Endured, not Enjoyed
Author's note: This was my entry for the 2018 Summer VacationWard Postcard Competition - the only one I've ever participated in.
Emmett,
You fat, fucking, childless bastard.
I'd like to think that I'll laugh about this someday, because if I don't, I'm pretty sure I'm going to kill someone over it first.
Possibly you.
Thanks for planning our camping trip.
Real cute how you set the stove open to the highest setting. Yeah. Cute.
Edward really liked that shirt.
And the campsite? Nice. Furthest one from the lake.
Right by the privies.
Aside from you trying to sabotage our trip, it's been peachy. Just frickin' peachy.
Like last night: Finn found the bag of marshmallows. Not sure how, because I hid them in a frozen peas bag, stuffed inside the oatmeal container. Both things he hates. We wondered why he was so hyper at bedtime. Normally, he just plonks off to sleep without a word. Sometime after we'd all gone to sleep, he puked.
Everywhere.
Inside the tent, just in case you're wondering. I'd like to plant a firm visual in your never-have-I-wrestled-in-the-bodily-oozes-of-anyone-anywhere mind that it took fishing through multiple pools of stringy marshmallow chuck to find a flashlight, and then the kid. Of course, all this woke Claire up, too, and you know what she's like when she starts crying.
Finn, of course, won't look at me sideways when he's upset, so Edward took on cleaning him up.
That left me to deal with the vomit.
Yes, Emmett. Get a good mental whiff of that. At least the worst was contained to his sleeping bag. After I papertoweled up as much of the goo as possible, I dragged that fluffy sack of sick down to the lake. In the dark.
In the fucking dark.
Flashlights are pointless when everything else is pitch black. But you probably know that.
Bastard.
After I swished that bag around in the shallows—because there was no way I was going any further in the dark—I started feeling things on my legs. I know it was probably just water-weed, but my mind was veritably poetic, imagining everything else.
But I kept my shit together, Emmett. Just.
As I walked back to the campsite, I kept telling myself that I was just imagining things. A wet sleeping bag, by the way, weighs a lot. A lot. Doesn't help when it still smells like vanilla vomit.
So when I felt more things slithering around my ankles, I gave myself the stern "Bella, you are just imagining shit" talk.
I was wrong.
Snakes, Emmett. SNAKES.
We're down a sleeping bag now. And a flashlight too.
But that's OK, because I'm never fucking leaving the tent again in the dark.
And maybe not during the day, either.
Anyhoo, I hope your holiday is going well.
Just want to remind you that vacations are, theoretically, meant to be enjoyed. Not endured.
Can't wait to help you and Rose plan your next trip.
Can't. Fucking. Wait.
- Bella