Camp Green Lake

Sarah Wazlawik

by Sarah Wazlawik

Story

There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. Of course there isn’t. I would have been really surprised if there was, because when we left the motorway and drove onto non-paved, earthy streets, it was like a foreboding of what was about to come.

As the minutes on the clock ticked by, the streets continued to grow narrower, the forests grew bigger and the houses got fewer. When the bus drove onto a small bridge across a stream – yes, a fucking stream – I knew that this so-called ‘Camp Green Lake’ would be nothing but a tiny, dirty waterhole with a few tents around it. The waterhole was probably too muddied to go in, so they should have really chosen a different name for the summer camp. Or maybe there wasn’t even a lake. Damn, if I had known then how ironically right I was…

Half an hour later we drove under a wooden archway with the words ‘Camp Green Lake’ written across it in yellow paint. Honestly, it looked like a toddler had written it. The letters were lopsided and some were way bigger than others.

The bus came to a halt and “Call me Mel”, the overly enthusiastic, probably drugged up because nobody could be that happy, camp counsellor got up from her seat to address us.

“We’re here!”, she exclaimed excitedly and then paused for a moment, probably expecting us to start clapping and cheering like we were at a football game and our team had just scored a goal.

I looked around me, and saw that the other teenagers looked just as enthusiastic as I know I did. Several eyed the woods behind us, as if they considered making a run for it. Well, I might have done that too if we weren’t in the middle of fucking nowhere, with only deer and rabbits and probably Bigfoot for company.

I wasn’t really the superstitious type, but this summer camp looked like you could write a really good horror story about it.

“Fifteen teenagers get shipped off by their parents to a summer camp in the woods, but strange things start happening. One by one, they get murdered, in the most horrible ways possible. Can the remaining teens find out who is the murderer before it’s too late?”

Oh yeah, and who would be the murderer in this story? Definitely Mel.

© Sarah Wazlawik 2022-08-29

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