Calum B. Munson's failed ride home.

There's a beauty to the forest at night that he’d appreciate if he weren’t tired from his kill. He needed to write, but it was too dark for his liking.

Calum had marched up to the road a few minutes before, and he wanted to get home without incriminating himself. So he waited for a car or truck to drive by, with an appropriate sob story and fake limp.

“Hello sir, I kinda sprained my ankle. Could you drive me to a gas station or something?” Calum asked, his face still hot from his earlier excursion.

The man simply opened his passenger door, with an over-sweetened glance, he obviously wanted more trust than he was owed.

There was an asymmetry in his actions that Calum recognized. And he knew what would be on offer if the man were honest.

His heart still played like a sugar rush, in his ears, hot in his skin and he wanted to brush his teeth for the memory.

It made his movements sloppy, which played well into his ruse. For all the buzz and relief he felt in the moment he could scarcely walk straight without a breather.

He knew it was dangerous, but it hardly mattered to Calum.

The man for his part started talking a bit too soon for his liking. "So, what had you so far out?" the man said, his voice heavy.

Calum looked at the window, trying to avoid his eyeline. It wasn’t Calums fault that the man sounded nicer than he probably was.

"Oh nothing much, just the scenery." he said, covering for the body he’d left only a few blocks from where he’d been picked up. Before asking, "is it alright if I do some writing here?"

"I don't exactly have a charging set up." the old man said, like that was the only way a man younger than fifty could write.

He’d already taken out his journal, "sorry to disappoint, I'm a bit old school." he said trying to play it off as an understandable gap, it would’ve been rude to treat it as anything else.

The man took it readily, along with a somewhat over-labored glance.

Calum tried to focus on his writing, he wasn’t the kind of person to worry spelling too much, but the man kept looking over.

He would’ve turned the page otherwise. 

"So, what do you like to write about?" the man asked with the dishonest curiosity of an overworked school counsellor.

"Bodies." he said, as honestly as possible. There were only bodies he’d killed in the book.

"Oh, what kinda bodies?" the man asked a whole lot more sincerely. 

"anybody, anything."

"Oh." 

The man's disappointment was palpable, as the man was finally made quiet.

Though he was also thrown in a mood, clenching and unclenching his jaw in a way reminiscent of a sad puppy.

He still went to look over at Calum, in that curious way he had before.

Listening to Calum’s chicken scratching.

He wondered if it annoyed the man at all, if it was less pleasurable to hear while driving than the tapping of phone keys woulda been.

But he also seemed a bit too interested.

“I still gotta wonder what got you out so late?” the man asked after almost half an hour of uninterrupted silence.

“I thought I told you? Oh, whatever,” he thought out loud, before lying, “is it alright to say I’ve got terrible friends?”

“Well hey, we’ve all been in bad crowds before.” the man said, a smile in his voice. He looked out the window.

“Yeah,” Calum asked on a lark, his writing mostly finished, “I don’t think I caught your name.”

“No, you didn’t. Be fair I didn’t catch yours either.” The man deflected.

“Ah, I’m Calum.”

“Let me guess, your mom had a thing for soap operas?”

“No, saints actually,” Calum corrected with a laugh, “my mom had a thing for cryptids.” it was an inside joke of Calum’s, his mom versus his birth mom. He didn’t actually know why he’d been named that.

Calum Bellamy always sounded so silly to him. He was glad he’d demoted his surname when he came of age.

He had apparently stumped the man royally, so he gave him an out. “It won’t matter if I don’t know your real name, you know.” 

It was only a little while anyway, before he took this guy out too. So as the man stilled farther his eyes on the road, Calum went back to his writing.

“no, I was just surprised. I’m Rayner Kelly.” the man said, whether it was fake or not didn’t matter to Calum.

As the poem was almost halfway composed.

He stayed quiet for the most part, writing the remainder of the piece before working out his aim. 

He unzipped his pants pocket. 

And well.

Waking with one's head in the pitch of the forest should never be a relief.

But that's really all it could be when your last memory is of an over muscled elbow headed straight for your face.

Leave it to say, Calum hadn't expected to wake up considering the countenance of his ride, and the general vibe in the old man's car.

That and the fact that he stabbed the man.

Calum should've known better than to trust himself with anyone after a kill, he was always itchy afterward. 

A bit touchy.

It was a long shot anyway, finding a ride that wasn't a creep. 

What he didn't expect was the guy's curiosity, he'd have been taking the long way round for a proposition, if he swung that way.

That innocuous camp counselor tone overridden by a slimy self interested lust, was another clue.

No wonder he woke up without a belt.

Maybe, Calum should get a haircut. 

He didn't much like that kind of half lurid attention.

He might've disliked the idea of changing, even that little bit against unbidden passions, as if it was the fault of anybody to be made a target.

He killed people, and he should know better than to impose that kinda nonsense.

Still he didn't like the feeling. 

Eyes and such.

Getting up to look down the road, where screeching wheels let him be, he knew even in the lowlight of a forest night where the man would be.

Where he was going.

If Calum kept to his skill the man would've puttered out along with his car a little down that path, but chances were just as good that he survived with a tale to tell. Calum took to the path hoping to smell the car, hoping that his altered state hadn’t undermined him.

Such hope dwindled as he walked.

He set his energies to his path, he might not have been a fan of those putrid delusions, but no one bragged about failed conquests.

He should have just called his mom.