oh no my obsession with hannibal and cannibalism as a form of love and devotion has cost me everything. and by everything i mean my fUCKIGN SANITY.

The Plight of Muse Hill

Chapter Two: Miscreants

Tristan Carter woke up at 7:00 AM MON DEC 23, according to his currently hysterical alarm clock. After turning the alarm off with resolve to go and get, the way he knew go-getters should, he promptly shoved his face back into his pillow for half an hour. He spent some time agonizing over the lost time, but, in the end, he decided he didn’t know what he would have done with an entire hour anyway. He got out of bed reluctantly and grabbed a towel on his way to the bathroom for a shower.

Tristan started to perk up under the stream of hot water. Once he was sufficiently awake, he began to get excited. He had two favorite people; one of these people was his twelve year old brother, Warren, and the other was Cassandra Murgatroyd. Cassandra, or Casey, had been Tristan’s best friend since they’d met on Halloween night, while out trick-or-treating on his ninth birthday. From practically day one, they had been getting into trouble together. Tristan couldn’t be sure when they had stopped getting caught doing the things they had been told not to do, or when they had started breaking the law, but he was sure the two events coincided. Today they planned to commit the misdemeanor breaking and entering without intent to commit a felony on the premises, because not much else could be said to be as fun in as small a town as this one. Tristan finished washing himself, but was reluctant to turn off the hot water and step out onto the cold tile beyond the shower curtain.

After he was dried off, he sauntered back to his bedroom with his used towel draped over his shoulder; his mom was at work, his dad was out of town, and his younger brother was still in bed, so Tristan felt no shame whatsoever in crossing the hallway fully nude. The experience was strange and felt scandalous, but was not at all unpleasant. He slung his towel on his bed when he reached his room and then closed the door so he could see himself in his full length mirror.

For the most part, Tristan didn’t care about his appearance, but he could never stop from brooding over his own reflection. He didn’t mind being short, which was good because he was barely 5’7” and probably would stay that way, or how short he had to keep his light brown hair so it would cooperate, or that, at the age of seventeen, he still had absolutely no facial hair; however, he did agonize a little over how thin and unmuscular he was. Of course, if he had really wanted to change that he would’ve had a workout routine, but the solution to slightness, in his opinion, worse than the problems. His teeth were straight and he took good care of them, so that was good. The one thing he truly cared about when it came to his appearance, though, was the one thing he truly liked about his appearance: his eyes, which were precisely the color of amber. This was very different from the rest of his family.

In fact, almost everything about his appearance was dissimilar to his family, all of whom were tall, and had blond hair and blue eyes. For years, this didn’t strike Tristan as odd, but when he finally noticed the vast difference, he started questioning other things as well (e.g. he shared neither his facial features nor key personality traits with his family).

It was his thirteenth birthday when he finally asked if he was adopted. The question had been burning within him for months by this point, and he couldn’t resist any more – relatives from both sides of his family had come for his big day, and it bothered him deeply that it was evident in one way or another that they were all related to each other. The question fell off his tongue and gracelessly onto the table at dinner almost immediately after he blew out the candles on his Halloween themed cake, with no less than nine members of his extended family present. Everyone at the table froze mid-whatever-they-were-doing and stared blankly at him, except Warren, who wore the most humorous expression of surprise. In the end, he got his answer: yes, he was adopted. And he hated that. The fact that he was adopted didn’t change how much he loved his parents or his brother; the fact that he was adopted had never changed anything, really, except maybe Tristan's perspective a little. Eventually he got over it and moved on. He had asked about his birth parents, of course, but never truly felt the need to meet them. With the parents who had chosen him, he knew in his heart, he had everything the parents who hadn’t wanted him couldn’t give.

Tristan glanced at his clock: 7:47. He dressed quickly in many layers of warm clothes and went downstairs. He wasn’t in the mood for breakfast, but he scarfed down some pop-tarts and a glass of milk anyway. He fed Barker – Barker was the family dog, a giant, fluffy black, white and brown Collie, whose name was inflicted upon him by an overly excited eight-year-old Warren – and went to the front door, passing through the living room, which was dominated by an enormous Christmas tree that had been decorated to death. Before leaving, Tristan took his warmest jacket and favorite beanie off of the coatrack, pulled them on, and picked his truck keys up off the table by the door.

