Author's Note
Excuse me, can't you tell I'm a little busy?
…
Sorry, just caught up, talk to me later.
Happy Tree Camp!
"Camp Creeps Part 2;
Going Batty"
Starring
Phoenix
And
?
If you wanted to give Phoenix some credit, it'd have to be in his spirit. He may be tampering with a world he shouldn't be, and honestly not everything's was going according to plan, and he was wandering through the darkened woods, with a cheap rifle that hadn't seen service since Russia occupied Afghanistan, given to him by a moderately inebriated hyena with a penchant for violence, and there may be a bat creature stalking him, which he knew was nigh-immortal, but he was keeping a stiff upper lip.
After all, this was his story, and he was in control.
Granted, he gave up a few rights in his back alley deal to enter his story, but it was worth it, to assure everything went off correctly. Omniscience, for instance, was denied him, when he entered the story, which would have helped him know that someone had been following him since he left the boathouse. But, a dry twig snapping underfoot behind him clued Phoenix in, he turned and fired, thankfully missing his target.
He didn't bring a flashlight, but in what little moonlight he had, Phoenix saw Flaky, who had dropped to the ground in shock, and was beginning to sob enormous tears out of panic. The bullet had hit a tree, just above her head.
"Flaky, what are you doing here?" He wasn't even bothering to disguise himself, and he carefully helped the scared little creature up. She stuttered for a moment, having trouble breathing, from the shock,
"I was just scared, and all. You even looked nervous when the, thing, showed up."
"Flaky, I'm not nervous. I'm just thinking. Writing within a story is dangerous work, and requires deep mental concentration. Now go back to the boathouse, you're going to blow my cover."
"But, wait!" Flaky called him back before he got too far away, "I needed to apologize."
Phoenix sighed, and dragged his palm over his face, before walking back to Flaky, clearly beat, "What is it you needed to apologize for Flaky?" he said, adding something under his breath to the likes of, "Oh this'll be good."
She made to say something, but a little purple raccoon poked her head out, "About me."
Phoenix nearly snapped the wood grip on his rifle while he choked in anger, barely able to form coherent sentences, something that horrified Flaky and amused Caramel. He managed to stop grunting in rage just long enough to try and figure out what was happening.
"Flaky, what did I tell you? Didn't I say that things would get bad if you started to talk! And look what you did!" He almost sounded like a father upset with his little girl.
"It's not my fault!" Flaky pointed to Caramel, "She was hell bent on cheering me up, and said she couldn't do it if she didn't know what was wrong."
Caramel nodded, and stated plainly, "It's true, sir, I'm very persistent."
"Well, who the hell else did you tell?"
"No one, I swear on my life!" Flaky placed her hands over her heart, and Caramel did the same. Something about their little innocent smiles made Phoenix almost convinced they were sincere(Or perhaps he just had a weakness for small furry critters, we couldn't be sure). But still, he ventured to ask,
"So you didn't tell anyone else?" The two girls nodded, and he could breathe easy for a moment. That is, literally a moment. Because a moment later, Zehuva followed up with her own chipper remark,
"Yeah, they're telling the truth! I followed without their permission!"
The other three would have been shocked, if they weren't already annoyed.
"Zehuva, what the hell?" Phoenix was shouting now, clearly at the end of his wits, "A bat monster goes on the loose, and the first thing you do is follow two other girls into the darkened woods to chase after a man with a rifle?"
"Well," Zehuva blushed, "I really just wanted to make sure your story ends with a sweet kiss for me and Flippy."
Reece immediately glared at Flaky, and he gritted his teeth to ask her, "What did you tell her?"
Flaky panicked, "I didn't tell her anything! Technically, I mean, I only told Caramel about your," She stood on her tippy-toes and reached up, "Phenomenal Cosmic Powers!"
Phoenix shook his head, and glanced upward in desperation, whispering to some unseen ear in the sky, "Forgive me." He turned back to the girls, "Flaky, why did you do this to me? I can't risk people knowing about what I can do! I mean, what if someone else heard about this, someone evil?"
"What are the odds of that happening?" said Caramel, and Phoenix cringed at the thought. The girls noticed this, and suddenly became a bit more worried themselves.
"Phoenix," Flaky asked, quivering a little in her voice, "Nothing bad's going to happen, right?"
"Heh heh. Um, about that," He was smiling, but it was paper thin, "let's just say that it would be better if no one else knew about me being here, because things aren't turning out right."
