To Your Credit

Allen gritted his teeth as the woman droned on. He could feel them grinding under the pressure, a habit newly formed in the recent year. A habit his dentist would notice, that is if he went to a dentist. It didn't surprise Allen when he noticed the tick, he actually expected it with everything that happened. 

"Is everything alright, dear? You look- you look uncomfortable." The woman stopped praising him and looked Allen up and down with concern etched in her wrinkle-lined eyes.

"It's just that time of year. It has gotten me on edge" Allen smile weakly at her hoping to end this rotting corpse of a conversation.

"Oh, I could only imagine after what you and that girl went through last year. It is only natural." She grinned expectantly up at him, obviously wanting to continue.

"Yeah," was all Allen could grumble out as he turned away from her. She was not his therapist. She understood this hint at least and made no attempt to recapture his attention.

It was a year ago. A year ago today and no one seemed to want to let Allen forget it. As if this is some new local holiday, Allen chuckled bitterly to himself. With how everyone is acting it almost wouldn't surprise him. Allen Day. Fucking stupid. His jaw began to ache and he relaxed the muscles in his jaw for the moment, sure the grinding would start back up before long. A year ago today was when this lie started. A lie he never wanted or asked for. A lie he never spoke himself.

-

He had been out for a day hike on the local hiking trails and because of either poor upkeep or high school vandalism, lost his way from the poorly marked trail and found himself lost, deep in unfamiliar woods. After a few hours of searching for another trail or a road, tired and scared, he came upon a house- or more appropriately, a shack. Allen disregarded the chills it gave him and kept pace toward it, hoping for some help or at the very least a finger in the direction of a road.

As Allen neared the shack he began to hear muffled crying, broken up with the sounds of gagging and coughing. More cautiously he crept forward. Through tattered, grime-covered blinds Allen could see the back of a girl.

"H-hello," Allen called out weakly already frightened from being directionless in the ever-darkening forest.

Dirty, unwashed blond hair whipped around an equally dirty and tear-streaked face. Allen saw her. Beth. The missing girl from his high school that everyone thinks ran away. Her mouth was tightly gagged with, what looked like, dirty blue rags.

Beth quickly got to her knees, grunting through her gag, reaching out, flashing steel, lunging toward the window I stood gaping and shaking at. Just as quickly as she had started, Beth was stopped short and lain flat, forgetting about the heavy chain nearly turning her right foot purple.

As Beth let out slow, muffled groans of pain from the unswept wooden floor, Allen began to back away. As he turned to run, eyes lingering on to the window when everything went black.

-

That shack. He never should have gone to that shack, he felt it in his spine and the way all of his nerves seemed to twitch. He should have listened to his instincts and kept walking and he would have found a road eventually.

Or maybe that's not right. Should he have wanted to save her? He was just so scared. He wasn't strong or brave or clever. Someone else would have saved her. Allen would have called the police and let one of them save Beth. Let someone else have all the credit. All the attention. 

Allen did not want it.

Allen made his way stiffly to the cafe where everyone was gathered. For him. For Beth. For him bravely rescuing the damsel in distress. The grinding started again as he opened the door to the small cafe.

-

As Allen came to, he could feel the knot above his left ear began to form. He also quickly became aware of the fact his hands were bound behind his back. His eyes shot open and he looked around himself quickly trying to understand what was happening. He was inside the little shack Beth was in and Beth was now asleep on the floor next to him with a shadow of dark purple encasing one eye that wasn't there before.

A moment later the door was yanked open and an old rugged man that seems to have made enemies with soap and razor blades decades ago stormed in with grass, leaves, and other bits of underbrush clinging to him. He noticed I was awake immediately. And came in close, nearly touching his nose to mine. The stench. The stench was like nothing I had ever experienced, what I imagine a week old body in a pool of ankle-high, stagnant water would smell like.

"L-look man, I don't know who you a-are, but it's cool. I won't tell anyone. I was just lost, you see, I don't want anyth-," my cracking voice was cut short by a putrid, unwashed hand clamping over my mouth.

With a deep, harsh voice this wild man pointed at Allen, then at Beth, and said one word. "Example" a wicked smile grew on his face as my eyes widened with fear and realization. I knew he was only waiting for her to wake up. For her to witness it. He didn't have to wait long because it was only moments later when she began to stir.

With my body shaking with the horror of what was to come, the man turned and walked to the other side of the shack and picked something up.

A knife.

After that, it wasn't so clear. Allen remembered the man coming toward him with the knife. Allen screaming, crying, thrashing. Then blood. So much blood. Beth said Allen lunged at the man when he got close enough, hitting him hard enough to throw him off balance, and by the grace of all luck in the known universe, the wild man fell on his own knife, landing right in the left lung. Allen could remember the bloody gurgles as the life left the man.

-

Beth said he saved her. Everyone said he saved her. Everyone. Really, though, it was only fear. He tried to runway, to pretend he never saw her. He was a coward being praised as a hero and he hated it. He was no one's hero.

Allen sat down at the table, Beth across from them as their families surrounded them in celebration of being alive, like a tomb of smiling faces. We got our food and drinks. Everyone was smiling,  laughing, and loving life. 

Allen stood up. Tapped on his glass and said, "Everyone, I have an announcement."