4-year old Kyle was sitting happily in his room. He was playing on his new drum-set, practicing a new song.
"Baby, ya light up my world like nobody else.." His voice was high, but strong for such a young boy. His father came into the room and grinned.
"But when ya smile at the ground, it ain't hard to tell. You don't know.. you don't know you're beautiful!"
Kyle finished his performance, his father clapping and cheering loudly. "Way to go, squirt!" His father laughed and picked him up, kissing his face lovingly. "That sounds great. Aren't you just a talented little thing?"
His mother suddenly appeared. "He sure is. He's gonna be a great, big star one day."
"He's a prodigy!" His father beamed.
"Our little prodigy." His mom smiled.
"Let's go get Mikey. We can all have a nice picnic today, huh?" His father smiled.
...
Kyle jolted awake.
He had been dreaming again, but this had been the opposite kind of dream.
And here he was, dreaming of a better father. A better family. A better life. Where they all loved each other.
His father had tried to kill him. He was out of the question, but it just made him more determined to find Mikey and make some peace in that department.
But wait..
"How the hell did I.." He looked around and realized he was in his camo truck.. and it was parked deep inside the forest.
He needed to get moving, he realized. And he would. But he needed to calm down still.
But he couldn't. How had this happened? One moment, his dad was ready to kill him. The next, he was parked in a forest and his dad's house was nowhere in sight.
And as if on cue, his phone rang.
He snapped his head over and grabbed the phone.
"Unknown caller."
This was probably the creepy voice from earlier.
Kyle felt his stomach turn. He had almost forgotten.
Was this mysterious person watching him? It was as if they had waited for him to finish up with his father before going to his next task. Or to wake up.
"That'd be so cool." Kyle murmured, answering it fairly quickly.
"Who is it?" He asked eagerly.
Lo and behold, it was the same caller. "You know who."
Kyle was interested, but still creeped out, admittedly. How did this caller get him at just the right time? Fairly quickly after he woke up, too. What had happened with his father?!
"How did.."
"How did I know you woke up, hm?" The caller finished for him. "How did you get there? Because I saved you from your father and put you back in your truck."
Kyle gasped. So this figure was following him. And touching him. He had saved him.
"W...why would you save me?" Kyle asked. It seemed like this person wanted to harm him, if anything.
"We can't finish your therapy if you're dead, now can we?" The caller responded. "You being killed off is not part of the plan. At least.. not by someone else."
Kyle got a little uneasy. "If you're gonna kill me, just do it and get it over with. And if you're gonna get rid of my body afterward, take it to a swamp and sink it into quicksand, a peat-bog, or a marsh where it will rot away into a skeleton with nothing but hair and clothes on. "
The caller seemed blown away by Kyle's ghoulish thoughts. "Wow.. I knew something was different about you when I watched you at the carnival."
Kyle squinted. "I.. I knew it. I felt like I was being watched. I thought it was just my nerves from performing." He gasped, shaking his head.
"I'm surprised you haven't called the cops." The caller randomly mused.
"I'm not like everyone else. I don't believe in cops, I don't believe in sending other people to fight my battles for me. I like to deal with my problems and face them alone." Kyle retorted.
It had been true all his life. Most likely due to all the years of keeping quiet about hating being his father's favorite child out of fear of being his old man's next bunching-bag.
"Well, I knew there was something different about you. That's why I chose you. You're not like the other people I've targeted over the years. This is going to be fun." The caller growled lowly, as if quaking in excitement.
Kyle was shocked now. So this person had been doing this. And killing people for years, presumably. And never being caught. Assuming he was telling the truth.
He shuddered more, knowing that this caller was probably watching him and had just recently touched him.
Kyle was getting freaked out now, and it felt less and less like a game.
"Congratulations on confronting your father. Telling him the truth about how you've really felt all these years. I led you to him, and you did just as I wanted." The caller said.
"Wh.. what happened to him? What did you do to him?" Kyle asked, not shocked that meeting his father was part of the caller's plan. Because of course it was. It was like a game of chess, and the caller had everything planned out.
"..Wait. How did you know I felt like that all those years?! Wh.. what?!" Kyle grew more frustrated, shaking his head and getting all the more confused.
"The reveal has not yet come." The caller stated. "And your father is fine. Still at his house."
Kyle shivered. So he'd get answers. But probably only right before being sliced up to bits..
