I didn’t trust these two asshats in a well-lit classroom, so what the everloving fuck was I doing following them into the woods at night? I thought about refusing to go with them but at this point, what was I gonna do? Ride my bike back alone?

I only had the vaguest idea of where the bordering neighborhood was located and going that way would mean having to ride my bike across the expressway rather than over it like we had done on the way here. Plus, it would take twice as long. I would probably end up spending the rest of my night just getting home.

Then I thought about those derelict train tracks encased in trees on either side and what it would be like to take those back alone with nothing but my bike’s headlight to illuminate the way…

Yeah fuck that, so I decided to stay and see this thing through. Hopefully, I would still get a chance to turn the prank around on them. That had been the plan anyway but now that we were actually here, I was starting to have my doubts.

“Here we go,” Dwayne said as he slowed to a stop beside a thick patch of shrubbery and Richie and I followed suit. Dwayne’s gaze was fixed on the bushes to our left. He lowered his bike to the ground and then suddenly held up a hand as he whispered, “Wait…”

Dwayne’s eyes narrowed as he quietly muttered, “Holy shit, someone’s here.”

I squinted through the treeline and saw that, in fact, holy shit someone WAS here. Behind the shrubbery was a small moonlit clearing and in that clearing was a man. He was kind of big. Not fat per say, yet undeniably large. The man was on the ground, propping himself up by his arms with his hands flat like he was doing push-ups.

Then I realized there was something beneath the man. I could just barely see her highheeled boots sticking out from under his much larger frame and I instantly thought of the Wicked Witch’s sister pinned under Dorothy’s farmhouse. Because even at twelve, I related everything to movies.

Dwayne gasped and quietly announced, “He’s FUCKING her… Sick bastard.”