Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25980873-20150923090455

The summer of 1993. That summer would live on in infamy. I was 22 years old, my sister Marjorie 15. My name is Jamison Cartwright. I grew up in Haven, New York. I am a professional musician by trade. I play drums and bass (in studio) with the emo band Gray Utopia. I wasn’t in the band in ’93, I was still in college, ready to begin my senior year. I had returned home in May for the summer, and was due to return to Alfred State at the end of August, after which time I would commute home on the weekends. I wanted to spend my last evening home with my baby sister. After packing all of my essentials for my dormitory, Marjorie and I hit the Carlton Maxwell Trail, a local hiking and bike path near Haven. We were riding our ten-speed bikes together, an activity I had always enjoyed with Marjorie. As we were riding along the trail, Marjorie and I talked about music, my forthcoming graduation, and her entry into her sophomore year of high school. This is hard for me to write…I remember my sister so well, you see. She was adorable. And I mean in both looks and personality. Her smiles lit up a room. She was tiny, only stood about five feet two inches tall. I used to pick her up and put her on my shoulders. There was not a thing in this world I wouldn’t do for her. That’s why this is hard. I feel like such a failure as a big brother. I couldn’t save her. She is dead, but I still live.



We were talking about Nirvana’s upcoming album. I remember we were debating whether or not the album would live up to its predecessor, when I saw it. Marjorie, who was looking at me, failed to notice it immediately. When I gasped in shock, she turned back to the trail to see what I was looking at. We both squeezed our brakes, coming to a halt just a few feet from the thing. Then we both dismounted our bikes, and inched forward for a better look. It was a doe, and it was dead. The poor creature had been ripped in half. It appeared that something had been gnawing at its flanks. I looked at Marjorie. She was white as a sheet. I put a comforting arm around her. Pulling her close, I whispered “It’s okay. We’re going home.” With my arm still around her, I steered her back to her bicycle. She mounted it, and I picked mine up, preparing to follow suit. I jumped and dropped it back to the ground when Marjorie screamed. She had already turned her bike back the way we had come, and was staring back up the trail, a look of sheer terror on her face. “What is it?” I said urgently. “A w-woman,’’ she stammered. “A woman was just standing there, then she dropped to all fours and scampered away!” I looked at her, puzzled. “Are you sure? What did she look like?” I asked, fearing that the sight if the deer had momentarily unhinged her.





“Her hair was covering her face, and she had blood all down her front!” Marjorie cried. “Are you sure it was a female?” I asked. “Well…yes,” she said, and she suddenly looked a bit embarrassed. “She was naked,” she murmured. I just stared at her. “A naked woman covered in blood?” I asked. I had difficulty hiding the skepticism in my voice. But then again, I reasoned, Marjorie wouldn’t mess around at a time like this. “Lets get out of here,” I said, and without further ado we began to peddle furiously toward home. What the hell was a naked woman doing on a bike path, eating an uncooked dead animal? Assuming of course, the blood Marjorie saw on the woman actually belonged to an animal…





Marjorie and I continued to ride. It was dusk already, and the trees around us blocked most of the remaining light. The path was so eerie, given what we had just witnessed. Oh how I hoped Marjorie had been hallucinating…



We were almost parallel with Camp Faulkner, whose barracks were closed for the year. A narrow pathway to our left led off the Carlton Maxwell trail into the camp. As we were passing the camp, I heard Marjorie scream once again. “Aaaaaaargh! Jamison!” I whipped my head around so fast I cricked my neck. Marjorie wasn’t there. I looked behind me, and saw her bike, still upright, still moving. Then it wobbled and crashed to the ground. “Marjorie!” I yelled. I skidded sideways to a stop, then took off in the other direction like a bat out of Hell. My sister’s screams were still echoing through the woods. They reverberated through my skull. My very being was full of my precious Marjorie’s screams. I stopped for a moment in an attempt to pinpoint where the screams were emanating from. I decided that they were most likely coming from the camp, so I rode a few feet until I hit the path that would take me there.



