Well, here's the draft I handed into my professor, and it needs some serious fixing. Unfortunately, I turned it in too late to get it workshopped by the rest of the class, so I'm in some dire need of more feedback
The formatting is probably a bit messed up here, since it's pasted from a google doc. Still, tried to re-space it as best I could for presentability here.
“Un-fucking-believable,” said Mike. He grabbed the camera upon seeing the figure move into the edge of their firelight. Heather grabbed a heavy stick, still smoldering, from the firepit. Tamir grabbed nothing, staring fixedly at the approaching entity and moving his hands about as if unsure what to do with them. It drew closer, and the three could see it was huge, easily a head taller than even Mike, a pair of eyes reflecting the dim firelight. With a sudden burst of inspiration, Tamir, without looking away from the thing, reached back and took the flashlight from his camp chair, and turned it on. Mike shook his head. “Un-fucking-believable.”
The beast recoiled at the sudden light directly in its eyes. It raised two clawed hands to cover its face, but everyone took a step back upon seeing the rest of it. The huge, hunched figure was clad in the remains of a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans, a dense, coarse pelt poking through the tears. Behind it they could see the tent had collapsed, the blue fabric ripped and lying in a heap. “It really is Joe,” said Tamir.
Heather raised her stick, hefting it with two hands like a baseball bat. “That’s not Joe-Boe. Not anymore.” The creature lowered its hands, revealing a face that had nothing human in its structure. It took a sidestep, growling lowly as it looked between them. None of them broke eye contact, aside from mike, looking through the camera’s flip-out screen. Tamir could see only an eight-foot circle around the fire, and a narrow line of tree trunks in his flashlight’s beam. It was hard to keep a sense of direction, but if it was between them and the tent, it was also between them and the road. The beast took a step, coming slightly closer, and Heather took a full step forward, raising the impromptu club over her head. The beast raised its hackles and bared its teeth, crouching down as if ready to spring.
“Hey hey hey hey, woah! Woah.” Tamir suddenly found his hand on Heather’s shoulder. “Just be real cool. We’re all just real cool here. Real calm. Real calm.”
“He’s a goddamn werewolf, not a-”
“Shhh. I know. I know. Just be cool.” He moved his hand down, lightly pressing on her arm. She slowly lowered the stick. The beast’s hackles stopped bristling. “Alright, alright. Cool. All just stay cool now. Hey, buddy,” Tamir raised a hand and inched forward. The beast growled again. Tamir retracted his hand “Alright, alright. Just take it easy now. Easy.” The growl subsided. Heather relaxed her stance further, unsquaring her shoulders, though still kept a white-knuckled grip on the stick. The bared teeth disappeared behind the black lips. “That’s right, we’re all alright here. No trouble. All alright. You’re alright, Joe.”
Tamir put his hand forward again, but got another growl. Then, slowly, he reached into his shirt pocket, and pulled out a cigarette, offering it forth. The creature bent forward very slowly, Tamir and Heather holding their breaths. Its face came within a few inches of his hand, and, after a sniff, it snapped up the offered smoke. After chewing on it a few times, the beast just froze, motionless as the rest, and sank to its knees, staring at the ground, the remains of the cigarette falling from its maw. “Joe, are you alright? Can you hear me, Joe?” After a few seconds, a nod.
Heather and Mike exhaled audibly. “Well. Um.” Mike walked over. “What now?”
The punch sent him stumbling backwards, barely catching the camera as he landed hard on his back. “The fuck, Heather!?” Tamir winced, and Joe shook a bit.
“You’re the one that made him drink from the stupid pool!”
Mike stammered. “Wha- No I didn’t! I mean, he’s the one that went and- I mean, how were we supposed to know that shit was actually going to happen!?”
A groan came from Joe, who had covered his face with his claws again. “Guys, please,” said Tamir. “Not now. Just… not now.” He tentatively reached over and gave Joe a pat on the back.
There was silence for a moment. Heather pursed her lips, looking at the ground and tapping her stick. Mike climbed back up onto his feet. “I mean, the water was just really green and shit, I just thought he’d get sick or… look. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Joe-Boe.” He came over to the others, camera still in hand. Heather bit her lip.
There was silence again. “Joe, do you want another cigarette?” asked Tamir. A few more seconds of silence. Then, a nod. Tamir took one out, and with some difficulty, Joe took it and fumbled with his claws until he managed to place it on the front of his mouth, between his teeth.
“Uh, let me get that for you,” said heather, touching the still-smoldering end of the stick to the end of the cigarette.
“Heather, you should really put that back in the firepit,” said Tamir. She walked over and stuck it back in. Joe sat there, still staring at the ground, until the smoke started getting to his eyes, and he tilted his head up a bit. The others could see that he was still avoiding looking at them, though.
Pressing the brightness button on the camera, Mike asked “Really though, what now?”
Walking back over, Heather said, “Get your phone, bring up the research again. Obviously.”
