When We Were 8

by catt dahman

  “I guess so.”

  Cassie glared at Angel who was curled up and wailing and said, “You’re lucky I saved your sorry ass.”

  “You waited too long,” Angel said, wiping her nose.

  “As pissed off as I am, you’re lucky I pulled her off you at all,” said Cassie.

  Nelwynn and Samantha clutched one another and cried. Whitney vomited again, and Tiffany joined her, heaving until she was empty.

  “What are we going to do, Cassie?” Tiffany asked in a tiny voice. “I wish I could die right now. I cheated on Joey, and look at this mess. How could I do this? How could you do it, Angel?”

  “I wish I could die,” Samantha said as she crammed a finger down her throat so that she threw up the drugged alcohol.

  “We’ll talk about that part later. You were drugged. Damn, Angel.” As for the second part, Cassie rubbed her eyes and wondered why they always asked her. “Meg?”

  “It’s bad. We’ll fry for this. We did it, and people will search and find the rest; we’re done.”

  “Fry? You mean….” Samantha paused in her mind, clearing vomiting.

  “Yeah. Here it was Angel and Cassie mainly, but we’re all part. As for the rest, we’ll fry,” Meg repeated herself.

  “Then, we’ll clean it up, same as so many other times, won’t we? Okay, first thing, we go back, eat, and drink coffee. We get all of you sobered up. Angel may need a few bandages, too,” said Cassie, smirking. “Then, we’ll come back and clean everything up and burn what we can, and I think we need the cellar for this.”

  “Someone’ll look for them,” Jill said. “We can’t clean it up. Look at this mess.” She felt her legs go wobbly. Looking around, all she saw were blood, char, and dead men.

  Cassie concentrated and said, “True. So maybe we can save a few things and make this look like the Watkins perverts are to blame. Plant some evidence? We can manage that, I bet, if we plan it out. Kill two birds so to speak,” Cassie said as she looked around. “Anyone have a better plan?”

  Meg nodded slowly. “It might be possible. Watkins, huh?”

  “We know they’re scum. Why not? It’s not like we can get into much more trouble for trying that as we would confessing, right?” Cassie asked. “We can make it look as if they killed them, and the bodies won’t be found.”

  “Maybe. We can figure it out, I think. It’s pretty smart, Cassie,” Meg said. “Most won’t hesitate to blame the Watkins trash. We can go to them, plant evidence, and blame them. Let the evidence convict them.”

  “We’ll do it. I don’t know how, but we can do it,” Jill said. “Why would this trip be any different than always? Fate must hate us.”

  “There’s no time to cry over it. We have work to do,” Whitney said. “I don’t think we can let the Watkins trash live. I’m just saying, and you’re thinking the same thing.” She waited until Angel stood and then led the way back along the trail. They went to the cabin, made coffee, and ate what was already cooked.

  Angel didn’t speak, and her face was swollen and already turning colors. She had two black eyes and a cracked nose, but no one cared. Sitting with a bag of frozen peas against her face, she tried to understand why everyone hated her.

  Tiffany cried with Jill and Samantha. “I feel horrible. We have bodies to do shit with and three, innocent dead men, but I can’t stop feeling bad about cheating.”

  Samantha nodded. “Me, too. It was the drugs, right?”

  “Would you’ve done that sober? Or just after drinking?” Jill asked.

  “Never.”

  “Then you know the answer.”

  Angel adjusted the bag of peas and glared. “Whatever you have to tell yourself. Cassie was sober and look what she did.”

  “That was an accident,” Jill snarled.

  “Isn’t it always?” asked Whitney, shrugging, “always excuses and never responsibility.”

  “For you, too?” Jill asked.

  Whitney swallowed hard. “No, I never felt much guilt, really. We always did what we had to do. We took up for each other and ourselves. We did what was right for us. We have to do it again. We are worth more than the Watkins brothers.”

  “That’s just another excuse,” Cassie said. “Are we worth more than those three innocent hikers?”

  “Who knows? I can’t deal with what might be. We have to deal with saving our ass. All of you are feeling regret and guilt, and I am not feeling those things,” Whitney argued. “I’m in this because it happened and I don’t wanna go to prison. I don’t want any of us to get into trouble.”