"We're way behind schedule, though. You were supposed to be out of Utah yesterday. Start the truck."
The caller ended the call.
Kyle shivered and gulped. This was horrifying. But the caller clearly knew where he was, what he was doing. There was no use in denying the requests.
"Behind schedule." Kyle scoffed to himself.
At least for now, he'd play the game. It was scary, but fun in a demented way. He would play the game for now, and if he got in any danger.. he could take care of himself.
His stubborn, determined-to-be-tough and take care of things himself attitude combined with his thrist for danger was sometimes risky.
...
Time since leaving Utah: 6 Hours and 50 minutes
Kyle had eventually arrived in Nevada. The radio, texts to Charlotte, and fast food restaurants somehow prevented his loneliness from taking over.
He called his mother, giving her updates. But he of course left out everything about being stalked by a psycho and everything about Lance. How his own father nearly killed him. He didn't know if she'd ever tell her. It was bad enough his mother was hesitant about letting him go on this road trip in the first place. She would freak out if he told her what was happening. And if she knew the man she used to love tried to kill their son? He didn't know what she'd do.
After his latest stop for food, he arrived back from the McDonald's to open his truck and see something in his passenger seat as he slipped inside.
An old film camera and and an old film-casing, along with an old piece of paper taped to it that had "1950" written on it in dark black ink.
"How in the world did you get here.." he murmured, lifting the camera and inspecting it. He had left his truk locked the whole time.
Had the psycho stalker gifted it to him?
He brushed it off for the time being and started his truck.
...
Later, night-time had fallen, and Kyle was camping out in the woods of Nevada. He was just grateful to be out of his truck for the time being. It felt so good to stretch his legs.
He had a camo-tent set up, a lit camp-fire, and he was sitting sitting in a camping-chair, cooking fish on the camp-fire in a cast-iron skillet that he caught in the lake. Unlike the rest of the world, Kyle wasn't too good for the good out-doors. Growing up, he always loved camping and preferred it over staying in a motel. Also, he was saving a lot of money by doing this, he mused.
Once the fish was good and fried, Kyle got some ketchup, a paper plate and a plastic fork and ate it up. Once he had eaten the fish, he opened a bag of popcorn, poured it in a black pot, covered it with foil and placed it on the campfire. While the popcorn is popping, Kyle got a white bed-sheet that been in his truck and sets it up between two trees. He grabbed the mysterious camera and film-casing out of his truck.
He set the camera up on its stand, aiming it at the sheet. He then got the film out of the casing and sets it up in the camera. When the popcorn stopped popping, Kyle removes the pot from the camp-fire and placed it on the ground in front of his camping-chair. He then activated the camera, then sat down in his chair, removing the foil from the pot, and began eating the popcorn as the film from the camera played on the sheet.
The year "1950" appears on the sheet-screen with a black screen and white text.
"Fun." Kyle sarcastically mumbled.
But his eyes were soon glued to the screen.
The film showcased a man, his wife and their 10-year old son exiting their home, with the man and boy carrying camping equipment. It was black and white.
Kyle wanted to assume this footage was from 1950, but the quality from the sheet wasn't exactly stellar. It was hard to tell if it was actually old, or simply made to look that way.
The boy had blond hair that was slicked back with brown eyes. The man kissed his wife goodbye. He and his son loaded stuff into a station wagon, got inside, and drove off. The scene cut to the station wagon parking outside a restaurant. The man and his son got out and went inside, and the scene cut to them indoors sitting at a table, eating.
The scene then cut to them exiting the restaurant, getting inside the car, and driving off. The scene cut to the father and son in the woods, setting up camp, followed by a scene of them fishing by a river.
Then, they were sitting around the camp-fire at night, frying up the fish, followed by eating it and then them putting the fire out with a bucket of water...
And them turning into their tents for the night.
The scene cut to morning, with the boy getting out of his tent in his pajamas and going over to his Dad's tent, opening it... and finding it empty. The boy around for his Dad.
And then.. the scene cut to night-time in a marsh where a figure sinks the body of the boy in quicksand.
The film ended and Kyle was stunned.
What was a wholesome video through and through suddenly turned eerie, with horrifying imagery.
Had he not been so used to this sort of thing, had it not been so engulfed in his personality.. he would have been much more shaken at the terrible image.
He realized that he was camping. Just like the boy and his father. And it made him shudder, goosebumps forming.
