#tw dead animals

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

Part 2/2

By the time Stanley had realized he wasn't as alone as he believed himself to be entrapped in this ravenous abyss; he had honestly begun to suspect that he was finally starting to properly lose his mind.

In all the ceaseless miles that Stanley had journeyed during his apparent permanent residence within the dark devouring void, not once had he encountered another conscious, walking, talking being similar to himself. Every other formerly living creature that he had crossed paths with had been so... silent. Empty. Dead, in every sense of the word. It was as though the very essence of life itself had been sucked out of their bodies with a straw, their forms slowly falling apart piece by piece under the vicious gluttony of the darkness that surrounded them. They looked like they actually were supposed to be there, unmoving and comatose, unlike him.

So, when Stanley first began to encounter the twins, all of a sudden, he wasn't the only one in the dark.

When meeting the first pair of them, he found himself standing in a lake.

He hadn't even noticed the changes at first. It felt as though he had been walking for weeks on end, his body moving purely on autopilot and his aching legs leading him towards a destination only it knew. A thick fog of forgetfulness and flickering memories had descended upon his brain like a heavy blanket of numbing static as he had traveled. In this absentminded state, he hadn't even realized that the ever-present undulating, buzzing darkness surrounding him had begun to gradually shift and morph to form a horizon line; stretching into tall looming cliffsides that almost seemed to close in on him. Once the nonexistent floor beneath his soles abruptly began to ripple and warp, like the disturbed surface of a shallow puddle; only then did he finally notice his transformed environment.

The transition was seamless, almost dream-like. One moment, he was still surrounded by that filthy, overwhelming abyss; and the next, his boots were suddenly plunged deep into the cold, dark lake water.

The silence didn't leave, however. It still choked and stuffed its way into Stanley's ears to clog up his mind with thick cotton; the eerie quiet not quite matching the calm, almost serene scenery the void seemed to have abruptly transformed itself into. Like a movie with its sound cut off; leaving only the unsettling hum of the projector to fill the empty air.

It was odd. The lake was surely incredibly deep. He could obviously tell from how thin and pathetically small the shores appeared all the way from where he now unceremoniously stood in the middle of the lake. Stan could look down and see the darkness below his feet swallow what meager light that managed to break through the murky waters. The overwhelming black almost seemed to beckon him, gaping and haunting; a bottomless underwater pit of pitch black that never seemed to end.

And yet, he didn't sink. Stanley remained perfectly level, the almost ink like waters stopping just at ankle level, as though he were held up just above the surface by some invisible force. Even the writhing waves seemed small and low, as though the waters were shy to climb up his legs further than that. It was odd, so very odd.

However, it wasn't nowhere near as odd as the sight that greeted him when he finally lifted his eyes from the waters.

Stanley had crossed paths with truly unbelievable sights in this strange somewhere; from bursting, collapsing stars; to the imploding heat death of entire universes, but none of them seemed to hold the candle to what he saw then when he lifted his eyes:

Children.

Two, to be exact. Two, nearly identical looking children stood motionless before him; completely soaked through to the bone as though they had taken a plunge into the frigid water that pooled around their ankles. It was a girl and a boy, both adorned with twin expressions utterly devoid of emotion, their wide eyed stare seeming to burn holes into his thin jacket. Their drenched clothes sagged off of their scrawny frames; thin rivulets of water dirpping off of them and disturbing the glassy surface of the water at their feet. The little girl's hair had messily stuck to her face in thin sodden strands, her cheeks still full and round with youth just like the boy's. They looked young. Too young to be in a place such as this.

Oh, but their eyes; their eyes.

They burned with such anger; such injustice, brighter than any dying star or galaxies he had ever seen. Anger towards the world, to fate, to whatever cruel deity that had deemed them fit to be sent to this wretched place so prematurely. They were too young to be here; to be entrapped like he was amongst this hungry darkness. And yet, here they were, sheer denial against their own untimely deaths being the only thing keeping them awake and conscious amongst the dead and rotting. A show of juvenile defiance to nature itself so vehement even the all-consumign darkness seemed hesitant to devour them whole just yet.

It saddened him. It saddened him to know that they belonged there, that they were supposed to be there. He could see it, he could feel it; they were dead. No amount of determination could deny that universal fact.

