The Horror Collection Toxic Edition

We’ve Gone Too Far

By

Sheri White

The new cable music channel MTV was going on air for the first time tonight, and I couldn’t wait. I’d seen music videos on TV shows like Fridays and Night Flight and every one of them blew me away. So much cooler than just listening to the radio. I knew MTV was going to be amazing.

It was late afternoon, and my friends and I were at my house, just hanging out in the basement TV room after a day at our community pool.

“You guys want to come back here tonight and watch that new music video channel MTV? It starts right at midnight.” I passed the container of Cheez Balls to Jeannie.

“Oh, that sounds cool. I’ll tell my mother I’m going to Desiree’s.” She tossed a few of the Cheez Balls into her mouth.

“And vice versa, Jeannie, as usual,” said Desiree. She grinned with teeth covered in orange powder.

“That is so gross.” Jeannie shuddered and laughed.

“Randy? Weed? You guys in?” Weed’s real name was Will, but we called him Weed because he lived for getting high. And somehow, his grades were always higher than any of ours.

“You don’t have to ask me twice, man,” said Weed.

“Me too, Paul. You’re so lucky you have cable. My parents won’t get it since there’s nothing but evil trash on those channels.” Randy raised his voice, imitating his mother, then rolled his eyes.

Weed held up a couple joints. “Party in our usual spot in the woods behind the school first?”

“Can’t we go somewhere else for once? Or couldn’t we just stay here and wait for the channel to begin, Paul?” Jeannie asked.

“Sorry, my parents are going to be home from work in a while. They’ll be down here in the TV room watching their shows almost all evening.”

“You guys know I hate hanging out in the woods, especially at night,” Jeannie said. I could hear the pout in her voice that usually showed up when she wasn’t getting her way.

“You mean you’re scared of hanging out in the woods at night,” I teased.

Jeannie crossed her arms and glared at me. “No, I just don’t like getting chewed up by bugs.”

I liked Jeannie, she was cool and all, but man, she could be such a wuss. She was especially scared of stupid urban legends—Bloody Mary, the man with a hook for a hand, The Bunnyman—she would even avoid stepping on sidewalk cracks which was funny since she and her mom didn’t get along.

What freaked her out the most though was the Goatman.

It’s some kind of half-man and half-goat thing, like a centaur I guess, that’s rumored to have been part of an experiment that went wrong at the Agricultural Center nearby.

Somehow it escaped, and now it supposedly lives in those woods behind our old elementary school.

There’s an old burned-out shed deep in the woods, and of course that was where Goatman “lived” before it burned.

So, the Goatman wanders around our small town at night since he doesn’t have any place to live.

We all talked about Goatman when we were little kids, scaring each other with stories about it.

We all claimed to have seen it, and we’d embellish the story every time we told it so it would sound like almost all of us were practically kidnapped by Goatman at some point.

We would convince ourselves that Goatman peeked at us from behind the trees at the edge of the woods during recess and we’d run screaming to the poor playground monitor that it was coming to get us.

For some reason, the Goatman legend, more than any others, stuck with Jeannie, so she hardly ever goes to the woods with us except to cut through them to get to the pool during the day.

“Jeannie, come on! There is no Goatman, you know that. I want to go, so please?” Desiree jokingly got on her knees and clasped her hands to her chest. “Pleasssse?”

I knew Desiree wanted to go because she had a crush on Weed. Jeannie knew it too, so she gave in.

“Fiiiiine.”

We all clapped.

“Tonight is going to be awesome,” Weed said.

***

We met up at the woods around dusk and headed to our favorite spot. We liked to be far enough into the trees so nobody could easily see us. The town cops knew kids hung out in the woods and drank and smoked, but as long as we were quiet and didn’t cause any trouble, they usually left us alone.

Randy and I came here earlier and hid some wine that we knew the girls liked.

Boones Farm Strawberry Hill was disgustingly sweet, but they drank that shit like it was Hawaiian Punch.

I had a fake ID that Jerry at the liquor store knew was bogus.

He didn’t care as long as we didn’t buy anything too ridiculous, like pure grain.

“That shit will fuck you up for life, man,” he’d say.

He’s pretty chill for an old guy in his 30s.

Randy pulled a pint of Jack from his sock and took a swig before passing it to me.

I drank some, loving the shivers down my spine.

I took out one of the wine bottles and handed it to Jeannie.

We sat on the logs Weed dragged there earlier in the summer.

I brushed leaves away from the boombox hidden behind the log I sat on.

I turned the dial, waiting to hit on a good song.

“Wait! Stop on that one.” Weed closed his eyes and went to town, drumming his fingers on his knees along with Neil Peart.

