《A Short Trip》


 Booze and cruise

    This is a story of a person named Keys.


    Keys was a person who does whatever the opportunity he gets. He has a best friend or the only one he considers a friend. His name is Connor. One day Keys, Connor and other friends go on a short trip.


    Although the reasons for such a trip is unironically for booze and cruise. Keys, despite warnings from Connor that they''ll both regret the decision, went on with the group.


    Before they started the journey, their cars stalled a few times, Connor said that this might be a sign that we still have time to abandon ship but Keys said he''ll go down the ship and Connor begrudgingly follows his friend''s wishes.


    After a number of issues and setbacks later the group of friends has reached a spot to set up camp. They started with clearing the area for pitching tents, finding wood for campfire and with the enflame of the campfire, things started to go downhill.


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    Things were perfect before the first round.


    And the first found happened but things were going smoothly.


    Then the second round happened. Keys started to regret his decision to go on a trip with these guys and have a drink, so he sneakily moved away from the campfire and headed to a quiet corner to reflect, leaving Connor behind.


    The third round happened without Keys and they felt a brotherly feel towards each other.


    But those feelings started to change with each subsequent rounds and their associated actions.


    And those rounds came to an end with one of the friends breaking a bottle.


    Keys who was having his own existential crisis and recovery heard the broken bottle and rushed back to the campsite and saw the fire was still blazing but the site was now scattered by the lifeless bodies of his friends except for one Connor who stood facing Keys right in his eyes.

 Reasons for disappearance

    The campsite, a small clearing in the blackwater forest, a quiet and serene place, in that a dimly lit campfire shows the world the corpses of its campers scattered between the two friends.


    Equally terrified , confused and unwilling to break the unnatural silence. Keys and Connor stared through the fire expecting an answer from the other. The seconds that ticked away felt like years.


    As fire started to slowly fizzle out, Keys broke the silence by asking what happened here.


    To which Connor replied that after Keys sneaked away, they continued the rounds of drinks and after the fifth one. Jeremy, was asked to play music on his portable speaker and they all started to dance to the beats, at first it was normal... for a drunk group of barely legal adults. But after the sixth or seventh round, and a change of genre, they started to touch each other inappropriately and Connor was confused about who was more inappropriate than the other. The guys or the girls.


    Amidst this confusion, things went from sensual touching to sexual touching and Connor''s resistance started to give in so he also bailed in search of Keys but didn''t find him.


    But his search was cut short by the sounds of broken glass and he rushed back to the campsite to see their friends lifeless and there is no explanation for them to be like this. On seeing this, Connor lay frozen in his stand and only was partially thawed in the sight of Keys.


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    Connor after telling his side of things asked Keys where in the world he went among all of this.


    To which, Keys replied that he sneaked out from the campsite and had quiet time to reflect about the things that transpired so far.


    And while walking around, he came across an open air house by trees which was well lit and there were signs of people living there, which was unusual as when asked about the spot, the organizer, Tyler, has told the group that it''s a secluded spot with no signs of civilization yet here''s one.


    So Keys sat on the tree log by what appeared to be the porch and passed time till he heard the braking of the bottle and he instantly knew that they crossed the line, and started to rush back to the campsite, and saw what he saw.


    After sharing the reasons for the disappearance, silence swirled the campsite once again.


    But just to keep the lights on, Connor rekindled the campfire and Keys added more wood to burn.


    And among the cracking of twigs, they heard a distinct cracking sound, as if someone stepped on a branch from the east of the fire. So Keys and Connor planted themselves firmly and kept their guards up against whatever that was headed their way. As the sound go closer and closer, their hearts started to pace with each approaching step.


    Then along with the footsteps, came a voice, a voice that they recognized so they let their guards down and waited for the owner of the voice to emerge from the woods to the light of the fire.


    And she was, Claire, one of the friends who was supposed to come here the next day. But decided to come early to spook the group and got spooked herself as she fainted on seeing the corpses.

 The face of the Killer

    With the appearance of their friend Claire and her subsequent fainting did not help the current situation.


    So Connor and Keys placed Claire in one of the pitched tents and started to discuss what to do next.


    Keys said that maybe they could bail out with or without Claire and leave these guys like this, or maybe dispose of them some way or the other. But the practical Connor rejected Keys'' idea but he asked Keys to make sure the dead are actually dead because they could be passed out drunk and they are none the wiser.


    So for the next hour or so They check on their friends for signs of life and moving the ones having it aside, and in the end only two of them had some promise that they are or could be alive.


    The friends then put Melody and Perry with Claire and got out of the tent to see the clouds have covered over Blackwater forest and rains started to pour. Hence they decided to wait out the rain.


    Time passed, as the sky cleared, Keys and Connor got out of the tent to move the bodies of their friends but to their surprise...the bodies were neatly organised in a pile and on a closer inspection they saw a trail of footsteps that led towards the north of the campfire. The same direction Keys came from.


    They scratched their heads on what to do next which was cut short when a voice of one of their friends emerged from the tent. So Keys told Connor to check on them while he''ll follow the footsteps and Connor ran back to the tent as Keys left. When he opened the tent, he saw Melody barely waking up and upon seeing the blood on her hands she tried to faint but was caught by Connor who kept her awake.