When they spoke, Stanley could hear anger:

Stan chuckled in a futile attempt to lighten the suddenly heavy atmosphere that threatened to crush him whole. "A lake monster? You kids and your imagination," he teased, hoping to somehow rid the poor kids of the haunted look that seemed to whirl in their glares. No child should have been burdened with such a knowing look; such eyes that looked like they had seen everything there was to see about the world, the horrid and the good.

Clearly, it had been the wrong thing to say, and Stanley's faux pas was rewarded with a scowl from the little boy. A world's worth of sour contempt etched into every contorted groove that his grimace seemed to dig into his much too young face. Stan suddenly felt guilt squeeze at his weary bones for having caused that.

"That's what they all said," the boy spat out, eyes shining with a sheen of wetness Stan wasn't sure he was prepared to deal with.

Stan left that first interaction with the twins with the feeling of guilt and sorrow still clining to him.

He couldn't have known, at the time. He couldn't have known that this wouldn't be anywhere near the last time that he would meet the pair. He hadn't realised just how many of them there were. After that first pair, his endless journeying within the Abyss was hardly be spent alone anymore. Countless more times, he came face to face with the exact same two young and impossibly worn faces; forced to meet one pair of beaten and bruised kids after another.

Not one pair had died the same death as another. Some had gotten lost, prey to whatever threat that had snatched them up out in the open; some had fallen from high up; some had been crushed under an incredible weight; some had burned; some eaten alive; some zombified. Some didn't even seem physically harmed at all, body perfectly intact, and yet that same faraway, distrubed look in their eyes remained.

He thought the worst ones were the ones he found alone. A little girl or a little boy, left all lonesome without their other half there. Twins, he remembered a pair of them telling him once.

Once, he had come across a town full of silent, stone statues. It was a rustic, shabby, almost nostalgic looking town- odd and strangely familiar. The sight of it had tugged at an aged memory that had long since wasted away in the back of his mind. It was serene, almost deceptively so. The sun shone; the air smelled crisp and fresh; numerous waterfalls continued to crash down from the tall cliffsides; and a soft nonexistent breeze whistled through the thicket of pine trees that blanketed the outskirts of the town. None of it seemed to match the gruesome scene of the hundred wailing statues that littered every inch of the town.

He had found the boy's statue on the other side of town, deep within the green forest and toppled over the gnarled roots of a towering tree. Like the rest of the townsfolk, he too, was frozen mid-shriek; his stone face twisted and contorted into a mock impression of a silent scream as his body lay paused in a writhing struggle. He made sure to be gentle when he carried the boy's statue over to place it beside the girl's, whose statue stood far deeper into the forest, sporting the same rictus grimace of terror as her brother's. It somehow felt wrong for them to have been so far apart from one another, even in death.

He had come to dread meeting of the twins. He hated every second he had to confront yet another pair of dead children that did not belong here, but fate had decided they did. He despised having to listen to their tales of woe as they wept about the injustice of the world, of having died young; he despised himself for being unable to do more than weep with them.

"We don't belong here, Grunkle Stan," he would listen to the little girl weep, calling him a title he didn't recognize. He never remembered if they had ever told him their name, but they all seem to know his, without a fail. "If we're dead, then what about you? What about Grunkle Ford? Mom? Dad? What about them? We can't be dead, we can't be," they would say, confusion and frustration written all over their faces. They didn't understand. They didn't understand why they had come to the darkness so early, so unfairly.

He never knew what to say, he'd never been good with words.

All he could do was kneel down to their levels and engulf them in his arms, hoping he could somehow squeeze the pain straight out of their bodies in his embrace. He hugged them, because what else could he do?

[mossyfellart]

dissecting a frog. my first finished comic :3

[thebunnylord]

New chapter coming soon! But for right now, I’m going to do a little Q&A. Pop a question in my ask box and I will answer it

[punktkachuk]

i’m here to whine about tiktok again but the uwu babygirlification of a man who used to (allegedly) inhale the scent of rotting animals will never not be funny to me. and it’s always the 15 year olds

[girlinlovewiththeforest]

[doyouknowhowtowaltz]

have u ever found bones or a carcass before

asking bc you seem like the type of person who has and am wondering if that's a universal experience

Nothing human if that's what you're asking.