Tamir swallowed the word “cool” before it could leave his mouth again, instead holding up a finger. Mike did take out his phone, though, and tapped the screen a few times to bring up the gallery. The screen filled with thumbnails of a book pages, carefully photographed. He opened the one that had brought them out here, a page mainly occupied by a cross-hatched illustration of a wide-basined, ivy-covered fountain, in front of a large, wedge-shaped boulder with a small tree clinging to the top of it. “Well. It still doesn’t say anything about a cure or anything. Just ‘all who drink from the fountain will be cursed,’ and then that stuff about pagans and the directions.”
Joe took a long, deep breath, then began to exhale smoke through his nose, as he often did, but started sneezing and hacking violently, dislodging the precarious cigarette and causing Mike to jump, fumbling to avoid dropping the camera. Tamir slapped Joe on the back until he recovered his breath. Heather, seeing the cigarette land amongst the dry pine needles on the ground, immediately stamped on it, with Joe looking mournfully on. “You want another one?” asked Tamir. Joe shook his head. “Mike, you alright?”
“Jesus. Yeah, yeah, I’ll be okay. It’s just…”
“Yeah. Understandable,” said Tamir. “Can I see the phone?” Mike passed it, and Tamir looked at the photographed page. Then he slid the screen to the next one. Then the next. They spent a few minutes passing the phone around, reading and rereading the pages, even Joe seeming to recover enough to take a look.
“Well, there’s bound to be more research somewhere, right?” said Mike at last. “I mean, if this stuff turned out to be true and all. We could find a way to fix this if we just looked around some more.”
Heather sighed. “But what do we do right now, though? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re miles from any kind of library or internet connection.”
Mike shrugged “I mean, maybe if we wait until morning? He’ll change back then, right?”
“How the fuck can we be sure? What if he’s stuck like this? What if we’re stuck waiting up here in the woods, and we have to go make a supply run in broad daylight with a friggin werewolf?”
“Guys,” said Tamir. But as he did, Joe stood up, and started lumbering away. Tamir shined the light in the direction he was going. The car. On reaching it, Joe turned around and looked back at them. “Joe?”
Mike lowered the camera. “You want to go somewhere?” Joe looked over at the tent. The others looked, too. It was shredded beyond hope. Joe tapped on the car, accidentally gouging the paint. “Where would we even go? The town? The ranger’s station?” Joe nodded. Mike shook his head. “Joe, you’re not thinking this through. And, uh, no offense, but I really don’t think you’re in a good state to make decisions…”
Tamir put his hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Michael, it’s a bust.”
“But we’ve actually got something real, and, and we could get more footage, we could prove we’re not faking it, and we could do our own research, and maybe find a way to-”
“Michael.”
“But this is what we’ve…”
“Mike. We can’t stay here. The tent is dead. It’s way too cold to sit out here all night. We can’t all sleep in the car, and we can’t leave Joe outside. We’ve got to go somewhere. And if Joe wants to go to the authorities, we should respect that.”
Mike sighed, and looked to Heather. She shrugged “I’m for a plan that doesn’t mean standing in the cold all night.”
“Alright, alright. We’ll go. I’m just really not sure about stopping anywhere.”
They broke camp as best they could, dumping the kettle into the firepit and salvaging their clothing duffels and sleeping bags from the tent, the remains of which they left staked to the ground. They had some trouble cramming Joe into the back seat, his head pressed against the ceiling and his tail pulled up between his legs, but somehow they managed to get the seatbelt around him, though he accidentally tore a hole in the upholstery in doing so. After some consideration, Mike unzipped one of the sleeping bags and wrapped it around Joe as best he could, in hopes that it’d make him a little less apparent if they stopped and someone shined a light into the car. They couldn’t do much to cover his face, though.
“Maybe if we pass anyone on the road, they’ll just think he’s a fucking huge dog,” said Heather, eliciting an angry grunt from Joe. Finally, they all climbed in, Mike taking the wheel, being the only one with a valid driver's’ license. Tamir, electing to sit in back as well, took the camera. “Here. Keep recording,”
“Yeah.” Tamir looked at the camera’s screen. Entirely black. Not enough light to pick up any video. “Can we get the radio?” Mark flicked it on after he started the car. A grainy, unintelligible voice was saying something in a gentle monotone, but then came the music, which was recognizable enough. The first few chords of “The Sound of Silence” played, and the signal picked up as they pulled out onto the dirt road. Joe closed his eyes and let his head rest upon the back of the passenger’s seat.
Tamir checked the camera feed again. Even with the headlights on, he still couldn’t make out anything within the car, and so swiped over to the camera’s memory. Umpteen thumbnails of endless tree trunks, of all of them walking. A few campfires. He tapped on the one from earlier today, the roughly triangular rock with the short, dead oak on it.
