The Portly Man
I'm sorry, sometimes I get depressed and don't schedule enough chapters. Here's a short story to apologize for the chapters that I missed. I intend to start sharing more short stories through my newsletter, so tap in with that.
The Portly Man
I always wanted to go to summer camp, but my parents could never afford it. When they approached me about Camp Grizzly, it sounded like so much fun. Hiking, swimming, capture the flag and everything else I could think of. The mood changed after I was dropped off and had said my goodbyes. The counselors checked all of our bags for contraband. They weren’t looking for knives or cigarettes; they were looking for snacks. That’s when I realized Camp Grizzly wasn’t a regular summer camp. It was a fat camp. Portly, chubby, husky, fluffy and every other adjective had been used to describe me since I was born. I suppose with only two years of high school left my parents thought it was time to do something about it.
There are no ice cream socials, s’mores around the campfire or even tater tots. There are plenty of daily activities, which are just cleverly disguised exercises. A relaxing day at the lake is just code for swimming laps. A scenic hike, is how they say five mile walk up a mountain and another five miles back down. I’d complain, but I’ve been too tired. Meager food rations and extensive exercise regimens leave me drained every single day.
Tonight is different. I’ve been here three weeks and I’ve heard one rumor over and over again. A cave out in the woods where the counselors hide all the contraband. The brownies, cookies, candy and juice. Sweet high fructose corn syrup filled juice, just waiting to be captured. Kids who had weirdly been here before or had family members who attended talk about it like the holy grail. I didn’t believe them at first, but on our latest hike up the mountain, I saw it. I saw the cave in the middle of the woods, and it’s not far from camp.
Sneaking out of camp always seemed so hard in movies and video games. I just walked out towards the woods, and nobody tried to stop me. I didn’t need to hide behind the cabins or crawl on my belly. I had a flashlight on the entire time. There were no counselors playing lookout and if they were, they just didn’t care.
“Where are you going,” a heavy voice asks behind me. I turn to spot Gabriel. Gabriel is a fat kid. We’re all fat kids here but Gabriel is the worst kind of fat kid. He’s a mouth breather, doesn’t smell great and there are always crumbs of food on his face. I went to middle school with him. He’s the kind of kid to bully others and then cry when he got in trouble for it. He’s not really a bully anymore, but he’s still a trouble maker.
“I’m going to the woods.”
“To find the goodies,” he asks liking his lips.
“Nope, just going in the woods,” I start walking, not wanting to be bothered.
It doesn’t stop Gabriel from following and breathing heavy behind me. He’s talking but I’m not paying it any attention. I’m only thinking about how he set of firecrackers in one of the outhouses the first week were here. Nobody can really prove it was him, but I just know it was him. People can change, but I don’t see a single way he’s changed. He doesn’t want to change because he doesn’t have to. His parents can always get him out of trouble. Write a check, pull a string and the issue goes away. In 6th grade he pushed a kid into the pool and he almost drowned. His parents bought new uniforms for the basketball team and we never heard about it again.
“The counselor told us a story about these woods,” Gabriel whispers before spitting onto the ground. It’s already creepy out here with just my flashlight and he’s wanting swap stories about ghost and hatchet wielding maniacs. Noises that we don’t hear in the day bouncing back and forth from the trees and making monsters that aren’t real. Sometimes it seems like eyes are watching us even when I know there’s nothing out here. It’s camp Grizzly, but there are no bears in this part of the state. No mountain lions or anything like that, but I’m a city kid. “Do you know about The Portly Woman?”
“It’s fat camp, we’re all portly.”
“No this is different,” Gabriel assures me. According to Gabriel back when the camp first open there was a counselor who was serious about making sure every camper lost weight. Supposedly she started abducting campers at night and using a machine to suck the fat right out of them. Sometimes she would go too far and suck out too much. They would just find a pile of skin and bones in the woods.
“Wow Gabriel, that’s such a scary story.”
“That’s not the scary part.”
“Oh, please tell me the scary part.”
The fat is the scary part. The woman had to put the fat somewhere. The story says she put all the fat together, and took care of it as her own child. Eventually the fat came to life. Either through her weird experiments or through her love. Eventually the kids stopped going missing, the same time the counselor did. When they finally found her, she was just skin and bones. Her own monster sucked all the fat out of her. Gabriel does his best to make the story sound scary as he tries to keep up with me. I haven’t been at fat camp for a full month and that is such a fat camp story.
The cave’s entrance is somewhat hard to see due to foliage, but you can’t miss the smell. I haven’t smelt anything like this before and it only gets stronger once we got inside. The closest thing I can think of is when the local taco spot got a shipment of rotting meat. It takes everything I have to keep the contents of my stomach where they belong. Gabriel isn’t as lucky. I almost reconsider going any deeper when I see the yellow slime spattering the walls and floor but the reward has to be close.
“Everyone thinks I’m a bully, but I’m not a bad guy,” Gabriel starts as if it were some afterschool special. The victim becomes friends with the bully and then they skateboard together. That’s not going to happen here.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be so mean to everyone.”
“I don’t do it on purpose.”
I don’t hear the rest of what he’s saying. I wouldn’t usually care what he was saying, but that goes double for now. My calf starts to burn as it feels like dozens of needles poking into my body, burning me with every prick of my flesh. It’s the slime, covering my leg and attacking me somehow. More of the slime moves toward me, covering my leg and joining the blob, leaving me stuck in place. I scream for help as Gabriel is looks on, mouth open and speechless. Gabriel starts to rock back and forth and I’m sure he’s going to run away and leave me to die. Instead, he digs deep into his pockets and grabs a handful of firecrackers from one pocket and a lighter from another.
I close my eyes as he tosses them towards me. One after another the explode with a loud pop. It works, it scares the blob deeper into the cave. I drag my leg after me as I make my way out of the cave as fast as can. I’ve never had a brownie worth risking my life over. Not even homemade brownies.
The two of us don’t speak on the way back to camp. We’re also not afraid of the sounds in the woods anymore. I have so many questions now, and I imagine Gabriel is no different. Why is this not worldwide news? Why did nobody report on the dead kids? What really happened to the crazy counselor? Why did nobody ever deal with the monster before? I guess we do know the answer to one thing; Gabriel set off the firecrackers in the outhouse.