I've seen all the usual kinds of roadkill, possums, squirrels, birds, couple of rabbits, some bigger stuff, like cats and dogs, but that stuff usually has too many vultures for me to confirm.

But I've seen some other stuff too, I grew up with a creek in my backyard, and while most of it was fast running and very shallow, part of it was very slow and at least six feet deep. And I can remember that one summer there was a picked-clean rat skeleton at the bottom, too deep for me to retrieve. It stayed there for months until the creek flooded. Once, we had a bunch of fish wash up. They were all way too big to have originated upstream, and all of them had their stomachs slit so their intestines spilled out. One year I kept finding salamanders or skinks that were frozen by rigor Mortis, standing on the banks. I'm sure there was more but mostly I just remember that it always smelled like decay.

I don't spend time in the right area at the moment, so these days its mostly just birds.

[aeonsredemption]

tried to have a nice peaceful morning walk with my dog and saw 2 dead beheaded baby bunnies and a dead baby bird. wtf is this world

[pumpkinnkidd]

wip i may or may not finish!

[santoshivers]

( Death Consciousness )

[raventroll80]

Stowaway Mer AU

Part 4: Beach-combing and Fishnets

A chapter in which Em experiences immense regret about previous actions, and makes a surprising friend.

Heads up this story contains; Injury, Swearing, and Dead Fish.

It was not long after 7:00 p.m when Flynn had come home, far earlier than her or Nimh had expected. presumably because of the raging thunderstorm. Though she did notice that his left arm was bandaged.

When asked about it he said a shark got caught in the net and had bit him. He said they had to cut it out of the net so they had to go back. Not because of the thunderstorm.

He had brought Daisy with him who was fast asleep in his arm. He had thanked her and Nimh for the food and went to what was presumably his room.

Em didn’t know if there were any rooms off limits so she dug out her old sleeping bag from a box and laid it out on the couch and slowly fell asleep.

Sometime during the night Flynn had brought down some blankets for Em and Nimh.

“I thought you two could do with some blankets, the house can get cold when the furnace is off,” he said as he handed Nimh some old blankets.

“Thanks bud, it’s really nice of you to let Em move in here with you,” Nimh replied while placing one of the blankets on Em.

“It’s no problem, the house is huge there’s more than enough room here,” Flynn said, “ … I’m gonna, go back to bed now,”

“Good night Flynn,”

——————————————————————————

The next morning the three went into town to get some things done. Mainly getting utilities restored to the house and finding someone to inspect the property for damage.

Em was sat in the back while Nimh sat in the front passenger like before. The sky was still cloudy and a light misty drizzle is all that remained from last night’s storm.

“Ok so, you’re gonna want to go to the town hall, you see that clock tower over there?” Nimh said as they drove into town, “town hall is right over there, the clock tower itself is the post office, you should probably stop there too,”

Suddenly Em remembered that she had left her bag at the beach. The dawning realization must have been visible because Flynn had asked her if something was wrong.

“I just remembered I left my bag on the beach the other day, is it ok if I have to go look for it,”

“Do you need help looking for it?” Flynn asked as he pulled into one of the port parking lots.

“Nope, I know where I left it, I’ll meet you guys at Mr. Grimmar’s” she said unbuckling herself and getting out.

“Which one?” Nimh asked.

“Silas!” Em shouted as she briskly jogged down the beach.

“Do you have your phone?” Nimh yelled back.

Em stopped for a moment and felt her pockets before yelling,

“Fuck!”

“Aye, she left at the house,” Nimh replied rolling the window up.

“I’ll show where Mr. Grimmar’s is when we’re done at town central,”

As the truck drove off Em continued to jog down the beach, being careful as to not slip and fall. She did not leave her phone at the house, it was in fact in her backpack. The same backpack she had left behind after her encounter with the shark-man mermaid thing from the other day.

When Em got to the place she thought she had left it, she was greeted with nothing but rocks and stranded starfish.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she thought to herself as she sat down on a rock. Em gave a defeated sigh as she looked around.

“Might as well toss these starfish back while I’m here,” she said, standing up and began to collect the starfish.

She put some in tide pools and others in the surf, seagulls had already arrived and were cleaning up some of the dead fish that also scattered the beach. Some followed her hoping for a starfish to fall out of her hand.

