This is my entry in to this weeks #constrainedwriting contest by @svashta (check out his post: @svashta/constrained-writing-contest-12-promotion-post and @svashta/constrained-writing-contest-12-winners-of-constrained-writing-contest-11
This week the judge is @simgirl, and she came up with the following constraint:
Use ”Little did he/she/I/we know” somewhere in your story
The story must be at least 250 words long
It was a mid-summer night. The warm breeze crackled with optimistic energy. There is magic in the air, Jess thought, sitting on the roof, her head resting on Dylan’s shoulder. Anything could happen on a night like this. But whatever was going to happen, she thought, taking the joint from Mega, and taking a toke, before passing it to it to Fender, it was going to be fucking great.
Little did she know that when anything did happen, later that night, it would be very far from fucking great.
It was Mega’s idea. The good ideas usually came from her. The bad ones too. Dylan rarely suggested anything - he was a man of few words, but when he did speak, everybody listened. Fender would always suggest the same three things: sit on the roof, smoke and chat shit. Jess, well Jess was happy doing any old shit as long as they were all together.
“Let's go down to the old mine,” Mega said, suddenly. Jess loved the way her eyebrows jiggled whenever she had one of her brainwaves. They seemed to move independently of each other, two thin caterpillars dancing a merry jig on her face.
“That sounds like the plot of a second rate horror film,” said Fender. “Four stoned sexy adolescents go down to the old mine. What could possibly go wrong?” he ignored Jess pointing and mouthing the word sexy?. Instead he put his hand to his ear and tilted his head to one side. “If you listen carefully, you can hear the creepy warning music. Fuck that shit. I vote no. Let's just stay up here, smokin’ and chatting shit.”
Jess laughed, and she could feel Dylan chuckling too.
Mega frowned. “Come on guys, it'll be fun. How long has it been? We used to hang together down there all the time.”
“Errrr,” Fender said, crushing the joint between his fingers and flicking the roach into the wind. “There was a fucking good reason we stopped hanging down there together. There used to be five of us, remember?”
Everyone remembered, then. Not that they had ever forgotten Kipper. Just that at that point they collectively remembered the funny little boy who had hung out with them one summer, five years before.
“Well,” Dylan said, getting everyone’s attention. “Perhaps we should go back there. Pay our respects.”
“No body was found,” Jess said. “He might not have died. He might have run away.”
“Come on,” Mega said. “Let’s go down to the old mine. Light a candle, smoke a spliff. For Kipper.”
Dylan nodded and stood up.
“Let’s do it,” he said.
Dylan and Mega led the way. Jess hung back with Fender. She didn’t want to go to the old mine. She had no wish to remember Kipper.
Or what happened to him.
The barbed wire fence that barred the route into the forest that hid the old mine was smaller than she remembered it. Mega used a branch as a wedge, so there was a gap large enough for a person to slip through, unhurt. If you were careful.
“Durr durr,” sung Fender, imitating the music from a lame horror film. “Durr da durrr! Listen to the music kids! It’s not too late! Turn back!”
“Fuck off, Fender,” said Mega, as she slipped through the fence.
Dylan followed, and after exchanging a look and a shrug with Fender, Jess followed.
It took fifteen minutes of trudging through the undergrowth, nettles and brambles reaching for any exposed flesh, until, at last, they saw the grey stone entrance to the old mine.
Locals had been telling horror stories about the place for years. The mine had had three large disasters in the fifty four years it had been open. The last one, killing over twenty five miners, had been it’s death knell. That and the fact that it had become less financially rewarding to its owners.
“Come on,” said Mega, climbing over the rocks that were supposed to deter casual walkers from exploring.
Using their phones as torches they walked into the darkness. Mega stopped from time to time to illuminate where they had scratched their marks into the walls. As they went further into the mine, Jess began to feel more and more uneasy.
“Here it is,” Mega said, shining her phone on the wall in front of her. There carved into the rock was one word. Kipper. “The last thing he did,” she said.
“As far as we know,” Jess said, her voice shaking more than she’d like it to. “No body ever discovered, remember.”
“Man,” said Fender, running his finger over the letter K. “Imagine walking these tunnels for all eternity.”
“Fuck off, Fender,” said Mega. “Come on, let’s go.”
Jess stayed for a few seconds, looking at the name. He had been an annoying little shit. But… she shook herself. What happened, happened. No point dwelling.
She realised she was alone. She looked around for the light from the others phones.
“Guys?” she called.
Nothing.
“Not funny, guys,” she said. Not a problem. Just turn back. Head back the way we came. No reason to get in a panic.
Behind her, Jess thought she heard a footfall. She shone her torch at the emptiness.
Nothing.
Time to get the fuck out of here. She turned, and came face to face with him.
“Hello Jess,” said Kipper, blood still running from that wound in his head. He held up a rock, a smile on his face. “Remember this?”
...
I took the photo this morning, thinking it might make a good picture for a cave or a mine or somesuch. And lo, 'twas so...