Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26543656-20150629101333

The Amphitheatre

It was Halloween night. Cliche as it can get for this type of story but hear me out. In Australia, we don’t put much value on Halloween. It’s considered hugely over commercial and a touch dangerous and irresponsible to send your children out by themselves. I’m about 20 or 21 at this point. I’m a student at a residential college (or a dorm if you’d rather) and if you know anything about drinking culture at Australian schools… you’ll know that we take any opportunity to get completely fucking smashed.

As much as we all never grew up with Halloween as part of our year, we got dressed up because why the hell not? I’m James. Me and my friends, Will and Rob went as a zombie trio. Not just because zombies were cool at the time, but because we knew a girl down the hall, Lizzy, who I studied with sometimes and who genuinely wanted to practice her gory make up. She supplied everything. Did our costumes, we all joked and drank and chuckled. It was pretty standard fare for a drinking night. Even if the excuse was a little Americanised and dubious.

Between the three of us, we’d got through a four litre cask of wine… and four and a half grams of insane weed. Well minus the glass and a half and a single cone that Kayla took. She was one of those “responsible adults.” We did all the rest of the hard labour.

That was our state before we hit the campus bar. We’re not the best looking guys on campus, we need some liquid and herbal confidence… although if I hit the booze and the drugs so hard now I’d have been on the floor long before we’d walked outside.

It was still really cold this year, a very long winter. The three of us decided to walk hastily from our building to the bar. We had torn tshirts to expose our green flesh and wounds, which did not help matters. It was freezing.

It was about 10 PM when we made our way across the darkened university campus. Loads of other people had the same idea at the same time, so therefore there were loads of dressed up and creepy figures walking in the direction of the bar.

It’s not an old campus really. It was made in the 1960’s in a post war utilitarian kind of way. They’ve done things here and there to make it look nicer. There are brand new buildings scattered in with the old, lots of trees and picnic tables for studying outdoors and parky areas. This does make it a bit of a maze, especially if you’re new. You really need to know your way around. It’s a huge sprawling campus that they’ve just been adding things to over the years. Very easy to get lost.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">It can be an oppressive place when you look at it in the right light. It has a kind of cold war Russia thing going on. This was that kind of light. Pitch black and foggy with nothing but lights inside a few of the taller buildings and halogen lights around and near the walking paths. We crossed the “moat” or a kind of man made river that circled and zig-zagged across the university. We knew from going to classes so many times that it shaved a few minutes off the walk to take the bridges through the park rather than the path that seemed at first glance more direct.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">We passed the outdoor amphitheatre, fairly lit up down the aisles of seats. There were more lights I’m assuming so you didn’t fall down the stairs in the dark, but in the middle of the stage it was still dark. Something caught my eye.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘The fuck is that?’ I said kind of half whispering to my friends. They thought it was a joke at first. Then I pointed.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">There was a girl standing in the middle of the outdoor amphitheatre all by herself. No one else visible around. We walked over there and sat ourselves down at one of the higher levels of the theatre. She didn’t take any notice of us. Even though we were sitting right in the light. I lit up a smoke so it didn’t seem too weird that we were sat down seeing what the hell this girl was doing.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">She wasn’t dressed a) for the weather b) for Halloween or c) for the time period. That last one I can understand. There are a lot of hipsters around who’ll wear vintage type clothes. A and B on the other hand were not so obvious.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">This was made all the more confusing by her doing what seemed to be yoga or tai chi moves, not proper ones, kind of halfway between. She clearly wasn’t exercising.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘It’s gotta be a gag’ Will said and he went down to talk to her…

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘No! dude..!’ I said… not because I thought there was something spooky going on by this point but because I thought he really was walking into a prank. Like there had to be a camera set up and a bunch of people in scary masks right? It was probably the anthropology department doing a dumb experiment. He’ll be the subject of a lecture on Monday!

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">He kept on walking and approached the girl in the middle of the amphitheatre.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">To my surprise, they just started talking while she continued her half arsed yoga session. It just looked like a chat. No people in masks, no cameras. He offered her a smoke and she took it. Exercising my ass, you don’t smoke and work out. They talked for a bit longer, and I saw him indicate towards the bar over the hill and beyond the moat and she kind of shrugged, like “yeah maybe I’ll go.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">She continued smoking her cigarette while pulling off her moves by herself. I’m surprised nobody else saw this and got intrigued. They were all drunk and looking to cause trouble as well… but then again she was difficult to see in the dim light. In fact now she was holding that cigarette, all I could see to indicate she was there was the red burning bud at the end, hovering in mid air occasionally being drawn back on.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘So what the hell was that about?’ I asked, looking at Will then smiling at Rob.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘Nothing. She’s from the other college. She said she’s just out doing her usual thing.’