“…changes aren’t permanent…” Weed sang.

I put my hands over my ears. “Man, you do not sound anywhere near as good as Geddy.”

“It’s all about the music, dude.”

We were quiet for a few minutes, just drinking and smoking, enjoying the music and the night. Then Weed opened his stupid piehole.

“So, Little Jeannie,” Weed said.

I cringed. Jeannie hated that song, and hated Elton John. She always got pissed off when anyone called her that, which is why Weed always did it.

Jeannie glared at him. “What,” she responded through clenched teeth.

“Do you really believe in the Goatman, dude? I mean, like, you think there’s some kind of fucked-up animal thing running around here in the woods?

What makes it so scary and dangerous? I guess it could strangle someone if it got close enough to grab a person, but other than that, how in the hell is it that scary? ”

Desiree giggled. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but that is mental, Jeannie. I stopped believing in Goatman in like, fourth grade.” Weed passed the joint to her. She took a hit and scooted closer to him on the log they shared.

“That is so not cool, Desiree. I thought you were my friend.”

“Don’t, you guys—” I started to say.

Weed interrupted me. “No, really—for serious. I mean, this is fucking hilarious, right? What is it you’re afraid of, Little Jeannie? Is it because he could be near us right now?” Weed looked around with his hands against his cheeks.

“Get bent, spaz.”

Randy threw a rock at Weed but missed. “Stop being such an asshole, dude.”

“No, listen. Shhh. Hear that? It sounds like, like hooves, you guys!” Weed grabbed a couple rocks off the ground and tapped them against the log to sound like an animal running.

Desiree bent over laughing. “Look! There’s a face over there! Run, Jeannie! Before he gets you!”

It had gotten dark by this point, but I could see Jeannie’s face in the moonlight. Tears rolled down her cheeks. I got up and sat next to her.

“Don’t listen to them, Jeannie. They’re hammered.” I put my arm around her, and she laid her head on my shoulder. I felt my heart flutter. We looked at each other in surprise and smiled a little.

“You two have been assholes since kindergarten. Why change now, right?” Jeannie sniffled. She flipped them off, and we all laughed.

Tommy Shaw started singing that he had too much time on his hands. He made it sound like a bad thing, but at that moment, I had nothing but time ahead of me and it felt so right.

“Hey, what time is it?” Randy asked.

Desiree looked at her watch. “Almost ten, why?”

“Let’s go swimming.”

“Where?” I asked. There weren’t any ponds or lakes nearby.

Randy rolled his eyes at me. “Duh, the town pool? Where we’ve been going all summer?”

“Duh, it’s closed,” I shot back.

“No, wait.” Weed jumped up, all excited. “Check it out—we can climb the fence. It’s not that high. We used to climb higher into trees when we were kids.”

“Exactly,” said Randy.

“Sounds good to me.” I looked at Jeannie and Desiree. “You two up?”

“Hell, yeah!” shouted Des. Weed helped her stand up. She didn’t let go of his hand, but Weed didn’t seem to mind.

“Hold up, guys.” Jeannie looked up at us and shook her head. “We can’t break into the pool! Do you know how much trouble we’ll be in if we’re caught? My mother would ground me for like, all of senior year!”

“Don’t be lame. We’re not going to break in. We’re just going to climb a fence,” said Randy.

I took Jeannie’s hand when she stood up. “Let’s do this, Jeannie.”

“I don’t know…”

“Listen,” I said. “In a couple weeks we start senior year. We’ll still hang out and all sometimes, and see each other on weekends, but this is our last real summer together. We need to do something so rad we’ll remember it the rest of our lives.”

The others nodded in agreement. Desiree took Jeannie’s hand. “He’s right. What do you say, Jeannie?”

She smiled. “You know what? The hell with my mother. I’m in.”

We quickly put everything away, leaving the bottles to pick up in the morning. If we did get caught, we did not need alcohol on us.

***

We got to the pool in about ten minutes. Weed and Desiree lagged behind us the whole way, holding hands and whispering to each other. If they got together, they were going to be insufferable at school.

We all scaled the chain-link fence easily. The floodlights weren’t on, but the lights in the pool were, and the moon was bright enough to see by. The water sparkled under the glow and the smell of chlorine filled the air. The pumps hummed in the shed nearby.

“Are we going to swim in our clothes?” asked Jeannie.

“Let’s skinny dip!” yelled Weed, already taking his shirt off.

“No!” both girls shouted at the same time.

“We can compromise, Weed,” said Randy, the peacekeeper as always. “We’ll swim in our underwear.”

The girls looked at each other and shrugged.