Buggin'

“Am I supposed to be feeling something?” Fletcher looked down to his hand and turned it over. He and Kyran were in the Edgefield forest, near Thorn’s End. Fletcher flexed the fingers in his gauntlet and shrugged, clanking as he did so. “I’m not feeling anything.”

“Dude, shut up,” Kyran said, his eyes closed, feeling the wind against his scales. “We just have to wait for it to happen. This is where the forum said to go.” They stood in silence for a moment. Snow fell from the sky in big, white particle effects. The brown level 1 wolves of summer had given way to the white, level 1 wolves of winter, that hunted the technically level 0 white foxes and white rabbits. Fletcher watched as one leapt onto a sheep from a nearby farm that had wandered into the forest. Fletcher bet that if he waited long enough, that same sheep would form at the farm and walk its way to this point, just to get mauled by the wolf. It would keep doing that until the end of time.

He found it hard to listen to the crunch of the wolf’s teeth breaking through the sheep’s body. “What if I have a bad trip?” Fletcher asked, to drown out the squelch of blood on teeth.

“It’s just like anything else. If you think you’re gonna have a bad trip, you’ll have a bad trip.”

“But what if I don’t think about having a bad trip and I have a bad trip anyway?”

Kyran sighed heavily and opened his large, amber eyes, the pupils a tiny slit. It made him look even more annoyed. His tail swished in the snow, leaving long drag marks. “Then you’ll have a bad trip. Don’t be a pussy,” he said, pushing Fletcher. “It won’t kill you or anything. No matter what, the game will log you out when it realizes something is wrong. The trick is to-” he stopped, looking to a nearby tree. He grabbed Fletcher’s shoulder and pulled him closer. “See that?” He pointed a clawed hand out into the trees and Fletcher could see a fawn fumbling toward them.

“What? The deer?” Fletcher asked and Kyran shushed him. He pointed to a tree a few yards away, where a wolf was walking in its normal routine. It seemed to notice the fawn and in an instant it darted through the snow. Fletcher wasn’t entirely sure of what he saw next. The wolf opened its fanged jaws and lunged at the fawn, but the fawn didn’t move. The wolf passed through the tiny deer, as if it were a ghost.

The fawn gave off a buzzing sound as it flickered in and out, jumping to a spot a few feet away and then snapping back in an instant. The wolf lay in its dead state, on its side. The fawn leaned down and began to eat at its flesh. A gush of blood flew up and onto its snout. “I-I don’t,” Fletcher began, but Kyran was pulling him towards the deer.

As they got closer the trees began to flicker as well. The snow became crystals, falling upward. The sun turned black in the purple sky. The soundtrack of woodlands sounds became blips and flatline EKG drones, the loudest death could be. Fletcher was aware that his fingers were laced with Kyran’s, but Kyran was miles ahead. He was behind.

They reached the deer and it turned to look at them, blood painting its soft muzzle, splattered on its wobbly legs. Kyran let out a whooping shout. Fletcher had heard it before, in the summer. When they took off their armor and jumped into the lake from the cliffs above. When Fletcher was Finn and Kyran was Kyle and they drove Kyle’s pick up to the river and made sure no one else was around. When Kyle didn’t have to tell him to not be afraid. When he was brave and took the leap he wanted to for so long. When they jumped together into the fast, dark water. Fletcher felt his head bashing against the rocks below, becoming paralyzed, not able to fight the water flooding into his lungs.

He retched and pebbles came tumbling from his lips, piling up at his feet. Kyran’s snake mouth was unhinged, gaping and wet, laughing and laughing. Fletcher was the wolf, being tugged from the inside out by the fawn. He couldn’t scream. Could only look up at the white sky until he was drifting upward like the snow.

When he looked down he saw his bedroom, cramped, the walls closing in on the him that was Finn, that laid in the bed on his side. He was crying, holding his phone so that his pale face floated in the darkness. Fletcher didn’t have to look at the screen. He could remember the words exactly as written. The words poured out of the screen and onto his face, torrents of jet black ink that Finn blinked away numbly. Words that piled on top of each other, slid down his throat and settled in his belly.

Fletcher couldn’t watch himself drown in the words again. But it was too late. They had already congealed around his feet, curling around his ankles. He called out and Finn turned to him. His eyes were blank and he smiled. Finn shouted out in fear, but he was back in the woods, alone with the fawn. It gnawed on the wolf’s bones, crunching into them greedily. “Having fun?” it asked him.

“Not especially, no,” he replied and sat in the snow.

“That’s too bad,” the fawn said its voice soft and child-like. It lapped at the marrow there inside the bones. “You don’t have to stay, you know,” it said to him.

“Sure I do. I can’t figure out how to log out.” Kyran had lied to him. The game should have logged him out by now, surely. He was scrolling through the game's menus but they were written in his mother’s handwriting. They said things like “I’m proud of you,” and “I know it’s tough.”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” the fawn said and folded its legs, laying beside him. It rested its head on his knee and sighed contentedly.

“Yeah, I know,” he said and drug his hand along the fawn’s fur. “It just feels like I need to.”

“You’re not doing anyone any favors,” it said to him quietly, sliding into sleep.

“Yeah. I know.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“What do you know?” Kyran asked, standing over him. “That you just had the time of your life and I was right all along?” Fletcher looked around to see that the forest was no longer shifting, that the snow fell as it was intended.

“I’m gonna go,” Fletcher said, standing.

“Man. I told you if you thought you were going to have a bad trip you’d have a bad trip. I was out there swimming with big-tittied mermaids in the stars and stuff. I’ve never had a bad time buggin’.”

“I guess that’s where we’re different,” Fletcher said, looking through his menu, which was now back to normal.

“Hey, don’t be mad,” Kyran said, stepping close. “I thought we’d have a good time. I didn’t mean to upset you. Did you see...did you see your mom?” Finally, Fletcher could hear Kyle’s voice and it felt like a punch to the gut.

“Among other things,” he said and looked through Kyran’s snake eyes, trying to find Kyle on the other side.

“Oh,” Kyran said and stepped away reflexively. “Look, Finn….”

“It’s fine,” Fletcher said. “I’ll see you around, okay?” He found the log out command on the menu. He watched Kyran until he couldn’t anymore. Hated the look of troubled silence on his face, of words unsaid pushing out against his lips. When his eyes cleared, he was staring at his ceiling again, tears streaking each cheek. He leaned up from his chair and surveyed the darkness.

Would he just wander into the forest again?