Grimm Woods

by D. Melhoff

  “What if I like seeing your lil’ white ass jiggle around?”

  “Well.” She held the l sound, turning over and making stoned eye contact. “You know what they say.”

  “S’at?”

  “Once you go white, the rest ain’t right.”

  Dominique gave a low, doped-up laugh. Goddamn, Dom, he thought. Good work. Erin might’ve been his favorite type of lay, especially when he was high: slow and sultry, funny and adventurous, experienced and dirty.

  In the background, the iPod changed from “I Am the Bulldog” to Insane Clown Posse’s “House of Mirrors.”

  “Nice sex track,” Erin commented.

  “Babe, this is my soul track.” Dominique closed his eyes and tapped the beat on his chest. So far, the shuffle gods had blessed them with MC Breed, ICP, D12, Slim Shady, and the Kid. Detroit boys—nineties Detroit boys—back when the only way to earn your stripes was down on W 7 Mile at the Hip Hop Shop or The Shelter in St. Andrew’s basement. None of this YouTube, iTunes, SoundCloud bullshit, he thought. In the nineties, you had to want it. You had to battle for it. Now, every kid with a MacBook Pro and a secondhand Sennheiser was spitting out half-baked EPs faster than you could say “mom’s spaghetti.”

  “You want another bowl?” Erin asked.

  “Nothing would make me happier.”

  Dominique peeked his eyes open and watched Erin approach his suitcase to rummage around for more weed.

  “Wait a sec,” he said, sitting up.

  “Huh?”

  “I might have something that could make us happier.”

  “Go on.”

  “Depends how down you are.”

  Erin cocked an eyebrow, intrigued. Dominique nabbed his briefs and tugged them on, caging his rapidly deflating half-mast before crossing the room with a new spring in his step. Suddenly, something was a lot more tantalizing than sex.

  He squatted beside her and pulled the suitcase closer. Yeah, let’s see how fun you really are.

  Clothes started sailing by—an assortment of T-shirts, jackets, and jerseys with sports logos ironed across the backs. Erin grabbed a Detroit Pistons hat that shot through the air and slipped it on sideways. “Basketball guy, right? Weren’t you PG for the Hawks in high school?”

  “Center.” Dominique didn’t take his eyes off the suitcase. “Came close to a scholarship too, but the grades weren’t there. Hard to rebound after a few tough semesters. ’Specially sophomore year.”

  “Fuck high school.”

  “Not a grades girl, either?”

  “Yeah right. I was too busy hanging out in garages listening to shitty metal bands with names like ViperSkin and Basket of Souls practice shitty Metallica covers.”

  “Uh-huh. So what, you some kind of toke?”

  “Huh?”

  “Like, uh, like the stoner version of a puck. The girl everybody passes around?” He braced himself for a slap, but Erin only shrugged.

  “Better’n what most of those prep bitches called me.” She pulled the Pistons hat off. “And speaking of passing something around, I believe I requested more Mary Jane…”

  “Hold on, hold on.” Dominique turned and flashed his pearly whites. “So Mary Jane’s a nice girl and all, but”—his hand came up and revealed a packet of tan-colored powder—“you ever been on a date with Lady H?”

  Erin leaned against the bunk bed and laughed. “You always bring dope to kids’ camp?”

  “It’s not Fun Dip.”

  They surveyed each other, and Dominique attempted to gauge whether he’d made the right call. She was rolling with metal bands in high school—of course she’s done shit.

  “Hmm,” Erin hummed, leaning forward. “What else have you got in your tickle trunk?” She attempted to peek over his shoulder, but he straightened up and blocked her view.

  “You’re not down with this?” he asked, flicking the packet.

  “I’m just curious. There’s not much I haven’t tried.”

  Erin bit Dominique’s lower lip and snapped it against his gums. Dominique closed his eyes and contemplated tearing off his briefs again, thinking, Damn, Dom, this girl’s goooood. What if we tried the top bunk next? Or standing. Hell yeah, standing. As he pictured their naked bodies slamming against the nearest wall, he felt Erin lean over his shoulder and heard her let out a quiet gasp.

  “Holy shit.”

  Dominique smiled and opened his eyes, turning to face the luggage.

