Good Ratios

The cabin had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The speaker blasting EDM outside was dulled little by the rotting plywood walls and the smoke from the campfire outside drifted slowly across the cracked roof.

“O wow. You’re a romantic.”

Taylor’s mocking smile came out of the shadows into the light of the candle. “What? O no, I just thought, you know…” Alex looked at her, awkward and blushing, “the lighting… good for making memories,” his lips thinned, as embarrassment rolled through his chest. He avoided meeting her eyes.

“And wine? This looks expensive,” she said holding up the purple bottle, marked ‘Vino Liber’, a minimalist drawing of an athletic man with a laurel either dancing or running, it seemed purposefully vague, in tandem with a spotted feline.

“Twelve dollars at the Co-op. What can I say, nothing’s too classy.” It was oddly dusty when he had bought it, but he’d wiped it down easily enough.

“Really? You didn’t want to go with Danny's mushrooms? They looked gourmet.”

“Yeah Danny conflates the idea of ‘hiking trip’ with, uh… well any sort of trip really. Not the kind of weekend I was looking for to be honest.” He laughed, and tried to casually lean against the wall, but quickly pulled away picking at a splinter in his palm.

She stepped closer, her eyes roguish and looking straight through him, “So what’s this all about?”

“Well, I just wanted to talk.”

“Talk? This looks suspiciously like you’re trying to swoon me or something?” She said pointing to the thick wool blanket on the floor beneath the window.

“Well, I mean…”

She interrupted him, “It's very sweet, but don’t you think we should pick this up at a different time? We came up here to hang with everyone else too, and I’d feel bad if…”

“Yeah, sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed…” an alarm went off on his phone and he pulled it out of his pocket. It was marked ‘!!!SHORT ANSWER!!!’. “Ah shit.”

Taylor leaned over to look at the screen, her freckled face coming close to his so he could feel her breath on his cheek, “What’s up?”

“I forgot to submit the assignment before we lost service.”

“I think Aggie said she had reception on that rock near the road.”

“Sick. Well I should probably go take care of that.”

She took his hand for a moment and squeezed. Burning thoughts spun up at the thought that she might pull him nearer, but all she said was, “Hurry up or they’ll be completely trashed before you get back.”

He mustered a smile, “It’ll only take a sec.”

He picked up the blanket and bottle and walked out the cabin door, passing the campfire, where Danny had the other three girls laughing at some escapade of his. They handed around a bottle of cheap vodka and Danny was playing his techno. The kind that made you feel like you were in a music video for all of a minute before you needed a significant amount of foreign substance to appreciate the repetitive beat. Alex shook his head as he opened up the silver hatchback of the van.

He looked at the bottle and shrugged. Taking the corkscrew from his pocket, he popped it open and took a draw. Not terrible. His thoughts drifted back to earlier in the day.

“What did you say her last name was?”

The day was perfect, the sky clear and a sea breeze keeping the sharp intensity of the sun welcoming and caressing. Him and Danny were sitting in the thoroughly destroyed front yard of their college house, the house they were sharing with three other guys that summer. Danny sat on the block wall by the street, feet swinging energetically, his backpack on the ground below him.

“Taylor Mancado,” Alex answered as he threw pebbles at beer cans strewn across the yard, dead marines, he’d heard someone call them once.

“Got her.” Danny put his Ray Bans on top of his bleached blond hair and squinted at his phone. He played water polo for the college, so he was always tan and muscular and his hair was dyed from too much time wrestling other muscular men half-naked in chlorinated pools. “Yeah she’s cute,” he said as he scrolled through her social media. “Kinda grungy though.”

“Yeah, a little.”

“Ha, but you like that weird stuff,” he said, giving him a knowing look.

“What? What do you mean ‘weird stuff’?”

“You know? Loopy, crunchy, a little wacky.”

“I don’t think you know what those words mean.”

“Whatever. Which one’s are coming with us?”

Alex leaned over to look at the other girls in Taylor’s posted photos, a page he had become highly familiar with since their first conversation. “I’m not sure, I don’t think she said their names, but Aggie’s in Media with us, it’s her van. That’s her right there.” Alex clicked on a photo of Taylor and Aggie in an antique store kissing a detached mannequin head held between them. The caption read ‘ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone been decapitated in the glorious revolution’.