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘Is that really all? Doesn’t seem a touch weird to you? Did you fucking ask her out?’ I asked rapidly.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘Yes, yes, and yes. Who cares dude, she’s probably fucked up on pills or something and wandered off from her friends. She didn’t even know it was Halloween, hah. She’s gonna meet us inside later, they’ll let anyone in.’

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">With that he started his trek towards the bar. We followed. I kept periodically looking back, and sure as anything she was still standing there, that lit cigarette waving about in the darkness. we crossed the other foot bridge. Rob noticed something gross in the water. It was a dog or a kangaroo or something. Covered in dark mud it had drowned among the roots and grass. A lot of wildlife on this campus. It didn’t really stand out that much to us at the time.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">Anyway, I knew he wasn’t going to see that girl inside. 200 or more drunk students packed into a bar/club meant for half the amount of patrons? God, I wasn’t sure we were going to find each other when we got in.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">A bit of time passed. I was trying to chat up some girl in the outdoor smoking area, while Will and Rob tried their luck at the dancefloor.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">She clearly was not interested in me or anything I had to say. There were a hundred other more attractive zombies at this party exposing more rotten flesh than than I was. So I decided to take a bash and tell her about the girl we saw in the amphitheatre. Only I made up that this girl was completely gone by the time I looked back, just to give it a spooky edge. Hey if I’m not a hot zombie, I can try to be an interesting one.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">She laughed like it was some kind of joke. I laughed too. I guess it was pretty funny.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">She stopped dead, serious after that and looked behind me. Over my right shoulder.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘What’s that fake hand on your shoulder made of?’

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘Hand on my shoulder!?’

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">I actually looked. She started laughing again. She was fucking with me.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘Moron… I know the girl you described, she doesn’t smoke, drink or do pills, and she doesn’t do tai chi and she was not in the middle of an amphitheater by herself. Inconsiderate prick!’ she said looking genuinely offended. She stormed off back inside.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">Ugh, other than the spooky girl story this is a really shit night. I flicked my ciggy, went back in and caught up with the other guys. We spent the rest of the night as per usual. Jugs of beer. Failed pick up attempts on women. Occasional trip to the bathroom to have a tactical vomit (Or tacvom as it became known)... as I had predicted we didn’t see that creepy girl again.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">Everyone gets tossed out at 2 AM and it was approaching that time, so we decided to leave a bit early and beat the crowd of people heading back to college and make ourselves some greasy food.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">Something caught all of our eyes immediately this time when we stepped outside. Red and blue flashing lights. Down near the river. All of our first reactions were: Shit! Cops! We’ve got weed on us… so of course we took the long path back to our rooms. We laughed it off. Had ourselves bacon and eggs, drank and smoked ourselves into a coma, fell asleep in one of the common areas and that was that. Only that wasn’t that.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">We were woken up early afternoon by a lot of loud talking and a little bit of crying. My head is throbbing. Something was really wrong. After a big college do usually it’s silent. Everyone’s dealing with their hangovers. Sounded as though this time they were dealing with some kind of grief.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">I heard a much deeper, older, authoritative voice ask something but I couldn’t hear exactly what it was.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘I’m not leaving till I find him… he told me his first name. James. He told me he was from this wing. I know how he was dressed. They had to be the last ones to speak to her!’ This was followed by more sobs.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">It was the girl who called me a moron and an inconsiderate prick. It was definitely her. I saw her through the open door. She still had the same costume only now her make up was completely messed up. She’d been crying. She walked into the lounge where we’d all passed out the night before. Two police officers stood behind.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;">‘That girl. You spoke to that girl in the amphitheatre. I look after her sometimes. Her name was Abbey. She’s blind. She has mental health issues. She’d just changed her medication. She was confused. She lost her dog. She followed you guys to the bar. She followed the sound of the music and… someone found her body. She drowned in the river.’

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<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">Go easy!

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<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">-Spiarmf <ac_metadata title="The Amphitheatre"> </ac_metadata>