"Too late," A voice directly behind Phoenix made him nearly jump out of his skin. He looked down to find Mae, who had been completely disguised in the darkness, with her long black hair, all black clothing, and black makeup. In fact, the only thing that gave her away in the darkened woods was the faint smell of cheap tequila and cigarettes about her.
"And in case you're wondering, I didn't follow them. I needed a nicotine break and your shouting just happened to lead me here."
Phoenix threw his rifle to the ground, "God damnit! How did a bunch of little girls get past two armed men?"
Flaky answered, despite it being a rhetorical question, "I said I needed to pee, and was too scared to go alone."
Mae smirked as she added, "I just flipped Ryder off and he threw me out."
And Zehuva, cheerful as always, chimed in, "Well I just told Meth I wanted to wander in the woods at midnight with a mutant killer bat on the loose, and he let me go! Wait a minute…."
"Great, and now you're going back to the boathouse, capiche? Go!" His voice was seriously angry, in an attempt to get rid of them.
"Are you crazy?" Flaky clung to his pant leg, "We can't head back."
"Yeah," Phoenix looked down, and found Zehuva had latched onto his free leg, "You know how dangerous it is, we risked out skins to come after you!" The bear almost sounded like she was blaming him for the danger they were in now. But she was right, the man couldn't in all good conscience send a group of young ladies out into the woods with a bat on the loose. He picked his rifle up from the ground, if only to give him something to wrap his fists around, and motioned for the girls to follow him. They took his sudden silence as a cue, and quieted up themselves, much to the man's relief.
While they walked, Phoenix, Flaky noticed, seemed different. He wasn't joking, like he did in her dream. He was much more serious, as if he had been chained, without his powers. She still didn't fully understand what an Author was capable of doing, but she understood fully that his job was monumental. And now she was fearing that he'd crossed a line, and something was going wrong.
Mae decided to be a bit more adventurous than the other girls, and walked right up beside Phoenix, asking plainly,
"So, what are you anyway?"
"Funny you should ask. Didn't Flaky give you a run-down?"
"Came here on my own, remember?"
"Right, well," He rolled his head, to stretch his neck a bit, almost relaxing before he started, "I'm an Author, and it's my hobby to write things. You're in a story of mine, though things seem to be getting out of hand."
"With the Bat?" She asked, coolly nursing a cigarette.
"I wish," He smiled, it was almost comforting talking to her, simply because she didn't seem to care what he said, "More or less my daughter."
"You have a daughter?" Anyone besides Mae would have been shocked, but she was almost mocking him as she took another drag on her cigarette.
"A rabbit, something we Authors call a 'Plot Bunny'. She's actually a universe inside herself, and somehow got out of her cage. I don't understand how it's possible, but someone let her out. Now I'm horrified with what might happen should she figure out and, god forbid, open up whatever's inside of her. I went to the infirmary today, and she was missing. But I didn't have the chance "
"Never too late to back out," She said, flatly. She wasn't even looking at him, "You're in control here, right? Snap your fingers and make it all good."
"Wish I could, but I'm limited. I'm sort of a weak Author, meaning I can only manipulate things that already exist. And even in that I'm limited. So right now, I can only do just about as much as you can. Plus, I'm not immortal, I've got weaknesses."
Mae's ears perked up, "Weakness? Kinky, very kinky. Care to share?"
"Aren't you an interesting girl? Well, first of all, bullets, fire, drowning. Anything that can kill you can kill me. When I snuck into this world I gave up my immortality. And I have a weakness for music."
"You're joking."
"No really, when someone starts a musical number I have to join in. I keep a set of Blues Brothers suits handy for just such an occasion. Want to see them when we get to camp?"
"Oh dear God no." Mae said, suddenly desperate for a distraction, "Oh hey look, we're here!"
And she was right, they had just arrived at the outskirts of the camp. Phoenix led them around the fence to the far side, where he unlocked the back gate with one of the large ring of keys he had been carrying. It must have come with being the camp's janitor, among other things.
"Okay, so we need to stop by the Pop's cabin, the two-story one, and radio the crew. I suppose after that we could spend the night there, we're better off waiting until morning than trying to get back to the boathouse."
"Wait, Pop's cabin has a radio in it?" Caramel asked, walking closely behind him.
"Not just a radio," Phoenix explained, "He's got the central hookup in there. The signals from around camp and the dig site are transmitted there, even if you're not directly talking to him, Pop can figure out what you're saying."