Danny scrunched his nose up and looked side-eyed at Alex.

“You’re a dick man. She’s really cool, you and Aggie will get along. What are you trying to do on a hiking trip anyways?” he said as he sent a can spinning from the table.

“O that’s funny coming from you. After you’ve been fawning over this girl for the last few weeks. I haven’t heard the end of it, ‘Taylor this, Taylor that, O, I don’t think Taylor likes me’. She obviously does numb nuts or else she wouldn’t have invited you.”

“I don’t know man, we’ll see.”

“You said there’s four of 'em going right?” Danny smirked, “Two to four. That’s just good odds. An ideal ratio I’d say. Ooo, I hope it’s these two.” Danny went to hold up the phone again, but a beat up minivan screeched up the street.

Aggie hopped out, as Alex and Danny stood up. “Hey guys, you can throw your bags in the back, hopefully it fits,” Aggie said as she threw open the packed trunk. Aggie was short and stocky, and had thickly calloused hands from unending hours in the climbing gym. She helped them pile their bags atop the others.

They got into the middle row, and Taylor spun around in the passenger seat, “Hey!” She was wearing a thin tank top and a ragged baseball cap, a brown ponytail sticking out the back. “So stoked you guys are able to come. Nice to meet you Danny, this is Aggie,” she pointed to the back, “That’s Carlie and Maya.”

The two girls in the back seats said hi and Danny easily slipped into conversation with them, his bronze forearm holding onto the top of Danny’s headrest as he talked. A conversationalist as always. Too smooth. Alex tried to shut down the voice that jeered at him for being as clumsy and fumbling as he would appear in comparison this weekend.

Alex introduced himself. Maya was undeniably pretty with tanned skin, full cheeks, and black wavy hair. Carlie was blonde and seemed nerdy in a very endearing way.

“Did you guys finish the assignment?” Alex asked.

“Yeah dude, like two days ago, I didn’t want to worry about it when all I should be thinking about is freakin trees and rocks,” Taylor responded.

“Damn. I’ve gotta do it on the drive out,” Alex said as he took out his computer and the news magazine he was doing his assignment on.

“Took Ricklan’s advice, huh? Gotta be able to feel the sources,” Sara said holding her hands up like a preacher, referring to their professor’s guidance to not get all their news online and read it from ‘tangible’ outlets so the importance of the headline wasn’t lost amongst all their ‘Facegram, Instabook, reality TV, bullshit’.

“Actually, I just snagged this at the doctor’s office after I saw an interesting story. Help escape the mindless scroll and the frying brain cells.”

“Escape, that’s where you’re in luck my friend, I’ve got something to help you get the most out of our outdoor experience, leave the whole world behind and then some.” Danny produced a bag of small, moist, mushy gray things.

“Yeah that’s more of a molecular level deep fry,” Alex told him looking out the window. Of course, Danny was the most ‘adventurous’ friend he’d made in college.

Maya leaned forward, “Are those mushrooms? I’ve never actually seen them, can I look?” She took the bag, stared at them and squeezed them between her fingers. “Weird.”

“You know,” Carlie chimed in, “I read some people think the beginnings of western culture started from hallucinogens. There’s these ancient cult gatherings that people would attend and lose their fear of death, they think from things very similar to mushrooms. A few believe it started Christianity.”

“Well I don’t know about all that meeting God stuff, but this is a whole bag of guaranteed good times,” Danny said.

Alex ignored Danny’s continued ranting and flipped to the page he was doing his assignment on. The story was on the particularly grisly murders of three small children ranging from age two to six in an Oregon suburb. The mother had apparently suffered a drunken psychotic break, but was completely normal by all accounts prior. Body parts of the children were found spread throughout their home and in the yard, torn apart with the force of a ‘grizzly bear’. Unfortunately, many of the remains were found to be gnawed on and masticated by wild animals, and even, though it wasn’t confirmed yet, by the mother herself. The police at first suspected high strength narcotics or a wicked mixture of prescription pills, but all they found were three empty wine bottles. There was a picture of the brand below. It was dark purple glass, with an off white label, and a logo that looked very familiar; an ivy-crowned man and a large cat. ‘Vino Liber.’

