‘It was a dark and stormy night when –‘, Milly began, before being cut off by Leaky. Leaky protested the clichéd scene which he could hear unfolding before him and he was not sympathetic to the literary trope. The pair sat around the campfire and discussed appropriate etiquette when toasting marshmallows, neither having been camping often.
‘Let me begin again’, offered Milly. ‘It was a night that had no light, and there was a weather event that had a lot of wind and blowing rain’. Leaky again objected, and in a manner which indicated contempt, he plucked his marshmallow from the end of his stick, broke it in half and threw it on the fire. It was a dramatic moment, but he had his singular audience member captive and it was time for him to begin.
‘The night was wrapped in sinister silence, yet the campers held their anxieties close to themselves, not wanting to seem irrational. They sat by the campfire, waiting for the night to be interrupted with crackling sticks and sparkling bursts. A chilled wind swept through the campsite, and Lester took the moment to turn to Milky and to solemnly discuss the front page of that day’s paper.
It was a story involving the poisoning of men all across the city – it seemed that their drinks would be spiked and they would die a horrible death as their insides melted by an acidic substance. As Lester recounted the article with growing fascination, his voice took on a sinister tone and Milky began to fidget uncertainly – clumsily, he let his marshmallow blacken to an inedible crisp. Both Milky and Lester stopped speaking and watched it burn. The blackness of the melting sugar only matched by the blackness of the night.’
As Milly was listening to Milky squirm about on the log in an unsettled silence, he couldn’t help but notice Leaky chose names similar to their own. Should Milly run screaming through the forest or should he remain calm and tell himself it was all folly? As he had not brought appropriate footwear for a midnight dash through the woods, he had no choice. Leaky, seemingly aware of the effect his story was having on Milly, reached out to him by offering to put a pot of coffee on the fire. Relieved, Milly agreed to the offer, and as Leaky set up the billy, he continued.
‘An owl hooted across their camp site and the wind kicked up when Lester declared that tomorrow’s front page will be filled with a further violent death. Milky sat in stunned silence, terrified that he was in the middle of the woods with a madman. Lester seemed to grow more animated in recalling the facts of the gruesome cases. It seemed to Milly that the paper had been either too graphic in its reporting, or that Lester had known the intimate details of the cases from another vantage point.
Lester, however, concluded his recount and settled on the log by the fire. Milky opposite him had chattering teeth and a tingle which wouldn’t let his spine be stilled. Lester, observing his friend’s state had offered to make him a coffee over the fire – a suggestion which led Milky to stand and move to his tent. Unusually, Lester noticed, Milky had not even said good night and this rare show of rudeness was most unsettling.
Lester had left the coffee pot in the middle of the clearing, and too, went to his own tent. As both he and Milky slept, a rabbit had snuck into their clearing and greedily began to gulp down the coffee.’
Leaky yawned, he was getting tired and the voice effects he was using was starting to strain his voice. The coffee pot was nearly ready, and he joked with Milly that they should spike it and call it their night cap. Milly’s eyes widened, and he demanded to know, ‘But what of the fate of the rabbit?’ causing Leaky to dismissively offer, ‘Oh, it probably died and Milky found it the next morning in the middle of the clearing’.
Milly, with fear continuing to rise in himself, took a coffee cup from Leaky – and, when Leaky was not looking, tipped the contents of the cup onto the ground behind him. He rose, offered the pretence of extreme tiredness and scurried away to his own tent, where he would not sleep for the rest of the night, but stand guard, looking for any signs of movement of his tent’s zipper.
The next morning the sun rose and the silence of the night was broken by the chirping of the early morning sky. Milly looked like death, having not yet managed to close his eyes, but he told himself that he’d survived the night and went out into the clearing. He looked around the clearing for any signs of dead rabbits, but there was none. There was only Leaky, who was again stoking the fire and offering to make Milly a morning coffee. Milly’s eyed widened, and he insisted that get on the road immediately. The pair left the campsite, and while Milly was relieved to find a take away coffee in the next town they drove through, forever after he was suspicious of the night that Leaky may, or may not have tried to kill him.
The lingering question remained, however – did Milly properly search the clearing? Was there a rabbit behind one of the log seats that went unnoticed?