Reunion - by PM2K

[PM2K]

Another older story... and quite a grim horror one. You have been warned...

Reunion by PM2K (written 1999, posted 2006)

Becky wanders away from the glow of the campfire into the inky chill of the forest, leaving behind the mindless chatter of people grasping at thinning straws of past lives. This was a mistake, has been a mistake, is still a mistake... and the wine and whiskey and weed and shared memories weren't helping to mask that fact, despite the consistent urging of Harold...
So the curvy brunette left, slipping away during another round table story session recounting events and parties and games and classes and embarrassing encounters which may or may not have happened...
But really, who honestly cared if they did or did not? Not those laughing and gasping in mock humility around the blazing pyre built in homage to college days 15 years past. None save Becky, who weaves her way around trees and brush, shivering slightly, the chill lightly kissing the bare skin of her feet and ankles, clad only in leather sandals. Gooseflesh tickles her bare midriff, which divides her tight hip hugging black denim jeans from her yellow tank top, over which an open black jean jacket rests to her belt line.
Never should have let Harold talk me into this, she thinks. But he was so determined to show the old gang how successful he was, how the two of them were doing after all this time... after Donny... Becky shakes her head at the memories even as she continues to walk through the dark woods.

The campground was a favorite haunt of theirs during their Fillmore days, where the dorm mates would hang out, smoke dope, guzzle beer and in some cases get laid on the weekends. Since they graduated, a number of them still liked to hold regular gatherings here, extending an invite to all former members of the residence to pop by for some fun and nostalgia.
I should have destroyed that letter, Becky thinks. I knew the name on it... I knew what it had to be.... yet I stood there like a stupid bitch and let him open it... let him get dewy eyed... let him call Freddy and Joan and Daphne and George and get acquainted with his past life... and reconnect me with my own...
The moon is full and casts a cold light which enables Becky to keep walking through the forest, which remains all too familiar to her. None of them talk of Donny.... except in stories of what Donny did at Johnny's party, or remember that 'cid that Donny brought to the homecoming game or, man was I wasted, or who was that gal Donny banged on the balcony during our Halloween mixer, the one who kept shouting how his feet were like canoes?... or how one weekend he went hitchhiking to BC to join that nude commune and was never heard from again...

Becky shivers again, the sounds of laughter and false memory long since faded behind her. The damp leaves beneath her feet rustle as she walks, the crisp fall air etching her breath in ghostly threads in front of her face, her closely cropped hair barely registering the chill save at the tips brushing at the skin over her ears. He always liked her ears, she thinks, and her hair... her long, hip length hair...
Becky stops suddenly, staring into the glaring dark of the moonlit forest, as she sees the thick tangles of pale reeds ahead of her. Dried from the past summer's heat, they rustle with the sounds of bones in the cold night breeze. But it is not the temperature which makes her shiver.
"No.... how..." she mutters to herself. It was so perfect, so wrong, so dead.... to find it now... to find it, period. A decade and a half was so long a time to find anything valuable, much less something deliberately lost... Becky is shivering now, shaking almost violently, yet she finds herself walking closer to the dried cattails. A part of her mind sees the green of summer in those husks, and feels the sticky warmth of August deep beneath the chill of October. The years fall away, and she is once again there, pushing her way through thick grasses and reeds looking for.... Donny...

Becky giggles, her small halter top wet with the sweat which glistens on her ample breasts and skin, exposed everywhere save for the tattered cut-offs and slim sandals she wears. The path he left behind through the grasses and reeds is clear, and she quickly follows it. Her long hair, tied back away from her face, bounces and swishes across her bare back as she moves forward.
Donny always liked to camp here, sometimes alone, so he would tell her. A chance to communicate with nature, one on one. Other times, he would bring her to his secret place, and the things they did...
This time was one of his alone times; but, in a playful mood, she decided to surprise him. The duck pond was close by, a great setting for romantic and explicit encounters, but he always dissuaded her from swimming in it. Too shallow, he said, and the mud... well, it was deep, too deep...
The far shore was one long bank of it, a dangerous spot...
Becky's thoughts as she neared the pond were interrupted by sounds and giggles. Familiar... Moving more slowly, she quietly parts the reeds and stares, her heart leaping to her throat, her stomach ice.
Donny lay across the blanket... their blanket... with Tanya, her roommate at the residence. They were naked, and Donny's face was buried into Tanya's groin, his tongue working its magic on her wetness, causing her to writhe and buck. Tanya’s hands are wrapped around the back of his head as she tries to force him in deeper, and the way she cries and gasps indicates he was only too happy to oblige.
Becky doesn't know why she stands there and watches, feeling sicker by the moment... why she keeps staring, biting her lip to keep from crying, yet makes no move to leave. She stares as Tanya straddles him, their bodies slapping against each other, both moaning in lust and raw pleasure... Becky slowly backs away as Donny rolls Tanya over so her round ass is presented to him, and he kneels, slowly sliding his penis home... and they begin again...