Hmm, an odd coincidence. No, he thought, he probably saw the bottle when he skimmed through the article the first time and subconsciously picked it at the store. He thought he’d chosen randomly since he knew nothing about wine and that one was in the cheap section. But that’s trendy labels and good marketing for you, sly bastards. He didn’t know if he wanted to drink a vintage strong enough to make you kill your kids though. A bottle for each one, huh?

“What are you doing your assignment on?” Carlie asked. Everyone else had fallen asleep and Carlie seemed like she had grown bored of Aggie’s John Denver and Fleetwood Mac playlist.

“This mom that killed her three kids, tore them apart actually, they aren’t sure how.”

“O, god, that kinda thing makes me sick. We had one sosh professor who said that women who did stuff like that were usually diagnosed sane later on. She said it was more likely stress from societal pressures to be a good mom and financial disparities. I don’t know. I guess they all say the same things about ‘the baby never stopped crying’. Makes you think at least a little something crazy must’ve got into ‘em.”

“Yeah, this one’s a bit different. They said they found bite marks from animals but also from her, like she’d been eating them.”

“Yeah I don’t think you can chalk that up to money problems.”

“Probably not.”

Alex grabbed his computer out of the car and wandered over to the rock Taylor had mentioned. He turned on his hotspot. With the wine warming his chest, he thought with an inward immature smile ‘hotspot’ sounded vaguely promiscuous. Surprisingly enough, his computer connected fine. He had finished most of the assignment and he fibbed his way through the last few questions, not bothering to check the article again. He watched the small circle spin and a green check mark appear next to ‘Submitted’.

He closed the laptop and the fan spun with a last little huff. The night up here was crisp, and there was no light pollution as they were above the cloud cover. He couldn’t see the city he knew was glaring beneath the rolling waves of moonlit clouds, a glittering gypsum desert that looked as though he could stroll right across, if he had a mind to.

“Ain’t it somethin.”

Alex jolted up, “Holy shit! God, you scared me.”

A man stood a few feet away. His face was half-hidden beneath a wide brimmed hat with a feather, like the ones hipsters wear, and he had a thick, curly black beard, and a face that suggested he was of Turkish or Middle Eastern descent. The man turned to him, an unhinged look flashed in his eyes in an expression Alex couldn’t name. The memory of an animatronic prospector in a haunted mineshaft came to mind, the way his eyes shifted from side to side and gleaned like he was trying to hide a smile. The man leaned on his walking stick and laughed, deep and bellowing.

“Didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I heard the music, wanted to make sure no one was causing too much trouble.”

“No, we’re all okay. I can ask them to turn it down…”

“No, no. Can’t think of a better place to let loose.” He closed his eyes and breathed in. “The mountain air, wild, how it just jumps down in your bones, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s beautiful up here.”

“Well, don’t be getting too crazy, in the company of young ladies like that, one has to keep a clear head, you don't want to make a fool of yourself” he giggled to himself, “altitude can have a strange effect on the mind and such.” He seemed like he had more to say, but all that came forth was, “Goodnight now, take care.” The man turned and walked up the road whistling to himself. Alex couldn’t pick out much detail, but he was pretty sure he saw a golden pine insignia on the hat. It was hard to see in the dark but that would mean he worked for the forest service.

That guy had to have been high. His eyes were completely glassed out. Guess the forest service would be a great job for a dude that just wanted to be stoned out in the woods. Works out. But still… after describing the gruesome murders of children it didn’t feel great to have a strange man watching from the shadows. He’d feel better when he was with the group again.

Alex made his way back to the van and tucked his computer away. The bottle of wine he’d left there was gone and he turned as he heard his name being called.

“Alex! Alex!” Taylor ran up to him, her cheeks rosy and the antiseptic fumes of vodka on her breath. “We’re playing corners,” she burped a little, “C’mon!” She pulled him by the sleeves of his hoodie toward where the others were seated around a cooler, cards splayed atop it and in their hands.

Taylor suddenly stopped and crouched down squinting at the ground. She pulled Alex down to look with her. “Ha, here we go mister, you know what this is?”