She had just placed more starfish into the water when she had noticed a bunch of seagulls were gathering just behind some rocks down the shoreline. Curiosity got the better of her and she decided to investigate whatever the seagulls were interested in. Though she did pull out her knife out just in case, luckily she didn’t leave that behind.

Em slowly crept forward and peered over the rocks, what she saw caused her to gasp. It was the shark-mer from the other day.

They didn’t look to good, they weren’t moving and they had a massive gash in their side. They were also tangled in some fishing nets. Seagulls were picking at the wound causing it to bleed.

Em felt a twinge of guilt as she wondered if she was somehow to blame for the state the shark-man was in. She felt bad and wanted to help them but knew that the shark-man mermaid thing probably wouldn’t be to happy to see the person who stabbed them approaching them. So she decided to slowly creep towards them and hoped they wouldn’t wake up, and that they were still alive.

As she drew near she could see that the were still breathing, shallowly albeit, but still breathing. She breathed a sigh of relief and continued creeping. Unfortunately she didn’t notice some debris before stepping on it causing it to loudly crack.

The shark-man’s eyes snapped open and they immediately scrambled back when they saw Em. Fear plastered their face and they struggled to hold their body upright as one of their arms was wrapped in net.

“Hey there buddy, I’m not gonna hurt you,” Em said whilst holding a knife.

The mer didn’t appear to believe her as they continued to try and back up. A seagull pecked at the wound on their side. The mer yelped in pain and pulled their tail away. Em lunged and shooed the bird away, yelling at it.

Seth’s hand slipped as they tried to back away, a grimace covering their face. Em kneeled down on the rocks a set the knife aside before addressing the mer.

“It’s ok, it’s ok… I know you’re afraid, and I don’t blame you either. I am too,” she said, the mers eyes occasionally darting to her knife before turning back to her.

“I’m sorry for stabbing you, and I know you don’t trust me but believe me I’m not going to hurt you,” she continued before picking up the knife again and leaning in.

The mer leaned backwards before falling over, they screwed their eyes shut and began to whimper. Em felt another pang of guilt and Seth braced for imminent death.

Em carefully grabbed the net, making sure not to tug on it too hard. She began to cut the net from his tail. Once it was lose she moved onto his arm. Seth tried to move away but he was afraid that he’d get cut by the woman.

Slowly and agonizingly she cut away at the net, careful as to not pull on it too hard. Eventually Seth was mostly free from the net, only his neck remained wrapped in it.

The Em began to reach towards his neck, and without thinking Seth threw his hands up in front of him. To his surprise she stopped what she was doing and also held her hands up.

Seth slowly lowered his, before lightly tugging at the remaining net around his neck. Then he looked at the scraps of net that she had removed from him, he was confused. When he looked back Em had lowered her hands and was now holding the knife with the handle pointing towards him.

“Here, you probably don’t want me anywhere near your neck with this, huh,” she said softly, with a hint of worry in her voice.

Slowly he reached out and took it from her. As he examined it Em took the opportunity to gather all of the loose net scraps and wrapped them in each other.

“You wait here, I’m gonna go get some things for those wounds of yours,” Em said as she stood up and slowly backed away.

Seth watched her as she walked down the beach at a brisk pace. Once she was out of sight he dragged himself into the water and swam out.

Once Em had made it back to the port she disposed the ball of netting in net disposal bin the town had set up. She then made her way to the bait shop to get the mer something to eat.

“Howdy Marco!” She said to the man behind the counter.

“Afternoon Em! Someone came in the other day looking for you,” Marco replied,

“Wait, really? Who? What for?”

“It was that researcher fellow, he said that he found you bag on the beach the other day,”

“Oh really thank god! Do you have it?” She asked.

“No, sorry, told him to take it to Silas’ shop since you’re there a lot,” Marco answered, “anyway what brings you here?”

“Oh right! Can I have my monthly employee bait bucket, Just moved into the old house up on the cliff, aaand I wanted to cook my roommate something as a welcoming gift,” she replied.

“Sure thing, let me just grab a bucket and let’s get you some fish,” he said stepping out from behind the counter.

“Can you ice the bucket, don’t want them getting smelly on the way home,” Em asked following Marco down the short flight of stairs to the live bait section.

“What kind do you want?” Marco asked as he packed crushed ice around the inside of the bright orange bucket.