  “Me, either,” Samantha said, “but it wasn’t just Cassie or just Angel. It’s always all of us. We have crappy luck and never think things out. Why did this have to happen? Are we cursed?”

  Jill tossed a can into the trash. “Nope. We have just been doing it so long that we can’t break the cycle now. Mike must be laughing as he looks up.”

  “Down from Heaven, you mean?” Samantha asked.

  “Nope. Up. Trust me, he didn’t go anywhere nice,” said Jill as she smiled grimly. “I have full faith that he’s in hell where he belongs.”

  Chapter 5

  When they returned to the campfire, the scene was more horrific to those recently sober. Cassie and Jill were as sick as the rest but barked orders. If any of the men were still dressed, they were stripped, and their clothing was burned. It took four women to drag each man back to the cabin, some of them taking two turns. Once in the cellar, the bodies remained atop the soil beside skeletal remains until other chores were completed.

  Tiffany and Samantha took the men’s backpacks from the campfire to the cabin while Jill scrubbed the cabin floors clean, making sure that no traces of blood remained.

  Whitney, Angel, and Meg cleaned up around the campfire, scraping away bloody soil; Meg found the severed penis and threw it into the fire to burn away and then wiped her hands on her shorts as she shook.

  By sun-up, the fire had burned away the clothing, most of the smaller logs, one severed penis, and some of Angel’s pill cache. Some of the pills were antidepressants and downers to sleep, and others were amphetamines to keep from eating. There also were three kinds of pain pills, and a new drug that was not yet on the market, but the developers claimed the drug caused both men and women to have a greatly increased libido.

  Angel sullenly admitted she had dumped all of the pills from the last bottle into the drinks so that they were unable to control their desires.

  Had Cassie and Jill not been gone, they, too, would have been involved in the orgy, and an orgy it was because they found out from the ashamed women that there had been sharing of partners. Not one of the women had missed sampling at least two of the three men and a few women or men had been with one another.

  Jill and Cassie saw the tame part when they arrived at the campfire. Jill took a deep breath and said, “I’m glad I wasn’t here.”

  Samantha cried. “I wish I hadn’t been here. I remember most, but it feels like a dream. A nightmare."

  “How did it begin? After the drugs?” Jill asked.

  “Angel was with Nick first. She did him in front of us like a show,” Tiffany told Jill. “He was the one Cassie, you know. And we danced and touched, and then some paired off….””

  Cassie pocketed a few of the pain pills in case some of the women were injured and a few other drugs for their plan. She burned the rest and refused to give Angel any pain relief other than aspirin.

  “I need pills.”

  Cassie faced Angel and said,” Come take them from me. Don’t wanna try?”

  Meg paced the cabin and said, “My dad will be investigating this one. I remember Angel drugging us, and it was funny. I knew she did it. I thought we were doing what we wanted to, and then Jill and Cassie were there, and everything went bad.”

  Cassie frowned. “It was already bad if you were drugged and not making choices.”

  “I made choices. I did what I wanted.”

  “You’re engaged,” said Jill as
she looked at Meg and asked, “and doesn’t that matter?”

  Meg pushed her red hair from her forehead and said, “I wanted to fool around, and I did.

  “Cutting off the man’s dick is a little over-reactive.”

  “I didn’t mean to! It was a normal response to swipe at him when I thought he was coming at me. How do you think we felt when we saw all that? I didn’t understand. I saw Angel, yeah, but it was also possible that Tiffany was being raped. We didn’t understand anything when we saw that…that….”

  “I knew it was bad the second I saw it,” Jill said. “Tiffany was drugged up and couldn’t focus. Whitney was throwing up. Samantha’s eyes were glazed. I thought the men were the Watkins, and maybe they had drugged you. I was scared out of my mind,” Jill began screaming her last few words.

  Cassie touched her arm, trying to calm her. “Shhh.”

  “No, Meg is acting like everyone had choices. Tiffany never would do any of that! Angel took away her choice.”