“Poop,” Alex said crudely. She gave him a look. Taylor was a very enthusiastic environmental studies major.

“This is the old shooby-dooby.”

“Huh?”

“Scat! Ooo buddy, that’s a big kitty right there,” she said grinning.

“A bobcat?”

“No, cougar. Mountain lion.”

“Oof.”

“Take it easy, this is probably ancient. Gotta love it though.”

She pulled him the rest of the way to the fire, where Alex noticed the bottle of wine at Aggie’s feet. So much for romantic endeavors. But there was always tomorrow. And he had special hopes for swimming in the alpine lakes. What better place for a more transparent conversation.

The hand ended with everyone cheering and Aggie, the apparent loser, having to drink from the bottle of wine. Alex felt his stomach turn at the thought of wine and vodka mixing in his belly. He was never much of a drinker.

Aggie finished her chug and somewhat out of breath said, “Dude, that is damn good!”

“Ha, glad you like it,” Alex said good naturedly, catching an apologetic glance from Taylor.

“Come sit down man, I need some back up, barely snuck by that round,” Danny said as he patted the seat next to him. Alex joined them for the drinking game and the girls very soon finished the wine, so when Danny and him lost they were forced to drink the cheap vodka. Danny took it like a champ. But Alex walked into the woodline, struggling to keep it down, eyes watering, and bent over with the sour taste.

He finally stood up and wiped his eyes, surprised the spirit hadn’t brought up his lunch. Then he caught movement beyond the reach of the firelight, and struggled to see, his eyes unadjusted. He immediately thought of the wandering bearded man, but he saw the ferns shift again, low to the ground. Just a flicker of taupe in the pine filtered starlight. He stood and watched for a long moment. And then another. But nothing else moved.

He eyed the trees as he went and sat back down. “Another game?” Danny asked.

Carlie stood up and took her jacket off, “Nah, I’m feeling kinda groovy, but this songs basically a lullaby, put on something better.” Danny changed the song to a recent hit, and Carlie started dancing around the fire and singing along. Alex winced as it was somewhat slurred and off key. The other girls quickly jumped up and joined in.

Danny shot him a very cool and serene smile. He looked like he was peeled off a movie billboard, fresh from a photo shoot. “Great idea you had coming up here,” he said as he laced his fingers behind his head and looked up at the pristine mountain sky.

“I’m just full of them,” Alex responded and he took a small swig from the vodka. It went down much smoother this time. They joked with each other and Alex fended off Danny’s questions about what happened in the cabin. Alex soon relaxed despite himself and as he stood up to adjust his chair out of the smoke, the rush to his head made him think he was quite tipsy.

He went to sit back down, as Carlie in her drunken state tripped and fell face first into the fire. Danny and Alex quickly reached for her and pulled her out, but not before her face had spent time with a sparking and spitting red hot log. They dragged her away and Alex prepared himself to see her horribly burnt, as she held her stomach and rolled back and forth. Alex realized she was breathless and laughing. She was shining with sweat and had a smear of ash on her face, but seemed otherwise untouched.

Danny looked at him wide eyed, his hands on his temples. Maya and Aggie staggered over, “You should see your face, ha, so stupid!” Maya said, pointing at the girl on the ground.

Alex knelt down next to Carlie’s laughter racked body and gingerly pulled her hair away from her forehead, thinking maybe she was too intoxicated to feel the burn. Not a mark. “I could have sworn…”

Danny knelt down too, “I thought she was a goner for sure man.”

“Me too.” Alex looked around and stood up. Where was Taylor? He saw brush move in the woods near the cabin, like something was crawling in the roots. “Taylor?” he called out. There was no response but he heard a wet lapping noise. He walked in a semi-circle around the brush so he could see the other side. He saw Taylor’s outdoor sandals kicking in the bushes, a fur covered mass above her. His stomach dropped as the beast turned and looked at him, two amber moons flashing in its kohl lined eyes, like they were inked on with pure fear. They were paralyzing and explicit in their meaning, stay still and it’ll be over quickly.

He saw Taylor move under the lion as her delicate arm wrapped around its neck and she pulled her face up, rubbing against the creature like it was her favorite stuffed animal. The mountain lion licked at her face and her neck, and Alex flinched to see the gleam of fangs come so near her throat. It was only a matter of moments he thought.