  All of the socks and underwear in the suitcase had been pushed aside to reveal a veritable pharmacy at the bottom of the bag. Another pouch of weed cushioned the far edge of the case, and beside it sat a box of cigarette filters, a dozen packets of white powder, a collection of pill bottles, two packs of cotton balls, and a bundle of U-100 syringes tucked under a stack of jeans.

  “I’m kind of the camp pharmacist,” Dominique said.

  “No shit. How much is it?”

  “About a thousand bucks’ worth. Gotta stock enough for the whole summer.”

  “This’ll do,” Erin mumbled, scanning the inventory. “You never struck me as the junkie type. No offense if that’s your career choice or anything.”

  “Ha. You think I’d be working some kiddy camp if I rolled like this every day? I stopped dealing a looong time ago. Learned that lesson the hard way.”

  “Sophomore year?”

  “Look atchu.” He grinned. “Paying attention. So how about it?”

  Erin ran a finger over the narcotics, perusing them like a tourist in the shoe department of Macy’s at Herald Square for the first time. “Do you have Oxy? I’d do that.”

  “Why, because it comes from a clinic? Fuck that. Doctors who hand out scrips are just drug dealers with degrees. I quit Oxy a year ago and switched to H off the street. Better high. And cheaper.”

  “Oh, I’ve done H before,” she clarified. “Just not a stranger’s H. I’ve seen guys—big guys—fall flat on their faces from random smack.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t random. My boys back home hook me up with their prime supply. Trust me.”

  Erin studied him for another long moment. After a beat: “Fuck it.” She leaned over and slipped him her tongue. “Let’s keep things rolling.”

  Dominique pulled back, smiling. He rounded up the gear from the suitcase while Erin cycled through the iPod’s playlist, changing songs from ICP’s “House of Mirrors” to Eminem’s “The Way I Am.”

  “Smoke or slam?” she asked.

  “Slam. This shit’s too good to go chasing dragons.”

  Erin nibbled on Dominique’s ear while he took a cotton ball and ripped it in half. Next, he picked up a tablespoon with rainbow circles scorched on the bottom and tapped out the powder while Erin kept herself busy with his body. Her hand slipped into his underwear, and as he reached for a lighter, he felt himself growing in her fist.

  “You know,” she whispered, “maybe we should squeeze in another quickie. Before you go all dope dick on me.”

  “Better idea,” Dominique said. “Ever speedballed?”

  “Huh?”

  “Fun way we can stay in the game long enough for another round. You add a pinch of coke. Gives it a boost before the H hits.”

  “That sounds like…”

  “What?”

  “Like a helluva fucking junkie thing to say.”

  “Fuck what I say. The great author William Burroughs said if God made anything better than a speedball, he kept it for himself. Are you calling William Burroughs a junkie?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I bet he’s a great lay.”

  “He died when he was, like, eighty.”

  “Can’t eighty-year-old crackheads have fun?”

  “Can’t nineteen-year-old girls have fun?” Dominique held up the spoon.

  Erin looked him in the eye, then down at his lips, then over at the spoon—darting between all three. Finally, her hand reached for the iPod dock and spun the volume dial louder.

  That was the green light Dominique needed. He mixed
the heroin with a drop of water and added the coke, crushing it with the needle’s plunger. As Erin killed the lamp, he sparked the lighter under the rig and razed the impurities. Finally, a forbidden smile crept across his face as he dunked the cotton and slipped the syringe into the center.

  Erin snagged her jeans off the floor, pulling the belt out of the loops, and tied a tourniquet around her arm.

  “You ready for the ride of your life?”

  She nodded. Dominique put the needle against one of her veins, puncturing her skin, and released the potent cocktail. The belt fell away, and Erin sat up straighter.

  Within seconds, the pot haze disappeared from her eyes.

  Dominique got another needle and repeated the process on himself. His pupils ballooned from the size of dimes to silver dollars to dinner plates as a wave of pleasure washed over his torso. He felt unstoppable. Pins and needles rocketed through his body from head to toe, and the next thing he knew, Erin was all over him. They slammed together like feral dogs, then switched to standing, then moved to the floor, then the desk, then the bed again, then back to the floor in frenetic sexual mania.