  Cassie smirked as she said, “And Meg, you’ve always been a slut. I’m not criticizing you. It’s just a fact.”

  Meg’s eyes blazed. “That bastard molested me and Whitney. Do you know what that did to my self-esteem? I didn’t ask for a love-hate relationship with men, did I? If you had settled it all with us that day when we had Ed….”

  “That’s the crux isn’t it? Payback for me refusing to murder that man?” asked Jill as she blew out a puff of air and shook her head with disbelief.

  “It isn’t all about you, Jill,” Meg said.

  Cassie and Jill walked around the cabin, refusing to argue anymore. In the bright morning, they could find nothing out of place; everything looked pristine, and from midmorning until mid-afternoon, it rained a squall, hard winds and buckets of rain. Whitney pointed out again how often rain saved their being discovered.

  Even though they were tired, they dug deep holes into the cellar floor, grimly finding more skeletal remains, but they still managed to bury all three young men. It took a huge amount of energy and time to cover all three bodies around the other bones and to make sure the cellar was covered in a layer of soil that would protect their secrets. Several times, some felt it was an impossible task, but no one stopped working.

  They drew straws for watch duty and then rearranged the draw because Jill and Angel couldn’t do duty together, just having had a fight and because Jill felt she and Meg might fight as well.

  Only Nelwynn’s old feelings helped as she agreed to take watch duty with Angel. Each duty was for three hours which gave the other women nine solid hours to sleep and recover.

  Cassie and Jill hedged the drawing a little so that they ended up together on a watch; they wanted to talk and make plans. In many ways, it was as if eight years hadn’t passed. Jill enjoyed being with Cassie again and regretted the years she had lost because both had been unable to talk through concerns.

  “We killed innocents. I feel bad. How do we come back from that?” asked Jill.

  “Jill, it was an accident, a real, innocent accident except for Angel. Blame her alone. We can’t take it back. We have to move on. It’s the one thing I suppose we’ll never be okay about.

  You and Tiff are close, so you have to be there for her and keep her from confessing to her husband. Sammie will lean on you as well, and I’ll help. I never should have let you three walk away and split our friendship after the prom. I‘ve missed my best friend.” Jill and Cassie hugged and wept a while. Both felt better afterward and caught up on their lives.

  “Meg’s pretty crazy right now. We need Whitney to watch over her,” said Cassie.

  “Whitney is kind of messed up, too. We need to watch over one another. I miss the closeness we had. I miss being close to Meg, Whitney, and Angel,” Jill said.

  Cassie understood. “Me, too. We changed, though. We grew up. We have to find our way back, Jill. We have to find a way out of this.”

  Chapter 6

  The women forced down hamburgers cooked on the grill, and Cassie showed them how they made the best burgers at the diner where she worked. The patties were cooked medium-done with onions, covered with cheese and a little jalapeno pepper paste and seasonings, and then put on toasted buns with a choice of mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup or a combination, and finally, stuffed full of Coral’s spicy dill pickles. Cassie had brought a few jars, and they were a favorite already.

  “We keep jars at the station, and my Dad hordes them,” Meg said. Whitney admitted she bought jars often from the diner.

  Samantha looked sheepish. “I avoided the diner because I was afraid you hated me,” she told Cassie. “I’ll come by a lot now for the pickles alone.”

  “Amazing what brings people together,” Nelwynn said as she took another pickle from the jar.

  They had sworn they’d never eat again, but everyone but Angel wolfed down two burgers and swore they were the best ever. Cassie grinned and gave her boss full credit because he bought the produce fresh, made his own sauces, and pickled the delightful, spicy green pickles that they devoured.

  Angel went back to bed after they ate; Nelwynn and Tiffany went back to pour over papers, looking for anything helpful. Samantha lounged on the sofa and tried to read a book, Whitney checked and rechecked the cellar and scrubbed the floors again, and Meg stared off into the night, her gaze not really looking past the plate glass of the window. She stayed nervous.

  Cassie walked into the other room but then halted before she went back to where Jill sat at the kitchen table. “Jill, don’t react to my voice. Ignore me. Don’t move, and don’t turn your head,” Cassie whispered.