"Why would he," Flaky started, but a shiver ran up her spine when she began thinking, and decided she wouldn't ask anything else, as they walked through the darkened camp. It was much different, at night. Especially knowing that the group was almost alone. Almost.
But they reached the headmaster's cabin in silence, and Reece fished through the ring of keys to find one that matched, and they slowly entered, flicking on the lights only made it slightly less creepy to stand in. Pop must have had a sick sense of humor, because his room was filled with stuffed animals, "ferals", the other tree friends called them. And a bear posed in a gristly roar that stood conveniently across the door managed to squeeze a yelp out of Flaky, and a few annoyed looks out of everyone else.
While Phoenix tried to turn on the radio, the others tried to make themselves comfortable, which became nearly impossible everytime they thought of their situation. But finally, he managed to switch on the machine, which resembled a WW2 comm station more than anything else, and even had a pair of circular tapes on the front that recorded whatever messages it received, and before he could even try to signal the two diggers, the radio began unwinding and played a message of its own.
"Hello, this is Handy recording at about 11:30 midnight,"
Reece checked his watch; it was about one in the morning.
"I repeat, this is Handy, and Lumpy is also present with me. We were attacked tonight, at around 10 o clock, and we trapped ourselves inside a cavern in Mt. Montijo by the dig site. The creature was some sort of bat, it took nearly everything we threw at it, even a small explosion, but we seemed to have escaped it. I'm trying to warn everyone I can, the thing is intelligent. It spoke to us, I could have sworn that it was a trick of my ears, but it's true.
"Anyway, we need to make this quick. The air is thick with debris, and we've only got three things, a flashlight, a radio, and an air purifier, and the things run on the same damn batteries. But if I say one last thing, it's that you need to see the cavern we're in. Even if you don't get the chance to rescue us, we've only got maybe two days here, you need to break open this cavern. The writing on the walls, seems to be predicting something, something incredible. It had that bat thing, and it has some strange rabbit.
"Look, I don't have time to go into detail. Lumpy, if you want to say something."
The recording shifted for a moment, the radio was being passed to another hand. Lumpy spoke, in a tear soaked voice, that almost depressed them, knowing how cheerful he normally was.
"Handy, I'm, I'm scared." He paused for a moment, and there was a voice in the background, Handy could be faintly heard reassuring him. Lumpy started up again, "Whoever gets this, I'm sorry. I tried to kill it, honest. But, I'm sorry."
The recording ended abruptly, and left even Phoenix shaking. Things were getting far too real, and the only thing the man could do was take the rifle off the table and try to reassure them,
"I'm sure you guys are gonna be fine, we just need to stay indoors. For now, the thing wouldn't come out in daylight, and it wouldn't chase us this far,"
But it was wishful thinking. He stopped mid sentence, because they could all hear the wind picking up abnormally fast. Then, suddenly, the same bat creature, still scarred from the fight with Lumpy and Handy, tore in through the nearest window, shrieking bloody murder. It slammed hard into Phoenix, and pinned him against a wall, one claw digging into his shoulder, and the other arm pressed against his throat.
"Run, everyone run!" He managed to choke out the words, with oxygen being denied his lungs. The girls were too scared to do anything else, and, still screaming, ran from the cabin, leaving Phoenix and the beast alone. Slowly, it fixated it's gaze on him, and spoke in a low rumbling roar that slowly evolved into what could best be described as the voice of none other than Dracula.
"You piece of filth," growled the bat, "You zhink you're protecting them?"
Phoenix allowed himself a smile, as his face began going blue, "I don't think, I know. And they don't need any protection. Not from you, Gouge."
The bat snarled, and took the claw off Phoenix's shoulder, and threw a punch into his ribs, knocking whatever wind he had left out of his lungs.
"Shut up! Who zee hell are you?"
"I'm an Author, and I know exactly what's going to happen," Phoenix was in control again, even staring into a near skinless monstrosity that held him, "You're going to chase the girls, and you're going to die. So go, little bat. Go and chase them."
Gouge's eyes lit up, and he began striking Phoenix, anywhere on his body, his stomach, his groin, his face, over and over again, until his body went limp in his hold. Gouge let the man slip from his grasp, to fall lifelessly to the ground.
"Bastard," Gouge whispered, before backing out, and taking flight from the window he had broken in from.
Phoenix was right, though. Gouge was going to die by the hands of four girls. Of course, it wasn't the first time the bat had died.
And it wouldn't be the last.
You know, I just got Dead Rising 2, and it took every ounce of my being to write this chapter instead of playing it.
Be thankful I love you guys.
