Needles & Pins #3
Gregory sits bolt upright and vomits onto his sleeping bag.
His body heaves for a moment, forcing air back into his lungs.
His throat stings, stripped raw by whatever he’s just brought up.
Scrabbling for his phone, he thumbs the flashlight on and shines it at his lap.
There, in a puddle of bile and half-digested food, sits a pile of pins; tens of them, maybe a hundred, scattered like a child’s game and gleaming silver in the pale light.
He wants to scream, but his throat refuses to make a sound.
Instead, he coughs and watches blood spatter across the sleeping bag, specks of it on the pins, on the vomit.
The coughing worsens, doubling him over as his body is wracked with spasms.
He wakes from the dream shivering and wet.
The synthetic fabric of the sleeping bag clings to him like cellophane.
Frantic and shaking, he peels it from his skin and jumps to his feet, banging his head on the tent pole as he searches for his phone.
The flashlight reveals nothing. Just a sleeping bag, wet with sweat.
The front of his boxers is wet too, although he can’t tell whether it’s piss or something else.
He stumbles outside, sitting for a few minutes on a thick root at the base of the oak.
The campsite is quiet; his phone says it’s not quite one a.m. Once his heart has calmed down and he’s breathing normally, he reasons the whiskey was to blame.
He’s had strange lucid dreams on a whiskey bender before; broken sleep, night sweats.
Everything that’s happened over the past few days has messed with his head.
For once, he thinks that he should probably clean his act up.
Drink less, exercise more. Maybe he could be better than this.
Maybe it’s okay to admit that he doesn’t like who he’s become.
It’s as he thinks this that he hears laughter.
It comes from the stream, same as the other night; two voices, laughing and splashing.
He can hear that one is Manon’s. The other is quieter, but he’s certain it must be the woman he saw her with last night.
He remembers what Manon said about the water, and it strikes him that maybe it was an invitation.
If that’s their kink, then he’s down with it.
He looks up at the oak tree. The branches are low.
He can see easy handholds leading up the trunk, as if placed there on purpose.
Surely that would be simpler than trampling through the undergrowth again; there’s less chance of him being spotted too, its upper branches the perfect eyrie for him to spy on Manon and her friend.
Reaching up, he pulls himself onto a thick branch, then finds another and hauls himself higher.
The climbing is easy, child’s play. He remembers enjoying this when he was a kid.
Looking down, he’s easily fifteen feet off the ground, maybe twenty.
His tent is still visible below him in the murk.
Pulling himself onto a long, leafless branch, he sits and stares out toward the stream.
The sky is clear tonight, the moon full, and he can see them: two figures, pale white in the water.
Both have their hair loose. One of them, Manon he thinks, dips beneath the surface, and hair spreads around her like a black veil.
He’s hard inside his boxers again. No need to even touch it this time.
They can’t see him here; he can watch them as long as he needs.
Maybe this trip hasn’t been such a waste after all.
It’s as he thinks this that they both stand, wading out of the water toward the bank.
He can see Manon clearly, her body glowing pale in the moonlight; her companion looks familiar too, but he is too far away to see her properly.
Edging along the branch, he tries to get a better look.
Two things happen at once.
As he moves forward, both of them turn to face him, and he realizes with a gasp who the second woman is.
At the same time, there’s an almighty crack beneath him and the branch snaps at the trunk.
One moment it’s there; the next he’s plummeting through air.
He strikes two other branches on the way down, one whipping him around the head, the other striking him so hard in the stomach that it knocks the wind from his body.
Neither compares, however, to the pain as he lands on his tent. It’s excruciating, his body screaming white-hot.
He must have yelled, because he hears footsteps nearby.
Twisting, he tries to see his rescuers. The pain worsens, though, and he can see why.
The tent poles have bent and splintered under his fall; two of the fragments skewer his left side, while the third, the longest, pierces his chest and emerges several inches out his back.
He can see the blood, gleaming red on the metal.
He can taste it in his mouth. He turns to ask for help.
But as the metallic taste bubbles up in his throat, and his vision starts to blur, he would swear he sees Becky standing there, hand-in-hand with Manon, naked and shameless.
Baring their teeth at him in the moonlight.