But as soon as I turned onto the path, the screaming ceased. “No, no, no!” I muttered to myself. “Please, no, please!” I reached the camp. I saw no sign of a struggle. No blood. Nothing. “Marjorie!” I called. No answer. “Marjorie! Marjorie! Please, don’t do this to big brother!” I was yelling for her as though my life depended on it. I rode through the little village of barracks that made up the main campsite. I couldn’t see any signs that a body had been dragged through the gravel on the paths. But then again, I didn’t know where Marjorie had entered the camp, if she was even there at all. I was just about to lose hope and call 911 when I turned a corner and saw a pool of what looked like blood in front of one of the barracks. And in the center of it, lay what looked like a human head, with auburn hair. I rode up to it, dismounted the bike, and slowly approached the grisly sight. The head was resting on its left side. I knew it belonged to Marjorie. That luscious auburn hair belonged to my sister. I reached forward, and brushed the hair out of the head’s face. The part of me that was still trying to deny that the head belonged to my sister died. It was her face. Her large blue eyes were wide and staring. There were tear tracks running down her cheeks, and her face still retained a look of sheer horror, even in death.





After getting my gag reflex under control, which was no mean feat, I surveyed the pool of blood more closely. A thick trail of it led from my sister’s neck toward the back of the cabin. I got to my feet slowly. I crept around the edge of the cabin, careful not to step in the gruesome crimson trail that I was following. I turned the corner.





What I saw made my heart stop.





The rest of my sister’s body lay before me, her arms and legs still intact. Her stomach however, had been torn open, the entrails lying across her breasts. Blood pooled from the stomach, as well as her severed neck. And crouched next to Marjorie was a naked woman. Her head was bent over the gaping hole in Marjorie’s stomach, and a horrible sucking noise was issuing from her mouth. The woman’s face was obscured by long black hair. The woman’s arms were real lean and muscular, and I guessed that, were she to stand, she would be nearly six feet tall. As I watched, the woman brought her head up, but not in away that shifted the hair from her face. With a long fingered hand she reached for Marjorie’s large intestine, and transferred the end to her mouth. I watched in horror as this thing chewed on my baby sister’s large intestine, like it was nothing more than a kielbasa. As I stared transfixed at this grotesque display, the woman stopped her chomping and looked up. I yelled in shock. At long last, her face was revealed.



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The face was heart-shaped and smooth. The eyes…no human alive had eyes like her eyes. They were extremely large, with slanted ends. The irises were an emerald green color, and the pupils were slit, like a cat’s. Her mouth was very wide, with sharp, pointy teeth and thin, red lips. The teeth were red as well, as they were coated in Marjorie’s blood. There were flecks of blood on the woman’s face as well. I took a step backwards. The mouth broke into a wide, toothy smile. The woman stood slowly. My assumptions about her height were correct; she was six feet tall, give or take an inch. There was blood all down her front just as Marjorie had described. Her breasts were the size of grapefruits, almost perfectly round, with large pink nipples. Her groin was extremely hairy. Her fingers were long and thin, each ending in a sharp nail. The feet were rather large, almost too large for a woman her size.

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The woman crouched again. She looked as though she was ready to pounce. I immediately dove to the right. As I landed, I heard the creature skid on the gravel. She had pounced. Without missing a beat, I scrambled to my feet. I raced toward my bike. But just as I reached it, I slipped in Majorie’s blood and fell facedown on the gravel. Dazed, I lifted my head. There was a metallic taste in my mouth. I split my lip. I had also knocked out one of my front teeth. I got to my feet and reached out for my bike. But just as I grabbed the handlebars to pull it up it, I felt a strong pair of arms seize me around the middle and lift me off my feet. This thing was incredibly strong. Not only was it pulling me, but my bike as well, which I did not let go of when she grabbed me.

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And then a miracle happened. As graceful as this creature was, it too slipped in Marjorie’s blood. The woman didn’t crash to the ground as I had, but she let go of me in shock. I seized my opportunity. I lifted my bike and swung it into the woman’s snarling face with all the force I could muster. There was a sickening crunch as her neck snapped. The woman crumpled to the ground. She was dead. I collapsed. As I lay there, the adrenaline began to wear off, and all the aches and pains of the last ten minutes began to creep up on me.