Tristan was the very proud owner of a truly ancient Ford F-150. The truck was old and had a huge number of miles on it, sure, but its former owner had taken excellent care of it and it was still in fairly good condition. Tristan had gotten it for his sixteenth birthday. Tristan crossed the lawn to the street where it was parked and hopped in the cab. The truck had never, in the year and almost two months he had had it, failed to start on the first try.

He was in front of Casey’s house in two minutes. He blew the horn and waited, knowing it would be few minutes before she emerged. Tristan beat his thumbs on the steering wheel rhythmically while looking out the windshield at his surroundings. White. That is what he saw, but that could be said about any place in or around Muse Hill this time of year. The houses all around weren’t hard to see under the snow, they just weren’t the most prevalent thing at present. Casey lived in the neighborhood adjacent to Tristan’s, and, while the houses here weren’t truly any nicer, they were newer and somewhat better looking. Tristan looked at the clock at 7:59, and knew that, if the clock on his recently installed stereo’s display was precisely accurate, Casey would be walking out of her house in one minute. Casey was always exactly where she said she would be at precisely when she said she would be there. As if on cue, the front door soon opened and possibly the most glamorous girl Tristan had ever seen was revealed. Tristan’s face fell somewhat in disappointment; the girl was an unwelcome sight.

Before Tristan could start panicking, though, Casey walked around her sister (who was walking slowly, as though she didn’t have anywhere important to go and had come outside for lack of anything better to do, like when one wanders aimlessly around his house out of boredom to eventually find himself staring blankly at the contents of his refrigerator) and smiled broadly at Tristan. Tristan smiled back instantly and realized, for the millionth time just how deeply, profoundly hopeless he was. Since that fateful Halloween night, Tristan had been obsessed with Casey, and they were instant best friends. A few years later, when Tristan had started going through puberty and had started experiencing all sorts of strange attractions and urges, and started noticing – ahem, noticing – girls, it was Casey he noticed, and practically nobody else. Yet, unfortunately, and also fortunately, about the time Tristan began noticing girls, Casey did too. This was fortunate because 1) Tristan knew how romance could get in the way of (and ruin) friendships from movies he’d seen and books he’d read, and 2) Tristan’s ego was spared being rejected out of disinterest or something else that would have marked him as faulty. This was unfortunate, though, because Tristan wholeheartedly believed that, though he hated himself for it for the pain he was inflicting on himself and for the strain it would inevitably put on their friendship, he was helplessly in love with her. Deborah (Debby), Casey’s sister, Tristan had learned the hard way, was a poor substitute with an awful personality, despite her ridiculously good looks – this substantiated, for Tristan at least, the trite expression claiming that God doesn’t give with both hands.

Casey wasn’t the least bit butch. She was pretty in a conventional way. She was tall (taller than Tristan was, at any rate) and thin, and it was quite possible she might have had decent curves constantly hiding behind her shapeless clothes that somehow she pulled off flawlessly. Her hair was bright red and cut short, styled deftly around her round face that boasted soft, friendly features. Her eyes were grass green and accented with a little brown eyeliner, the only makeup she wore. Her pretty smile revealed bright white teeth. Her skin was pale and almost entirely without blemish. Anyone would have been lucky to be with her.

Casey approached, opened the passenger door and hopped onto the seat. She was still smiling as she pulled something out of her purse, “It’s finally finished!” she exclaimed brightly.

“What is?” Tristan asked before he realized what she was holding. It was blank CD – had been a blank CD – in a clear plastic case.

“The playlist. I mean, it only took a few minutes to burn the CD, but it’s finally done in that it’s taken us so long to agree on the music.”