Taylor opened her eyes at him, and they were aglow with pure joy. “Alex! Look I made a friend, I told you he was around here!”

“Taylor, I think we need to back away very slowly...” he tried to whisper, but it came out harsh and too loud. She jumped up and jogged to him. The cougar stalked slowly behind, lithe, its gaze unshifting. As he reached to take Taylor’s arm, she pinned him to the tree by the hips with surprising force.

“You know we were just thinking how cute you were!” she said, head swaying but her eyes locked onto his.

“Taylor we really should get in the van…” he muttered, but he began to shake as the cougar came up to his feet.

“You remind me of a puppy, you know when you see a puppy so cute and small you just want to eat it up whole? See if you can fit its little skull in your mouth?” She came close to him and gnashed her teeth jokingly. He could smell her sweat and feel the heat coming off her skin. Too warm, he thought. Had Danny brought ecstasy or something? He remembered seeing that some drugs could cause you to overheat, hyperthermia.

He felt the tip of her tongue run across the path of his jugular. At any other time this would’ve been a welcome sign that things were going favorably, but the mountain lion continued to pace, waiting. He felt a sudden sharp pinch at his neck and he pushed Taylor off, falling backwards into the light of the clearing, holding his throat.

Taylor was chuckling and he saw her mouth was crimson with his blood, “I was right, you do taste sweet! Like red honey!” Where was the mountain lion? He didn’t see it near Taylor. He turned around in his sprawled position and was baffled by the scene before him.

The other three girls were prancing around Danny’s crumpled form near the firepit, wide grins spread across their innocent faces, and Alex began to wonder if they’d all taken the mushrooms while he was away, or if Danny had spiked the bottle somehow, because now he was surely hallucinating. Entwined around their arms the girls had snakes, earthen scaled diamond-backs, whose deviled-tongues flicked out to the rhythm of a pop singer still blaring from the speaker. They held the serpents aloft like Pentecostals, as they twirled, and their wild feet kicked up the dirt around Danny’s unmoving body. He watched helpless, as Maya stopped and with the ingenuous excitement of giving someone a gift to unwrap, gently lowered the snake towards Danny’s face.

He went to cry out, but there was a deafening snap and a thrashing, like a massive tree uprooting and falling. Then only red searing pain that faded to black.

Alex awoke being crushed by a fallen pine. He found he couldn’t move his toes and was sure his back must be broken. His face was pressed into the ground and his vision obscured by branches, but he could still see the girls at their ballet. Other shapes flickered in shifting shadows behind them. The feral forms of cougars and coyotes, blazing red foxes, and stomping bears, all that came and yelped at the women’s feet and nuzzled at their cheeks. He couldn’t be sure if the beasts were there or if they were wild shadows cast by the erratic dancing and ever rising flames.

Then, simultaneously, they bent down and picked up Danny, as though his 180 pounds of muscle were a feather pillow. They began to twirl again, a spinning wheel with him as the spokes. He awoke and screamed only briefly. The sound was unreal. Wet, horrendous popping, followed by the sound of entrails and blood splattering the earth. And laughter. Ecstatic laughter, like a funnier joke had never been told. Alex thought in shock of Danny’s ‘ideal ratio’ and how easily he’d come apart by his four limbs, each now in the hands of one of the manic girls.

Alex coughed up the aerosolized taste of iron and struggled to breath through the weight of the tree. He blinked hard and grunted as he willed any part of him to move. Nothing. He opened his eyes to Taylor holding the branches apart, peering down at him like she’d found a forgotten toy on Christmas.

“There you are! Always feigning shyness, but I know you want to party with us! Don’t you?”

No word he thought made it to his broken lips. Her hands came down like steel vices and gripped the back of his head, fingers hooked into his cheeks. They tasted like honey and they ripped his skull from his spine as easy as a comb from the hive.

He soared through the night, bounced off boughs, and cracked against the granite faces. He rolled almost endlessly, until at last he landed with a splash, and bobbed off down a rambling spring.

The bearded man perched above the smooth waters watched him float on past, “Ha, I warned you, in the company of young women like that it’s only too easy to lose your head.”