You Shouldn’t Go Camping

The sun was setting now and everything was quiet. Peaceful. The soft glow of dusk faded every passing second, the sounds of crickets and katydids ringing out across the vast, rolling hills surrounding the farm. Farrah could hear them, even at this distance, in the woods. She lay on her back across the plaid blanket, gazing up at the sky, watching as stars began to freckle across it.

Next to her and equally as freckled, sitting up and staring placidly at the far-off farm through the clearing, was Liv. Farrah’s girlfriend. She was wearing her signature bright blue hoodie from the cafe a few blocks from her house. Turning her head, Farrah smiled, watching the light of the fire in front of them bounce off of Liv’s eyes, the fiery blaze almost identical to her hair, which fell perfectly down her back, tucked behind her ears. She felt her face warm as she thought, “beautiful.” Catching her gaze, Liv turned her attention to Farrah. She laughed, in a startled kind a way.

“Oh my god, Far, how long have you been staring at me?” Her cheeks were pink now, though Farrah could only just barely tell, the little light from before having mostly slipped away.

Sitting up, Farrah replied, “long enough to be amazed by how stunning you are. Again.”

From the light of the fire, Farrah saw the pink in Liv’s cheeks deepen. Liv was bad with compliments, Farrah knew that, and so when she began to stutter, Farrah only laughed.

Liv playfully hit her shoulder, “you’re mean, you know.”

“I am not.”

“are too.”

“Am not.”

“Ar-” Liv couldn’t get her next word out, because Farrah put her hand up to her mouth, silencing her.

“Sh,” she said, glancing around.

Liv looked confused for a second, then smiled, moving Farrah’s hand.

“You and your prank-”

But Farrah shook her head, silencing Liv once more. Then, in a whisper:

“Did you hear that?” Farrah turned now so that she was facing toward the side of the woods, the clearing to her right, their tent to her left. Straining her eyes, she tried looking deeper into the woods. She’d heard something. She felt her heart begin to race.

Taking notice of the change in Farrah’s demeanor, Liv lowered her voice to a whisper.

“Farrah, what is it?”

Farrah opened her mouth to answer, but drew a blank. She didn’t know. It had been twigs, snapping, too heavily to be caused by anything like a squirrel. She listened, sorting through the sounds of the night, hoping to find where it could have come from. Nothing. Just crickets and katydids, like before.

“Farrah?” Liv’s eyes were wide now, glancing fervently about. When Farrah looked back at her, she saw tears were now welling in her eyes.

Alarmed, she tried her best to comfort Liv.

“Liv, liv no it’s okay, I just- I thought I heard something….” she said still in a whisper, trailing off as she looked back once more, behind them, just to check. Still nothing. Turning back to Liv, she put a hand on her cheek.

“Hey, i’m really sorry okay, i didn’t mean to scare y-”

She was stopped abruptly once again by the sound, louder this time, closer. She whipped around wildly, adrenaline coursing through her, on hand still resting in Liv’s shoulder. In a hushed voice and, Farrah thought with a shiver, definitely crying, Liv said, “Oh my god oh my god, I heard it this time too.”

Doing her best to stay calm and find the source of the noise, Farrah squeezed Liv’s shoulder. Her eyes scanned the woods, clawing into every crevice to look for anything out of the ordinary. It was Liv, again, who spoke next.

“Maybe it was just like, a deer or something. A fox.”

But Farrah had lived next to these woods her entire life. She’d hunted in them. The deer didn’t come this far east and no fox is making that much noise, especially at this time of night. No, she thought, No those sounds were…

And then she saw it. Hugging against one of the poplar trees at the edge of the clearing, a human silhouette. Panicked, Farrah raised her voice ever so slightly, hitting Liv lightly as she repeated: “Run, Liv, Run. Run!”

She felt Liv hesitate behind her.

“Go!, she whisper-shouted.”

When she felt Liv rise and begin to run, she too turned and began sprinting down the hill, back to the farm.

It was a person, she was sure of it, glancing over her shoulder to see them being chased.

Catching up to Liv, she screamed.

“RUN LIV, RUN KEEP RUNNING.”

Liv let out a cry, falling to the ground. Farrah skidded to a stop and turned. The figure was closing in on them, less than 200 meters, if she had to guess.

“Liv!” she pleaded, crying, “Liv come on we have to go!”