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My face was smarting, and there was blood running from my cut lip and the gap in my teeth. I took my jacket off and pressed it to my injured mouth. I sat upright and looked at my fallen enemy. She was a physically superior opponent. Yet somehow, I had beaten her. The woman had slipped in Marjorie’s blood. Even in death my baby sister saved me. I looked to her severed head. My eyes burned as tears began to run down my cheeks. “Thank you, Marjorie,” I said to her head. “Jamison loves you.”

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<p class="MsoNormal">I stood finally. I walked to the monster. Before I alerted the authorities, I examined the woman. Apart from her freakish facial features, her body was quite attractive. She was well built. One would say she looked like a supermodel. I rolled her onto her belly with difficulty. As I examined the back of her neck, I saw a most curious mark there. It was a tattoo of sorts. I bent forward for a closer look. I realized it was a barcode. What the hell was this thing?

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I called 911 at that point and the police came along with two ambulances and a black Range Rover. The police questioned me for over an hour, in which I twice recounted every event from that evening. And then the doors of the Range Rover opened and two men dressed in black suits emerged from it. The men were identical to each other, right down to what they were wearing. Their suits were almost unnaturally neat, their shoes unnaturally shiny. I noticed the police seemed quite eager to get away from these men. The paramedics had zipped my sister’s head and mutilated torso into a body bag and placed her in the ambulance. They were already pulling out of the campsite. The monster lay dead ten feet from where the men and I stood. The paramedics hadn’t even bothered with her. He police left shortly after, leaving me alone with these men. I opened my mouth to speak but the man on my right lifted a hand to silence me.

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“You will not breath a word of this to anyone, understand?” he said in a deep, rich voice. I notice his mouth hardly moved. It was impossible to tell how old the men were. They didn’t look like any men I’d ever seen before. Their face looked as though someone had superimposed dull brown eyes on a crash test dummy’s face. “Your parents are being notified of this as we speak. They are being told what killed their daughter, and they are also being told to hold their tongues,” said the man to my left.

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“What was that thing?” I asked. “An abomination. You finished it off for us. Your assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated,” said the man to my right. “You will be taken to the hospital to have that lip sewn up by a second ambulance shortly,” said the man on the left. “And we advise you to keep your mouth shut. Because believe me, you do not want to see us again.”

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So here I am, twenty-two years later, writing this terrible narrative. We buried Marjorie, and I went off to college and got my degree in fine arts, and started Gray Utopia with my roommate Eddie. But throughout my life, there were times I swore I saw a man in a black suit watching me from across the street, or sitting among the families at graduation. I see them even at the Haven Cemetery, where Marjorie is buried. I could have sworn I saw a black clad man lurking in the trees as I visited on her birthday one year. Perhaps I am just paranoid. Although, some new information came to me through a friend who lived Westbrook, thirty-five miles north of Haven. A secret facility was set up in the woods surrounding the town. My friend, who shall remain unnamed for privacy’s sake, told me the United States military had set up this facility, and had told the residents of Westbrook to keep their silence on the matter.

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<p class="MsoNormal">One night, a siren had gone off in the woods, and several all-terrain vehicles had been dispatched, apparently in search of something. My friend believed that someone or something had escaped the facility, and the army was desperate to capture it. This information was given to me twelve years ago. I have not seen or heard from my friend since. Could this thing that so brutally murdered my sister have been a military experiment gone wrong? Was it an alien/human hybrid? Was it a cloning gone wrong, perhaps? I doubt I’ll ever know. That barcode certainly wasn’t a decoration. And the ever-present threat of those “men in black” has effectively prevented me from delving deeper into this mystery. All I know is my sister died at the hands of this thing, and I can only hope no one ever has to experience this again. Rest in peace, Marjorie.

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<ac_metadata title="Jamison and Marjorie (please read and review, thanks)"> </ac_metadata>