“Hmm… just some mullets and herring today,” she answered.

“You got it,” he said and opened the fridge and grabbed some fish.

Once the bucket was full he screwed the lid on and handed it to Em.

“You have a great day now Em, you hear!”

“Thank you Marco!” She replied before exiting out the side door and jogging back down the beach.

When she got back the mer and her knife was nowhere to be seen. Em scanned the waves and thought she saw a head poking out of the water a few meters out. She wasn't entirely sure if it was the mer or not but she called out anyways.

"Umm... Can I have my knife back? You don't have to return it right now but I would like it back eventually. There's a dock on the island not too far from here, just follow the coast until there's a break and the Island should be not too far out from it."

the head tilted to one side before turning around and diving under the waves.

Em decided that she should get going an pick he bag up from Mr. Grimmar and left the beach.

---------------------------------------------------

Seth was still in shock when he surfaced for air. The net was still wrapped around his neck keeping his gills shut, he was too afraid to try and cut it off himself. He was contemplating going back to shore when he saw someone standing on the beach.

They were about the same height and shape as the human who was helping him. They were holding some sort orange cylinder. He wanted to investigate but he was still unsure if they could be trusted.

He heard the person yell from the beach and he recognized it as the the woman from earlier. She was asking for her knife back and giving him directions to a dock somewhere nearby.

He decided to at least give this dock a look. He took a deep breath and dove back under the waves and headed down the coast to this supposed dock.

[scuro-sideblog]

Revisiting the time Machi made a pile of hares and hid them on top of a cliff

[igottatho]

Utqiagvik (fka Barrow) has similar whale bones but in an arch, it’s called (by wypipo) Gateway to the Arctic.

Source.

Archaeologists believe that the Whale Bone Alley of Yttygran Island, Siberia was built as a shrine and sacred meeting place by the Inuit in the 14th century. At the time, there was a temporary Ice Age that resulted in a prolonged winter, and food shortages that could have led to conflicts between Inuit tribes. Whale Bone Alley may have been the neutral place where they could come together to discuss their problems, take part in sacrificial offerings, and store their meat in the square pits that once existed between the bone walls. 

(Source)

[ra3kiv]

in the woods somewhere

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

The Bronx Zoo has just released Flaco's necropsy results.

He was not thriving, as the people championing the ideal of "freedom" claimed.

He was poisoned.

He was sick.

He was suffering.

"Freedom" would have eventually killed him. A building just happened to do it first.

"Postmortem testing has been completed for Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl that was found down in the courtyard of a Manhattan building a little over a year after his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo was vandalized on February 2, 2023. Onlookers reported that Flaco had flown into a building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on February 23, 2024, and acute trauma was found at necropsy. Bronx Zoo veterinary pathologists determined that in addition to the traumatic injuries, Flaco had two significant underlying conditions. He had a severe pigeon herpesvirus from eating feral pigeons that had become part of his diet, and exposure to four different anticoagulant rodenticides that are commonly used for rat control in New York City. These factors would have been debilitating and ultimately fatal, even without a traumatic injury, and may have predisposed him to flying into or falling from the building. The identified herpesvirus can be carried by healthy pigeons but may cause fatal disease in birds of prey including owls infected by eating pigeons. This virus has been previously found in New York City pigeons and owls. In Flaco’s case, the viral infection caused severe tissue damage and inflammation in many organs, including the spleen, liver, gastrointestinal tract, bone marrow, and brain.   No other contributing factors were identified through the extensive testing that was performed. Flaco’s severe illness and death are ultimately attributed to a combination of factors—infectious disease, toxin exposures, and traumatic injuries—that underscore the hazards faced by wild birds, especially in an urban setting."

The naturalistic fallacy kills animals in horrible ways. The romanticism of what humans want to think of as a "free, wild, pure life" cannot be allowed supplant the reality of injury, sickness, and death. Releasing captive animals (or keeping them from being recaptured) because it's "better" for them to suffer untethered than live a healthy, safe, captive life is inhumane and horrific.

Flaco's life didn't have to end in pain, sickness, and suffering.

Flaco's death didn't have to be tragic.

But once the idea of "freedom" entered the chat, Flaco's fate was unavoidable.