Liv quickly struggled back to her feet and began running, but Farrah noticed she was limping, and moving slower than before.

”Liv, what’s wrong, what happened!?” She looked up, the figure now closer as she tried to pull Liv into a sprint. Crying heavier now, Liv yelled, “my ankle!”

It was no use running, Farrah thought wildly as she looked back once more, to find the person nearly within arms reach of them. She thought frantically. Her pocket knife, did she have it? Fumbling around in her picket with her free hand, she searched. No, No, No, come one , where is it- YES, she thought, grabbing hold of the knife just as she flat hands grab her shoulder. Whipping around, she flicked it open and plunged the knife forward, blindly, until it met something. Someone.

With a groan, their assailant stumbled, their hands falling off Farrah’s shoulders to hold their stomach—his stomach, Farrah noted, seeing in the dim moonlight that, whoever this was, it was a man.

Not hesitating, Farrah pulled her leg up and kicked the attacker square in the pants, driving her knee into his face as he fell. She saw something clatter out of his hands, then. A knife. Her blood ran cold.

“Liv!” she shouted, “Liv, grab the knife!”

In the corner of her vision she law Liv stumble, dazed, to pick up the knife from where it lay in the grass.

Turning her attention back to the man in front of her, she shouted.

“Who are you?! What do you want, why are you chasing us?!”

The man said nothing, holding his face and stomach as he lay on the floor.

“Hey, I’m talk-”

Farrah didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence, because the man suddenly lunged forward, grabbing her arm and dragging her down. With a scream Farrah fell, but before she could do anything else she felt a hard blow to her face. Everything grew fuzzy, white-hot spots floating across her vision like fireflies. The last thing she saw was the attacker staggering to his feet towards a pale, frozen-in-place Liv, who clutched the knife from before firmly between her hands at her chest.

“L-iv,” Farrah tried to choke out. Then everything went dark.

-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-

Farrah awoke to the soft glow of morning light seeping through her eyelids. Her head felt funny. Beneath her, she could feel something soft, waxy…grass? But why-

Opening her eyes, she shot up with a jolt, remembering flashes from the night before. Her head started ringing as panic flooded her mind. She glanced around wildly

“Liv? Li-”

she stopped. Sitting in the grass to her left, head in her hands, was Liv. She was completely still.

“Liv?” Farrah said cautiously, a slight uptick in her voice.

No answer. She shuffled on her knees the few-feet distance between herself and Liv and tapped her gently, flinching slightly when Liv jumped. When Liv raised her head, Farrah saw her eyes were bloodshot, and her face puffy. Taking Liv’s face in her hands, Farrah spoke, careful to watch her volume. Liv looked as if she might snap.

“Oh Liv, Liv hey, what’s wrong?” Concern dripped from her voice, materializing in tears that began to seep down her face. “I was so worried, that man-”

Again she stopped. Wait. Wait. That man. Where was that man?

Liv didn’t speak, and instead simply stared ahead, past Farrah. Turning to follow her gaze, Farrah’s heart stopped when she saw it. Lying on the ground, just yards away from her, maybe five, was a body. Still and unmoving. And next to him, a knife—with crusted, dried blood covering the blade. Farrah felt her stomach turn. She thought she might be sick. She heard Liv’s voice behind her, choked and stuttered.

“I didn’t want to kill him, I-” she swallowed, “he came at me, and I just, I just…”

She didn’t have to finish. Farrah knew. She didn’t know what to say to Liv, so she just wrapped her arms around her. The same soft breeze from before was tugging playfully at the air around them, moving through their hair and brushing their skin. She felt Liv begin to shake, and knew she was crying when she heard the sniffling sound of her trying to keep quiet. Farrah just held her tighter, digging her fingers into her hair.

“it’ll be okay Liv. You’re gonna be fine. I promise.” Farrah lifted her head, and kissed Liv softly on the head.

They were silent like that for a while, just listening to the sounds of the morning. As the sun rose higher in the sky, they were forced out of their trance and into the blinding brunt of reality. Neither knew what time it was when they finally rose from the grass and walked the short distance back to where their camp lay in the clearing of the woods. They had to do something, they agreed, growing antsy from sitting so long. Liv had stopped crying, but her eyes remained watery, the tears constantly threatening to spill out.

They gathered their things in silence and placed them in the car, before making their way back to where the man lay, lifeless as ever. When they reached him, it was Liv who spoke.

