In Tents

Sometime late in the night Mal wakes up. She doesn’t need to pee and she isn’t thirsty. Her pillow is wet with drool; she wipes the cheek that’s been resting on it. It is too dark to see anything, but she can hear John’s steady, sleepful breathing.

She checks her phone for the time, blinking sleepily at the bright light that emanates from the screen. Just past three in the morning. Brilliant. 

She lies down, turns away from John, and unlocks her phone. Just a bit of mindless scrolling before she goes back to sleep. Her phone opens automatically to the photos app, which is slightly odd because she remembers clearing her tabs before going to bed, but she must be mistaken. She decides she’ll go through the photos from the hike they took that day.

The first photo is one Mal asked another hiker to take of her and John in front of the entrance to the forest. She remembers thinking he had quite a nice smile but felt awkward saying so, so she didn’t.

Following that is a series of dumb selfies and areas noted as particularly compelling by Mal-standards: a creek, a view from over a wooded hill, a close up of a toad, and a close up of a frog—although, Mal isn’t sure which photo is of a toad and which is of a frog. 

Mal is caught off-guard when she reaches what she thought was the last photograph and scrolls to find another. This one is strange and, unlike the rest, not one taken by Mal herself. It couldn’t have been; it is a photograph of Mal sleeping.

Mal stares at it for several minutes that feel like hours. Is this some weird joke? She doesn’t strike this as something John would find funny, but she could be wrong. John has been acting…odd. Was it taken by accident? (Believing that would be disgracefully naive.)

Mal feels around in the darkness for John and, when she finds him, shakes him awake. He grunts and she can hear him sitting up. She waits for him to remember where and who he is before shoving the phone in his face. “What the hell?”

Mal gives John a moment to understand what he’s looking at. “What…huh?”

“What is this?” Mal demands. “If it's a joke, it needs work.”

“Why are you…” John grunts as he stretches. “That’s your phone.” 

“Yeah,” Mal says. “With a picture of me sleeping on it. Don’t be dumb, John. I couldn’t have taken it.”  

John takes a closer look. “Neither could I. I was sleeping.” His voice is deeper than it normally is, the way it gets when he’s tired.

Mall scoffs. “Yeah, okay, great excuse.”

John takes the phone from her and turns it around. “No, really. You can see it right there. I couldn’t have taken it; I’m in the picture, too.”

Mal narrows her eyes as she she regards the picture a second time, then snatches it from John to get a closer look. Her eyes widen as horror grows within her. How could she have missed it before? 

Sure enough, next to Mal’s sleeping form is John’s. He’s turned away from her and most of him is out of frame, but it is unmistakable. That is John’s ear; Mal would recognize it anywhere. It sounds stupid but after seven years together, you come to know these things about your significant other. She knows his fingers in much the same way. In a police lineup of only hands, she imagines she could pick John’s with ease.  

Mal doesn’t say anything for a while. She’s thinking something, but if she says it that’ll make it real, and she doesn’t want it to be.

It's John who makes it real, the bastard. “Someone else was in the tent.”

“No,” Mal says with dread, shaking her head slowly. She drops the phone in her lap and brings her hands over her face. She stares into the darkness through the gaps in her fingers. She’s glad for it; with light cometh truth. “No, that’s—”

They both freeze. There's rustling outside the tent. “What was that?” John whispers, and Mal hates him a little for it, the way he keeps forcing reality upon her. 

The rustling sounds close, maybe several feet away. “A deer,” Mal whispers. 

The rustling grows closer until it is just outside the tent. It stops. Neither of them speak, and neither do the creatures of the forest; it seems the world has stopped to listen. There is a sound like scratching against the polyester, and Mal covers her mouth when she hears the thing on the outside fumble with the zipper. Mal is sure the following moments will be her last.

With glorious relief she hears the zippers lock. They’d been having trouble with the zippers since setting up; they kept getting stuck. Bless this cheap piece of junk, Mal thinks. Inside she could cartwheel, but externally she and the world remain on pause. 

“Mal?” A voice calls. “Mal, are you awake? I just went to go pee, I think the zipper’s stuck. Hey, can you hear me?”

Mal’s blood runs cold. She knows that voice: it belongs to the owner of the ears and fingers Mal knows equally well. John’s voice.

Mal cannot speak. She hears John outside the tent curse and mutter something under his breath, then shuffle away a bit. She remains still and silent, and just might've stayed like that for eternity if the phone in her lap hadn’t begun to ring.

Hand shaking, she picks it up and looks at the screen. A picture of John fills it; he is several years younger and his hair is shorter. She isn’t sure if she means to answer the phone; her hand is shaking so badly it very well could’ve been an accident. 

“Hello?” she whispers.

“Hey,” John chuckles a bit sheepishly. “Sorry if I woke you. I left the tent to pee and can’t get it open again. Can you help me out?”

Mal’s hand is shaking so bad she nearly drops the phone, but doesn’t. John asks if everything’s alright; the question is a duet performed by the voice on the phone and the one outside the tent.

Mal finds the flashlight on her phone, but struggles to hold it steady in front of her. Instead it illuminates her lower half, and his. His.  

She can make out a set of hands and feet aside from her own. Gently, one of the hands closes over the one Mal is using to hold the phone. He helps her lift the flashlight so it can illuminate his face, but even before she sees it she knows it won’t be John’s. She has seen his fingers and she does not recognize them.

“Who are you?” she whispers to the man across from her. She is puzzled to find his face is strangely familiar to her, but in a way that unsettles rather than comforts. Outside, she can hear John continue to struggle with the zipper, and she wants to scream at him to run, run far away, don’t look back, but she cannot manage more than a meek exhalation under this man’s gaze.

The man doesn’t answer, but he smiles, and Mal can’t help but think it is a good one. An excellent one, in fact. The kind you fall for and never quite regain stature from. 

He raises a finger that looks nothing like John’s to his grinning lips. “Shh. Don’t want your boyfriend to hear,” he whispers before slitting Mal’s throat.

When John manages to get into the tent, it is completely dark. He is annoyed and confused. He saw Mal’s flashlight go on and she answered her phone. He wonders if she’s playing a weird prank on him, but that isn’t like her. He prays she hasn’t come across the black velvet box, but he can’t imagine any good reason Mal would have for rummaging through the box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies he has hidden the ring in; Mal is vegan. He figures she was probably half-asleep when he called her and not fully awake when she answered. Despite his mild irritation he finds her form in the darkness and settles into it, curling his shape around hers and drawing her closer to him. He smiles. Mal must be drooling in her sleep again. She’s all wet and sticky.