[inbabylontheywept]

by tradition, the first day of the camp was spent pranking the group next to us. our prank was ziptying the zippers on their sleeping bags together. we figured one of them would sleep with a knife, because we all slept with knives, because we were dangerous maniacs and half the danger of a dangerous maniac is that they tend to think that they are Actually Normal. so. obviously that didn't pan out, and instead they got stuck in their sleeping bags for like half an hour and because their scoutmaster slept in their car and couldn't hear them yelling, they actually only got out when one of them went full caged animal and chewed through the plastic. which meant they had time to make it to the axe throwing station, but they did miss breakfast.

the scale of our victory was impossible to understate. it was an epic prank. unrivaled. the best in years. we knew they were going to retaliate, and we both feared and craved it. maybe i'm still a maniac, but that feels like a common thing, right? do well adjusted people that are not maniacs crave Judgement?

(serious answers only please, from people who would never spoon a knife.)

anyway, the next day we got back to our camp, and the neighors had skipped dinner to just come back and fill all our tents with pinecones. which was like, a decent prank, i guess, but it probably took them an hour to fill all the tents up, and it took us like 15 minutes to tip the tents out, and as a return volley to the ziptie prank it was incredibly underwhelming. we felt a little cheated.

so our scouting group held a council, and we agreed, unanimously, that our prank was 100% better and theirs sucked and that there would be no escalating tensions because we were the clear victors. they'd had their chance to retaliate, and they failed, and so the war was over. that was it.

we agreed on this. we swore. but madness is a relative thing, and in our group of maniacs, we still had J. i have many, many J stories. too many. i biked up to school with him from 4th grade to 8th, and i saw him get hit by cars thrice. he'd just swerve into the road sometimes. one time on a rainy day in 4th grade, a car splashed me, and before i could even consider my response J yelled I GOT THIS and then he blitzed off after the car. i didn't see him the rest of the day. i was so anxious i barely slept that night. i saw him the next morning and he told me that he'd chased the car until it got to a gated community and then he'd climbed over the fence and looked in peoples garages until he found the one with the car, and then he'd ripped the hood ornament off and broke their window. then he gave me a hood ornament to a different brand of car from the one that splashed me and i didnt tell him because i didnt want him missing more school. i want you to mentally adjust your mental model of the things a 9 year old is capable of doing to include chasing a car for five miles, hopping a fence, breaking into a garage, and vandalizing a randos car.

and that's just the tip of my J stories iceberg.

the point of all this is just to say that J was so crazy that he made us knife spooners look like accountanting enthusiasts.

so we agreed the war was done, and we shook on it, and then J, in the name of friendship, in the name of honor, in the name of avenging our pinecone filled tents, snuck over to their camp that evening and fornicated with a watermelon that they'd been saving in their cooler.

i want to emphasize, again, that this was not the consensus of the group. that is not a prank. like i know it seems like we dont know what pranks are because of the whole ziptie thing, but even we knew that fucking someones food is not a prank, it is a crime, and a sin, the kind of weapon that had only been ethically used once in history by Horus in his battle against Set and none of us dumb assholes had owl heads.

so.

the next day went pretty well. we threw some more axes again, which is a valuable and important skill for children to learn i guess, and we learned how to tie knots, which is a skill that turned out to be far sexier than i ever expected, and i learned how to light fires with a magnifying glass, which was great. i'm looking back at this, and i am actually just now beginning to realize that the clear and obvious point of scouting is turning child sociopaths into apex predators.

and then the day ended, and we went back to our camps, except for our leaders, who had a sort of Scout Leader Meeting they were going to have for a few hours at least. it was built into the camp, that day was supposed to be our day to chill as a group, and make peach cobbler, and just be buddies.

except, as it turned out, our neighboring group's alternative to making peach cobbler was eating their watermelon. so at some point they opened their watermelon, and woo boy. oh man. you think catholics hated seedless watermelons? you should see how much mormons hate seeded ones.

so we were chilling by the fire, and then we heard screaming from the camp over, but we didn't pay much mind to that because there are many reasonable explanations for a group of 10ish children to scream simulanteoulsy, such as wasps, which are abundant in arizona, and then the screaming got closer, which did not bother us because there were many reasons for a group 10ish children to scream and run towards us, for example, wasps, which are abundant in arizona, and then we noticed they had large sticks on them, which we figured were perhaps being used to drive away the wasps, which are abundant in arizona, and then they arrived and they started beating the shit out of us, abundantly, in arizona.