  Gradually, the cocaine tapered off, but it wasn’t followed by the usual crash, because Lady H was there to catch them.

  Dominique saw Erin loll against the bunk, and then he forgot about her. All he needed now was his own cocoon—the blissful opiate blanket that came along and wrapped him in a warm, dreamlike trance.

  He blinked slower…slower…

  Just when Dominique’s eyes were a millimeter away from shutting, he heard a knock on the hut’s door.

  Go back to Denisha’s, Lance. You said we could swap.

  The knock came again.

  But Dominique didn’t care anymore. His vision blurred, and he felt as though he was sinking through pleasant quicksand, away from any kind of disturbance or problem he might have had in the real world. Problem? He smiled. He didn’t understand that concept anymore, like everything that bothered him had been stuffed into an interplanetary potato gun and shot off to Neptune. Neptune, Jupiter, Mars, Pluto—Pluto’s not a planet anymore. Aw well, that’s too bad, give it slack, boys, everything’s all right, don’t worry Pluto, just let it go, let it wash away…wash away…wash away…

  There was no third knock. Instead, the doorknob started turning.

  Look, someone’s joining us.

  Come in, he might have muttered, but it was probably just a thought. The door wafted open, and he saw a person standing in the frame. The figure stepped inside and closed the door.

  “Hey,” Dominique mumbled. “Hey, man. Sorry, we’re sleeping in here—”

  A hand grabbed him by the neck.

  Dominique sputtered out a muted choking sound, and the figure rammed him against the floorboards facedown, sending a burst of stars exploding across his vision. His limbs barely fidgeted as his brain attempted to trigger his sympathetic nervous system and failed.

  Dominique’s head flopped—dazed and throbbing—to his shoulder, and the last thing he saw was the back of the intruder crouched over Erin, beating her motionless. Just as Dominique was about to cry out, another chemical tsunami flooded over him, one that was too formidable, and he slumped, unconscious, onto his side. Ten seconds later, Erin lay unconscious beside him.

  The figure rose off the floor.

  Below, the naked nineteen-year-olds’ bodies were lit by a shaft of moonlight streaming through the hut’s window curtains. Dominique’s suitcase had tumbled open in the scuffle, and his illicit drug paraphernalia littered the room like poisonous candy wrappers.

  The figure plucked one of the needles off the floor and held it up, watching the plastic shine dully in the moonlight. The other hand came down, retrieving the discarded spoon, and selected a packet of heroin.

  Powder tumbled. Water trickled. Cotton absorbed.

  And the needle drew.

  6

  Honk! Hooooooonk!

  The drawbridge groaned and shuddered, its chains rattling off its winch like metallic snakes as the planks peeled away from the gatehouse and struck gravel—cruuuunch. With a short, pneumatic tss, the Greyhound pulled through the entryway and parked on the edge of the clearing, its bug-splattered grille glinting in the sunlight.

  Scott’s eyes drifted shut and snapped open again. Stay awake, loser.

  He wasn’t the only one having issues keeping his eyes open. Looking around, it seemed as though the other counselors showed similar signs of hangovers: pale faces, sunglasses concealing bloodshot eyes, water bottles dangling listlessly from hooked fingers. Most of the girls had their hair tied into a ponytail, but the guys were defenseless against their disheveled mops. (A majority of them had been to the bathroom that morning, but not to shower—only to vacate their stomachs via one hole or another.) And still, to Scott’s amazement, they had all made it in time for the bus’s arrival.

  Everyone except Dominique and Erin, he noted. Shit, are they gonna get it.

  Charlotte had yet to mention anything about the missing couple. In fact, ever since she had sped in five minutes ago—her head buried in her clipboard, a two-way radio bleeping with updates from Ella in the kitchen—she was too busy to register the absent duo. Her eyes rarely left her papers as she rifled off the latest updates (“Lasagna for lunch,” “Room lists available at the fort,” “First hike starts at 3:00 p.m. sharp.”), and only when she motioned the counselors closer and began counting heads did a shadow of concern steal across her brow.

  Beeeeep!

  The bus’s doors opened in the background, and a tidal wave of children flooded the welcome area. Charlotte turned, and the shadow vanished from her face, replaced with an ear-to-ear grin.

