The Long and Winding Road

"Hiya, my name is Trevor, and I'm currently on a roadtrip! Leave a message and I'll get back to you!"

  Shit. I think to myself. ''It might already be too late. He left.'' My hands shook violently as I picked up the phone and put it back in the receiver. But I should probably explain what's going on.

My friend, Trevor, is a daredevil. He'd do anything you told him to-- even if it was risky. One time he drove his bike off the roof of my house and broke his arm. He wasn't the smartest guy, as you can probably tell, but he was good company. That's why we need to get him back.

He never told us where he was traveling to. He just called my friend and I telling us that he needed to "get away from everything for a bit" and then hung up. We were alarmed and made the trip up to his house, but when we got there his car and all his belongings were already gone. We were extremely nervous about this entire thing, because this just wasn't him. He was never the type to let shit get to him and hide away. When push came to shove, he just didn't care. He kept on going. So I think you can understand our frustrations.

We called his parents a few hours later and they picked up their phone. They explained to us that they were happy to hear that we didn't go with him because of how strange he was acting before he left, and they were actually surprised he didn't take us along on his "escape." We asked if they had any idea where he went, and they gave us a quick answer. "He didn't exactly say, but we have an idea. We used to take him to this resort-- it's abandoned now-- and he had been complaining a few weeks ago about how we didn't go this year, which set off a red flag. I didn't want him to leave, but his father insisted he'd stop acting like this when he did. The resort is just a few towns over." They hung up the phone abruptly.

My friend, Kaylee, and I weren't exactly ready to travel, so we waited a few days to get our stuff ready and to see if he'd just come back. He didn't, so we got in my cramped car and traveled through three towns to get to this "resort." As we traveled, the people in each town got stranger and stranger. Everyone in the last town was just standing in their doorways, staring at our car as we traveled down the dirt road like they'd never seen anything like it before.

And that was when we got to the dirt road.

At first glance, we thought it would take a half an hour to travel or something, but then we actually started driving on it. WIthin the first five minutes, one of our tires blew and we had to replace it with the spare I brought. As I did this, a lanky old man walked up to me and stared me in the eyes. He had a huge shit-eating grin on his face, like a serial killer from a horror movie, and at first I was creeped out. But then he handed me a plate with a sandwich and a note, and I smiled at him. I muttered "Thanks..." and an awkward laugh and got back in the car. The sandwich was made with some sort of chewy meat, and it was okay-tasting so I finished the entire sandwich in just a few bites.

Then I read the note. "Pig's intestine." And a smiley face next to it. I felt like throwing up. Is it even healthy to eat the intestine of any once-living thing? I choked back the vomit and pushed further down the road. "Wait a second... where the fuck did that old guy come from, anyway?" Kaylee asked me as I drove. I shrugged and leaned closer to the steering wheel as it got darker.

We finally arrived at rusted gates the next morning. The "resort" his parents sent us to was definitely abandoned, vines growing over the windows, dead animal carcasses strewn all over the place, presumably because they couldn't escape. We pried open the gates and got inside. The first off-putting thing was the red stain on the wall in the opening, but we shook that off and went farther into the building.

One room was just full of dead cats, another full of dead birds.

One of the doors was completely locked up, but we broke the lock and got inside. What I saw will never leave me, for as long as I live.

Trevor's parents were lying on the floor, their throats slit and their intestines hanging out of jagged incisions on their bodies. Both of us just stood there, mouths agape, as we stared at the grisly scene. Then we ran as fast as we could until we got to the exit. "But... wait... what the fuck? Who did we talk to earlier?" Kaylee asked me. I shrugged again and told her to go faster.

As we opened the exit, we heard a buzzing sound and something thudded against the ground. It was a dark mass, overgrown with tangle vines and a bloody smell. A light turned on and we saw who it was.

Trevor lay there, unmoving. Several organs hung out of his body, but the most noticable thing about the body was the fact that his intestine was missing.

A note fluttered down from the ceiling.

"Pig's intestine. :)"