“What do we do?” She sounded scared, but detached, as if none of it could be real. And god, Farrah wished it wasn’t. She hated not having answers, but standing there, peering upon the crimson stains in the grass around the body—at that gash in his stomach—her mind was blank. A sound in the distance brought her attention back to the present: bells from the old church, not far from where they were. It was noon. Farrah began to think, long and hard, before turning to Liv.

“We should go to the cops, Liv.” She saw alarm spring upon Liv’s face, and spoke quickly as she saw her mouth open, forming what Farrah was sure to be a “No way.”

“Listen Liv, it was self-defense. He tried to attack us, or kill us for all we know. You won’t get in trouble, I saw the whole thing, I’ll testify.”

Liv bit her lip and stared at the ground, muttering something.

“What?” Farrah asked.

Liv hesitated, then repeated: “you passed out, you didn’t see it.” And she was right. Farrah technically hadn’t seen it. But that didn’t matter.

“I’ll just lie. I’ll lie. I’ll tell them that he knocked me to the ground and ran at you, and you stabbed him, and then we didn’t know what to do so we just sat there all night.”

Liv looked unsure, but after a few seconds pause, nodded.

“So do we just..I mean do we just leave him?”

Farrah looked back towards where the dead man lay. For the first time, she was curious as to what their attacker had really wanted from them. She took in his tattered shirt and pants, the latter of which had multiple small dirt stains. His shoes were simple sneakers, no distinguishable brand, with beaten up toes and platforms that were coming undone. The man himself was skinny, not so skinny as to be unhealthy but skinny all the same, and he had messy brown hair, short, strewn atop his head. It looked like he hadn’t washed it in weeks. And his eyes, so open and still, staring up at the sky…

Farrah snapped out of it, a bit sick. She didn’t want to think about his eyes. About how they would never see another thing. So she turned back to Liv.

“Yea. Let’s get the car and drive to the station. We can tell the police everything when we get there.”

And so they made their way back up the hill to the clearing, to the small blue Volkswagen that Farrah had been given for her seventeen birthday last year. The drive to the station was maybe forty minutes, and they were silent the whole way, exchanging words only for directions. When they walked into the station, and officer took immediate attention to them, looking up from across the room and catching their troubled, hesitant stares.

The next few hours were painstakingly long and tiring. Tedious. Liv cried again as she told the story of what had happened, and when it was Farrah’s turn, she cried too. The police took their statements, called their parents, and sent a small team out to look for the man. Everything else was a blur. The next thing Farrah knew, her and Liv’s parents were there, holding them. Farrah didn’t know if they were crying too, or if it was just her, doing enough crying for all of them. She didn’t really know anything, at that point. She was tired, checked out. She looked over at Liv, whose face was somehow both pale and gray. Farrah thought then, with deep pain for Liv: she’s never going to be the same. She knew Liv. It was going to take a long time for her to even be on the border of “OK.”

When they finally left the station, it was growing dark outside, and the wind had grown stronger. Liv and Farrah were both clutching small blankets from the station around their shoulders. They had decided, after some resistance from Farrah’s parents, to go back to Liv’s house. They didn’t want to be apart yet, Liv and Farrah. After some talking, Liv’s mom had suggested that Farrah's parents sleep in their guest room, for as many days as they needed. And so that was the plan.

-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-

At least that’s how Farrah told herself the story went, sitting on the steps outside her house, twenty years later. Over and over she replayed the scene in her mind, holding that bright blue hoodie in her hands. She felt tears drip down her face, watching as they splattered onto the fabric, seeping into it in spots, rendering little bits of it an ever so slightly deeper blue.

Farrah missed her. Every day, she missed her. Every damn day, she wished Liv hadn’t tripped. Wished that man hadn’t chased her when she ran, and had just come back to where Farrah lay crumpled on the ground. Wished he hadn’t bled out before he got back to her and had killed her too.

She stared up at the sky. Small stars were beginning to freckle across it, like they had all those years ago, on her eighteenth birthday. A chill came across her as the wind blew, and so she stood, gathering herself to go back inside. She looked out once more across the neighborhood she now lived in, in Brooklyn. People usually walked around this time of night, laughing with one another on the streets, small children pulling their mothers along to a gelato stand or something or the other. But not tonight, not right now. The sun was setting now, and everything was quiet.