  Everyone but Scott lit up at the sight of the kids. As his coworkers waved the children over, he glanced down the greeting line at Brynn. They hadn’t talked since the previous night, but all morning he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Picturing her shirtless, sensing the phantom grind of her hips against his lap in the rowboat. It didn’t take much to imagine her lips teasing the side of his neck, her tongue slipping in and out of his earlobe, in and out, in and out…

  Brynn perked her head in Scott’s direction. He turned away—Quick, look busy—and waved at one of the approaching kids.

  “Hi!” The kid waved back. As he darted forward, the boy’s Dumbo-sized ears bobbed up and down with practically enough force for liftoff. “My name’s Marshall. M. A. R. S. H. A. L. L. Did you know this is my first time at camp? I’m excited because my mom told me there’s gonna be swimming and canoeing and maybe even paddleboating. Is she right? ’Cause I’m a super good swimmer and—”

  “Easy,” Scott said, noticing that Brynn wasn’t looking at them anymore. He evaluated Marshall head to toe. “You, uh, you usually this hyper?”

  “This isn’t hyper. But you know what makes me hyper? Skittles. I’m not supposed to have them, but sometimes…” The boy scanned the crowd and peeled open his windbreaker, revealing a fun-size bag of Sour Skittles hiding inside. He put a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

  Scott remembered smuggling his Marlboros into camp the day before and winked, whispering, “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Good morning!” Charlotte’s voice cut through the buzz. “And welcome to Camp Crownheart, ye brave newcomers. Show of hands, who’s ready for a week of adventure?”

  The kids cheered and pumped their tiny arms enthusiastically.

  Scott glanced at Marshall again. The eight-year-old—having already torn into his bag of candy—was hopping around and hollering some sort of sound that wasn’t even in the neighborhood of a real word. “Mweeebahooo!”

  Good Lord.

  “All right,” Charlotte said, “that’s what I like to hear. Squires, take us to our opening ceremonies.”

  “Opening ceremonies?” Scott whispered to Chase.

  “Shh,” Chase grumbled, massaging his temples. “You’ll see.”

  Scott fell in line with the other counselors and helped shepherd the kid
s away from the bus, first over the grass, and then to the path that led to the fort at the top of the hill.

  ____

  The fort’s doors stood wide open: a pair of oak slabs held together by iron hasps and pintles as big as PVC pipes. Scott stepped through the archway and took a deep breath. Smells more like wood and lacquer than stone and earth. Inside, every detail tricked the eye into thinking it was an authentic castle: iron torches mounted on the walls, maroon rugs carpeting the vestibule, suits of armor guarding the entrance. But despite the regalia, something was viscerally off. The cobwebs were too cottony. Cracks in the walls exposed patches of white Styrofoam, and the holes in the baseboards were perfectly rounded parabolas, as though some hyper-intelligent rodent had used a protractor and a jigsaw to make the cuts.

  Classic Crownheart quality, Scott thought.

  The campers, on the other hand, were not so difficult to please. Their voices dimmed to excited whispers as all fifty-five of them followed Charlotte down a winding hall. There were no windows along this stretch—only torches.

  The walls curved right then left then right again, never branching off, and three turns later, the group arrived at another set of doors. Without pausing, Charlotte gripped the double handles and pushed.

  Light poured into the hallway. Inside, stained-glass windows illuminated a lofty hall where six rows of chairs, ten in each row, faced an elevated stage. The ballroom was large enough that it could have doubled as a small gymnasium; however, Scott assumed the stained-glass windows (each featuring a fairy-tale character—Big surprise) precluded the possibility of any sports taking place within its hallowed walls.

  A cluster of kids rushed forward and claimed the chairs at the front; others skulked to the back and sat as far away from the stage as possible.

  Scott took a seat in the last row. A second later, someone slapped him across the back of his head. “Pst.” He turned to see Chase motioning to the edge of the room where the rest of the counselors were standing against the wall.

  Really? Scott mouthed. Chase nodded. Scott rolled his eyes and joined his coworkers, about to hop onto a windowsill when an earsplitting trumpet fanfare blasted over the room’s ruckus.