  Jill froze and did as asked. She kept bouncing a bare leg and didn’t turn. She made an effort to stay as she was.

  Cassie whispered a few times to warn Jill to be still but said nothing else. Samantha, out of sight of the kitchen, saw and heard Cassie and sat up, curious about what was happening. After less than five minutes, Cassie sighed and made a gagging sound but warned Jill to stay still.

  Five minutes later, Cassie rounded the corner and made a motion, and Samantha ran over to the table. “What was that?”

  “Something gross. One of the Watkins boys. I remember his mug shot,” Cassie said.

  “What was going on?” Jill looked to the side and behind her and saw the tall window was smeared in several places, one worse than the other.

  Cassie pointed, “Up there at his face level, he was pretending to kiss and lick you. That’s his saliva and the grease off of his face.”

  “That’s nasty!” Samantha said. “There’s a lower smear of something….”

  Jill gagged, and Samantha’s face turned red. “Oh, my God. He did that, too?”

  Jill felt ill. “Oh, my God. I had no idea.”

  “I wanted to watch to see what he did. I wish I could bleach away that memory,” Cassie said.

  Samantha shivered. “And Jill would have never known. How gross is that?” she asked.

  “Watch, my ass. I’ll clean it off,” Cassie said. She took some spray cleaner, a roll of paper towels, and a plastic garbage bag with her. She quickly worked hard and tossed the towels away. “For the burn barrel. That’s sick.”

  “It’s bold,” Jill added.

  “We thought those first boys might be the Watkins brother, but then we knew they weren’t because it was obvious they were just campers. We got crazy from whatever Angel gave us,” Samantha said. “I’ll never forgive her. I don’t know when I’ll be able to forgive myself.”

  “Be glad we came back. Be glad we weren’t drunk. No. If we had been, I’d have screwed a stranger and cheated on Charlie, and you’d have been a part, Cassie, but the boys wouldn’t be dead. We just screw up everything we do, ” said Jill as she wrapped her arms around her torso, shaking.

  Cassie told her, “You couldn’t stand it. You’d crack. There wasn’t anything else; it was just a mess and all Angel’s doing. You gave her an ass whoopin’, tho’.”

  Jill smiled and said, “I guess so. I’m not sorry
at all. Two days down and look at us. Three hikers are gone, and we have pervs doing dirty things.”

  “Some things never change here,” Samantha said.

  Chapter 7

  “I hate this,” Tiffany complained again.

  “I know, but they liked your sweater. The one that did his thing was watching Jill. Angel is a plan B. You can do this. Don’t get scared because we’ll be close by. And, Angel, trust me; if you mess this up, I’ll be beating your ass,” Cassie warned.

  Jill and Tiffany dressed alike with their shirts mostly unbuttoned over the swimsuits and short shorts. Angel wore a short denim skirt and a tube top that made her breasts look enormous, and her bruises showed blue, purple, and green all over her face and chest.

  “You ready?” Cassie asked.

  Jill nodded, feeling her knife through the tiny pocket of her shorts. They were cutoffs slit to her hips on the sides and cut so short that the pockets brushed her legs. She was nervous but ready to get the plan going.

  Jill, Angel, and Tiffany meandered along the trails, always headed toward where the Watkins brothers lived. The closer they got, the more they laughed and giggled, announcing themselves. The cabin the men lived in was little more than a shack with a lot of patches and windows covered by cloth instead of filled with glass. The yard was filled with running chickens, a few cats, two lazy dogs, plenty of car parts, and old, rusted junk.

  Jill led the way through the chaotic yard.

  “Well, what have we got here?” Jered Watkins stepped out onto the dirty, sagging grey porch and smiled, showing his slightly mossy teeth. He wore faded, almost-bleached white jeans that were thin and rested low on his hips; he was bare chested and barefoot.

  “Figured we might as well meet since you keep coming to see us,” said Jill, grinning.

  “I come to see you? For sure? How’d ya know that?” Jered asked.

  “I figured it out. You left hints. No one else around, is there?”

  “Why’d you come alone?”