camp for a full month and that is
such a fat camp story.
The cave’s entrance is somewhat hard to
see due to foliage, but you can’t miss the smell. I haven’t smelt
anything like this before and it only gets stronger once we got inside.
The closest thing I can think of is when the local taco spot got a
shipment of rotting meat. It takes everything I have to keep the
contents of my stomach where they belong. Gabriel isn’t as lucky. I
almost reconsider going any deeper when I see the yellow slime
spattering the walls and floor but the reward has to be close.
“Everyone
thinks I’m a bully, but I’m not a bad guy,” Gabriel starts as if it
were some afterschool special. The victim becomes friends with the bully
and then they skateboard together. That’s not going to happen here.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be so mean to everyone.”
“I don’t do it on purpose.”
I
don’t hear the rest of what he’s saying. I wouldn’t usually care what
he was saying, but that goes double for now. My calf starts to burn as
it feels like dozens of needles poking into my body, burning me with
every prick of my flesh. It’s the slime, covering my leg and attacking
me somehow. More of the slime moves toward me, covering my leg and
joining the blob, leaving me stuck in place. I scream for help as
Gabriel is looks on, mouth open and speechless. Gabriel starts to rock
back and forth and I’m sure he’s going to run away and leave me to die.
Instead, he digs deep into his pockets and grabs a handful of
firecrackers from one pocket and a lighter from another.
I close
my eyes as he tosses them towards me. One after another the explode
with a loud pop. It works, it scares the blob deeper into the cave. I
drag my leg after me as I make my way out of the cave as fast as can.
I’ve never had a brownie worth risking my life over. Not even homemade
brownies.
The two of us don’t speak on the way back to camp.
We’re also not afraid of the sounds in the woods anymore. I have so many
questions now, and I imagine Gabriel is no different. Why is this not
worldwide news? Why did nobody report on the dead kids? What really
happened to the crazy counselor? Why did nobody ever deal with the
monster before? I guess we do know the answer to one thing; Gabriel set
off the firecrackers in the outhouse.
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