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    Meanwhile Keys followed the trail and reached the open air house by trees now lightless and abandoned where he saw his friends''...heads hanging down the nearby clothesline...and the blood from their necks dropped drip by drip into a small puddle under them.


    The air around Keys felt cold as if someone turned the ac on. He tried to move away but couldn''t, shift his gaze away but couldn''t... He was stuck without his will to act. But as the silence around Keys except for the sounds dripping blood felt unnatural, a sound of a knife sharpening is heard through the house and he got his motor controls just enough to see a shadowy figure approach from the darkness of the house.


    Parallelly, Melody calmed down in the hands of Connor and asked what happened and he quickly summarised what happened from his perspective to melody and asked what happened from her perspective.


    She told him that, they were drunk, sexually aroused, and high from the shrooms that Sarah and Walt found. And she moved out the campsite to pee and rub one out while others kept dancing. When she was about orgasam, she heard screams.


    So she rushed back and hid behind a tree to see someone choking Tyler while the others lay on the floor lifeless...as life slowly fizzled out from Tyler, Melody took a step back in fear and accidentally stepped on a twig to bring the attention of Tyler''s killer to her and the killer who maintained side eye contact with her, took a glass bottle and threw on the tree to scare melody and it worked as she passed out instantly.


    Connor, who listened to this attentively asked Melody, who the killer is and she thought for a second to bring the face of the killer in her mind and here face went pale as she said... It was Keys.

 A Friendly interrogation

    After Melody''s statement told Connor that his best friend just took out the life of one of their mutual friends and by extension, all of the others, got the seeds of confusion planted in him as Connor knows that Keys may be capable of killing someone and had plans for Tyler. If given the opportunity, Connor thought for himself, he could''ve offed Tyler but others? What did others do or what will the others do as they were drunk and supposedly high, to be an interference for Keys.


    Therefore Connor, with these questions, decided to cross examine Melody, the sole witness. He started the questioning by reiterating her perspective then asking, was that person really Keys and what made you say he is the killer.


    To which Melody replied that she saw the killer with face of Keys and his cold demeanor and she had seen the bloodlust in this Keys'' eyes and also overheard a conversation once with Connor, where Keys said who he''ll kill who and how intricately, and considering he was drunk senseless, she continued that it could be possible that Keys forgot his morality and went with the killing. She also quoted that alcohol brings the truth out and implied that it was Keys'' true self.


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    This answer rubbed the interrogator the wrong way as his reply was that he also overheard a conversation in that Melody said who she''ll have sex with and how and considering that she was drunk as well as high and their friends were in stages of undress, Connor implied that she could have gone through them before Keys and took their lives through sheer exhaustion.


    Whatever kick Melody had at that point instantly crashed when she heard that and she promptly slapped Connor for suggesting it and Connor pointed out that she did the same, accusing someone without giving proper evidence rather than mere speculation and asks her to leave the tent.


    Although he believes otherwise, Connor now understood that his friends were murdered by someone with the face of Keys who may or may not be Keys himself which Melody saw and this killer did not kill melody which is a question itself but scared her despite the logic does not make sense on leaving witness. And somehow Perry was alive unless he was also not in the spot.Connor came to that realization and decided to wake the last Survivor up to get his perspective of things and to clean things up.


    Meanwhile Melody, got out of the tent and sat by the campfire, next to the corpse who used to be Sarah and started to caress her face while mourning. Remembering their time in the world and the memories they shared, when the alleged killer came rushing ironically to save his life and crashed into the mourning Melody, gave her a quick accidental kiss on the cheek while Claiming that, all of their lives are in grave danger and he may be responsible for it.

 Conversation between Killers

    As Keys remained frozen on his tracks facing the emergence of the shadowy figure from the house, he could see the blood dripping from the hands of this figure, he observed the bloody hand move up to its head as the figure combed his hair.


    Keys saw the face under the dimly lit moon, a face he has only seen in reflections and in pictures now existed right before his eyes.


    The figure which bares his face warmly welcomes its creator to his home and asks if he is happy with what it did with his friends.


    Keys was left speechless as he could not understand how he created this, why does this creature bear my face and the most important of them all, why does it kill his friends in the way he envisioned just mere moments ago...he sees their life force fade away as they see him as ... a monster.


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    Keys asked the creature what is it and why it chose to fulfil his wishes, to which it replied that Keys has freed it from its tomb and as an act of gratitude, he took care of Tyler, this prompted Keys to ask about others and the creature laughed the same way Keys does and replied that he did not consider them worth living.


    Great, Keys thought for himself, not only this creature is bearing his face but also mimicking his personality without morality.


    So Keys thanked the creature and was about to leave when the creature said that It knows what Keys has in store for Melody, Perry, Claire and Connor, and the restrictions the former has to do, but the creature assures that it''ll do it in his stead.


    And since the man and his face bearer share the trill of the hunt. It will give Keys a chance to save his remaining friends if he can.


    So Keys started running in the vague direction of the campfire and crashed in a mourning Melody while claiming that their lives are in grave danger... although he didn''t say that he was indirectly the danger.