so we ran into the woods.

now, at this point, we had no idea what was up. we knew that the camp next to us was out for blood, which was crazy, because we'd actually locked them in fartproof bags for 30 minutes and they'd barely done anything back, and were trying to figure out what could possibly have happened that could drive them to Terrible Violence when we realized that J was cackling like a witch that had learned how to order children off of ebay.

so we politely asked J what the hell he had done, and he politely explained that had "done" their watermelon, and we politely beat him with large sticks because life is nothing but endless cycles of violence.

we were still being chased by the other camp btw. so it was them, chasing us, chasing J, and then they got tired and went back to their camp, and we chased J a little longer because we were mad we'd all been walloped with sticks, and J did not care because he was a supernatural entity whose only weaknesses were Needles and Fire, and then we got tired and went back and J kept running, and we just kind of figured he would come back eventually.

he did not.

we went back to our tents, and we waited, and J did not come back. we stayed up all night, peering into the forest, worrying. our leader came back, and we did our best to hide our battlewounds, and he either genuinely did not notice or simply accepted this as part of Boyhood. then he went to bed, and we waited, and waited, and waited. And Waited. and did not sleep.

eventually, we convened again, and we agreed that if J was not back by after breakfast, we would have to tell the scoutleader about what exactly had transpired. and we really did not want to do that, because it would have meant that everyone would have gotten in a very large amount of trouble.

morning came around, and J still was not back. we went to breakfast, and we ate very, very slowly. we were afraid the other camp was going to continue their war with us, but they actually looked fairly frightened. one of them actually came to us and asked for a truce, and we agreed because we truly felt bad for them. like, yes, they did beat us with sticks, but J fucked their watermelon. we werent complicit in the watermelonfuckening but they didnt know that, and it was definitely the kind of crime that left one outside the bounds of the social contract.

and then when we could eat no more bits, when breakfast was almost done, right when i was getting pushed to go and tell the scoutleader that we needed to find J, he arrived. he was sleep deprived, and noticeably scraped and bloody, and tied to his belt was a blood squirrel tail.

and i asked him, J, where did you get that? and he said, don't worry man, it was already dead, which did not answer by question and gave me several more.

the camp ended that day, and the other groups avoided us like the plague, and it was not until some weeks later that we were able to piece together what happened.

J, in his sojourn through the forest, managed to find (or, possibly, make) a dead squirrel. he then cut off the tail to keep on his belt, because he was a weird little freak like that. he also took the dead squirrel, and he skinned it, then he tied it to a little crucifix made of wood, and he left it in the other scouting group's camp. which is why they were so scared of us.

it was such an unhinged thing to do it actually sobered us up for a while. scouting became a scary thing for us. we'd found something dark and primal there, in the place where no adult could see, and our appreciation of J as a wild ride kind of changed into seeing him as something truly dangerous. we had a sense wherever he went, something terrible would follow, and the only way to escape it was to not be there when it arrived. and so piece by piece, the scout group dissolved. it wasnt until he moved out of that ward that the rest of us started daring to go back to scouts.

and for the final epilogue of the tale:

i have a little brother who was friends with a younger cousin of J's, and the two would go to parties together in highschool. and sometimes J, who was in his early 20's at that point, would show up at the parties, and it was unsettling in such a way that it just became a known risk at parties with the cousin. and at one party, they were playing truth or dare, and J wasn't even in the room, but someone asked him the Truth of how he always knew how to find the cousin, and J said the cousin's mom had mentioned she was worried about him and the parties so he'd put a tracker in his car. and when he saw that the cousin was out of the house on weekends, he'd made a visit by, just to make sure he was safe.

then he left. and every single person at that party went over that poor kid's car. they searched the wheel-wells, checked underneath it, the works, until they found the tracker. then because they were clever, they didnt break it, or throw it away, or anything that would've given away what they'd done. they just gave the tracker to the cousin, who put it in his glovebox. and on schooldays, he'd take it with him, so J could see him in the parking lot. and on weekends, he could leave it in the garage, so he could go to parties with out Hell coming with him. because everyone that met J - every single person - knew that the only way to be safe from him was to be far, far away.

[corrodedparadox]

Your new life is going to cost you your old one

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