There he was with his hands in his pockets, just looking at the water as they came up to it. There was no fountain, just a big pool of stagnant water, matted with green. The sunlight through the pole-like trees showed the dust hanging in the air. There she was, constantly looking back as she kept outpacing the group, before they all came to a stop at the pool. And there was Joe, sleeves rolled up, denim jacket tied around his waist, and sweat sheening on his face.
“Hey, we made it!” came Mike’s voice from behind the camera, slightly out-of-breath but excited. “Just where the riddle said it would be. Joe-Boe, get out the snacks!”
Joe set his backpack heavily on the ground. “I just wish we had some water left,” he said morosely, starting to fish inside. Tamir watched himself look between them, seeing his brow already creasing. He’d put his hands in his pockets, tapping his feet.
“We’ll have lunch, and then we’ll get the shots.”
Joe looked up from his rummaging, a completely flattened granola bar in hand. “Wasn’t the point of this all to get ‘live reactions?’”
“Well yeah, but I mean, we’ve got to dramaticize it a bit.”
“Obviously. Because what’s spooky about a big pool of shit.”
“See, that’s what the legend’s for. This shows that the place in the book is real, and so we can really play up the curse thing-”
“Which is what exactly?” asked Joe, setting out the various mangled trail bars on the ground. “We come back to camp and fake some Discovery Channel ghost bullshit following us?”
Heather turned around “Can you just stop bitching? Can you just take this chance to enjoy a frickin’ hike?”
“...can I please have a snack bar?” asked Tamir quietly, ignored.
Joe stood up, hands clenched. “Well it’s all very well for you, huh? Don’t you care that Mike’s got no idea what the hell he’s doing? First he says two weeks, oh look need one more to get more stupid-ass footage of freakin’ trees, so there we go getting more shitty-ass food from that shitty-ass holiday village. He can’t even decide if we’re doing a documentary or whatever, so he leaves the fucking camera on so much he’s got to carry around a pack full of chargers and shit instead of, I don’t know, food or water!”
“Well, if you hadn’t drank a whole bottle right at the-”
Mike raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Hey, hey. Joe-Boe. I get it. We’ve been out maybe a bit longer than expected, you haven’t been able to smoke with all the fire-warning signs, you’re out of your element. And hey, we’re all a bit tired. It’s understandable. Look. We’ve made it here at last, right? So I think I know how to wrap this whole thing up. We just need an establishing shot of this place, and then someone drinking from the pool. And then we could just, y’know, film some drama back at camp. Some hauntings in the woods.”
Joe just stared at him. Tamir bit his lip. Heather spoke up, “I mean, just fake the drinking thing, or whatever.”
“You know what?” Joe plunged his hand into the bag, pulling out a crumpled, empty plastic bottle. “How about I just drink some swamp-ass water right now? You rolling Mike? You rolling?” He stomped over and stuck the bottle into the murky water, then brought it up to his lips and took a long gulp, before tossing the bottle aside. “And when I get giardia, maybe then you’ll finally drive us all back out of the fucking mountains!”
There was silence, Heather pressing her palm to her forehead and shaking her head. “Well…” said Mike, “you didn’t have to. Um. I got it on camera, so-”
Tamir stopped the clip there, and leaned back in his seat. None of the others seemed to have heard the playback over the music. Heather tapped her fingers on her crossed arms. Mike was muttering as he steered, “I mean, it’s not a complete wash, right? I mean, think of the views, right? It’s all gonna be fine... “ Joe seemed to be nodding slightly to the music still, but also shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Looking out the windshield, none of the road looked familiar to Tamir. Everything in the headlights, going another way. He couldn’t say for sure that any of them would know where to go, once they reached a turn or a fork.
The sounds of the heater, the music, and the crunching dirt road beneath the tires began to run together, until Tamir couldn’t be sure if he’d fallen asleep at any point in the drive, a monotony punctuated only be noticing the snatches of different songs. He remembered the car finding pavement, the sudden stop of one constant sound. He remembered some conversation. “What exactly do we tell the ranger?” asked Heather.
“I guess just ‘come look?’”
“Think he’ll believe us?”
“I don’t know. Do you think we should try and bribe him or something?”
“Wouldn’t that just make more trouble?”
Tamir recalled, in a period of lucidity in that indeterminable drive, taking out the camera again, scrolling to the first page in the gallery. There they all were, with the car freshly packed, most of the supplies on the rooftop carrier. Standing in a line, hands around each other’s shoulders, big smiles. He, happy to see them happy. Joe, happy to lend his tent, finally getting it out of the box it came in. Heather, happy to finally go one one of the adventures they’d always talked so much about. And Mike, happy to have everyone on board. He studied that photo for what seemed a long time. Was there any sign there, of what was to come?
After a while, he thought he saw Joe craning his head to look at the screen, too, but on looking to confirm, Joe’s eyes remained forward, on the road. Maybe his eyes could see better in the dark than Tamir’s, after all. Not that Tamir could think of much point in seeing a little further ahead, though. They were all headed to there, regardless.
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Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___ (Read 314124 times)