They had been trying to put together a compilation of their favorite songs for weeks. It wasn’t difficult for either to choose ten of their favorite songs, but it was difficult for both to agree on the other’s choices, as the Venn diagram of music Tristan liked and music Casey liked was, with rare exceptions, two circles that did not touch. It wasn’t at all surprising that Casey had put the songs on a CD immediately after they had finally agreed on which songs to use and in what order to use them.

Casey took the disc out of the case, put it in the CD player and pressed play.

The drive to the edge of town took ten minutes. Today’s outing would be a very tame one. Very straight forward. They would drive to the barbeque restaurant at the edge of town, park there, and walk the next half-mile to the abandoned warehouse. They had passed the warehouse countless times in their lives and had always been curious about it. Today they would visit it and see what there was to see. Tristan and Casey went on these outings just for the fun of it, for the thrill of adventure, the rush provided by the idea of getting caught, because there was little to do in the small town of Muse Hill except bend the rules. Not all of their adventures were illegal, though, and none of them caused anyone major harm, so they were unconflicted. All they were going to do today was get into the warehouse, explore it a bit, and get out. Only that. Nothing else. Breaking and entering would be the extent of their excitement. Perhaps they would get lunch together afterwards.

The first song on the playlist was the longest and took up the entire trip to Porky’s; it was also Tristan’s favorite, so he was distracted from navigating the road, which was covered in snow and ice. Casey spent a good several minutes playing it, the song, on thin air and Tristan shuddered to think what sound she would be making on a real guitar.

They trekked the half mile the rest of the way to the warehouse in about ten minutes, all the while wishing they were still in Tristan’s Truck. They had decided to leave the truck at Porky’s because, strictly speaking, they weren’t allowed to leave Muse Hill, and the Warehouse was just a little past the border. The street that passed by the warehouse was a busy one and some passerby might have recognized the truck as Tristan’s parked on the side of the road in front of the warehouse where he was trespassing in an area he wasn’t supposed to be in the first place. It was far less risky to walk.

The warehouse was enclosed by a tall chain link fence. On the side of the fence facing the road was bolted a metal sign warning away prospective trespassers, which Casey mocked (“Well, I guess we have to go back now.”) since there was no evidence of a security system or surveillance cameras. Once they reached the gate, Casey pulled her lockpick out of a jacket pocket, and knelt to start on the single padlock standing in their way.

Tristan took this time to look around. The endless snow was somewhat drier, more powdery here than at his house seven miles away: it had fallen more recently. All he could smell was the distinct scent of chilled air. Lining the road and surrounding the warehouse were hundreds of evergreens. It was then, looking at the bases of the trees, that he saw something unexpected. It was mostly hidden behind the line of trees on Tristan’s right, probably a hundred yards away, but it couldn’t be mistaken. And it was magnificent. A buck, whose shoulders probably came up higher than the top of Tristan’s head, with enormous antlers, the time of year notwithstanding, stood, peeking out of the foliage, with one front hoof raised slightly. Tristan tiptoed toward Casey without looking away from the deer, careful not to make too much noise or move too suddenly, afraid of scaring it off despite all the distance there was between them and it. He touched Casey’s shoulder and winced when she yelped. But her startled utterance didn’t send the buck running. Tristan pointed covertly and whispered in her ear. Casey didn’t see it at first, but once she stood up, she saw it immediately and a second later, a broad, delighted smile broke out over her face.

Both Tristan and Casey stayed as motionless as possible and stared at the stately creature, which didn’t move either . . . until it did, that is. When it did move, it was almost as though it hadn’t moved at all, but had switched positions instantaneously. One second it was standing, and the next it had collapsed. In fact, it had been tackled and was now on its stomach, one of its front legs bent the wrong way, with something small and dark, impossible to identify, on its back. The abrupt change in the scene the two teenagers were taking in was accompanied by a disturbing crunch and a terrible, high-pitch bleat. Tristan and Casey watched in shocked horror as whatever had taken down the buck dragged it back into the trees.

Casey, trembling, took one step forward, outstretched one hand, began to utter an expletive, but did not finish: "holy sh-", then did nothing else; Tristan felt his heart beating very fast and very hard in his chest, but couldn’t think how to respond to what he had just seen.