Her bare hands touch the branches of a fallen tree, drowned ages past by the wetland, and as she hears Donny tell Tanya how special she is, how he never showed this place to anyone else...
Becky finds herself grabbing one of the heavier branches, pulling it loose from the decayed trunk... In a blur of motion she charges forward, a savage growl escaping as her coldness flares to rage. Wrapped up in their coupling, neither hear Becky's attack until the branch smacks hard against the back of Donny's head, dropping him in mid thrust.
Tanya, ass still in the air, glances over her shoulder to see Becky strike Donny a second and third time, her eyes wild, her hair, now bursting loose from its wrapping, whipping around in an angry swirling cloud.
Gasping, Tanya leaps to her feet and runs, not stopping to grab any of her clothing. Her flight goes unnoticed by Becky, who continues to beat Donny's head into mush. Blood, brain and bone fragments splatter her bare skin, but she doesn't stop until the branch disintegrates from the repeated impacts. She falls to her knees, panting and sobbing from the effort and the emotions unleashed, the curtain of red fading before her eyes.

A shrill scream barely registers at first, but slowly Becky's eyes begin to focus again. The cries continue, wails of terror and panic which cut through her like a knife of ice. Rising to her feet, legs muddy from kneeling, she staggers towards the sounds. Looking down, she sees a set of footprints, stamped into the dark mud, toes, soles and heels clearly visible in the wet earth.
The screams continue, and Becky rounds the curtain of reeds surrounding the pond and stops, staring. Before her stretches the black mud of the far bank, and near the centre of it, Tanya. She is sunk up to her bare breasts in a thick slurry of water and dark quaking muck, which she claws at desperately with flailing arms. The young woman is gasping and whimpering, her motions matched by the hungry gurgling and slurping made by the bog she is stuck in.
Becky stares in fascination, mesmerized by Tanya's nude form, and the black filth which greedily sucks on her body. She finds herself moving forward, careful not to stray from the firmer ground marked by the green reeds, and by the time her roommate's nipples slip beneath the quaking mud, she is close enough to touch her, if she chose to...

Tanya, in a total panic, twists around to look at Becky, an action which forces the tops of her breasts under, filling her cleavage with the wet slime imprisoning her. Her breathing is rapid, and she stretches out her right arm, which drips with thick clots of mud.
"Becky.... help me..." she gasps, the effort of speaking causing her to sink a little deeper so only the tops of her shoulders are visible. "Please...I...I can't feel any bottom....Oh, God...I can't feel any bottom!"
Becky stares into Tanya's eyes and sees the terror reflected there. She sees her roomie, the one who introduced her to dope, to her small circle of friends, to music... who held her while she puked from that tequila binge and cleaned her up... who...
"Oh, God...Becky...why are you just staring at me? Help me..."
...who introduced her to Donny... the man who played guitar and seduced her... who took the virginity she gladly surrendered... who's hot lips and tongue pleasured her in ways she never imagined before college... sucking on her nipples... nuzzling her groin... probing her...
"Please....help....Help! I'm sinking...I'm sinking....Oh God...save me....save me! Please...get me out of here... please..."
Becky looks down again to see Tanya... only her head and right arm are still above the roiling mire... Her hair floats around her head like a mass of seaweed, her arm waves inches from Becky's face, and her eyes bulge in complete panic. Part of her wants to grab her arm, haul her out, dripping with black slime, and hold her... Becky reaches out, leaning over the mire, her long hair falling free to drag on the mud... Tanya staring up, only her turned up face visible...her arm up...her mouth open, drawing in gulps of air...
Then Becky catches a glimpse of a sprawled body on the far bank... looks down... .and stares again at Tanya, who's brief glitter of hope vanishes...
"Becky... Becky... please...no...n..." then her pleadings are smothered by a torrent of mud pouring into her open mouth, choking off her cries into a series of burblings and gurgles... The filthy bubbles burst and gargle, splattering Becky's face and arm with dots of dark mud...
Then, as Tanya's nose and forehead melt into the violently quavering bog, her arm lunges forward and seizes Becky's hair, and clings with a determined grip. The girl screams then, snapped out of her near fugue state by the pain... Struggling to keep from being pulled in, Becky heaves back, her hands gripping her own hair, her back arching, and with a sudden yank manages to rip free, losing a fistful of hair in the process and landing on the wet earth behind her. Seated, she stares as Tanya's arm and hand slide under the quaking, bubbling mud, her fingers clenching at the last air they'd ever feel...

Becky shudders at the memory. Since then, she always feels those fingers around her hair, which even keeping it short failed to totally exorcise. Her very roots ached whenever she thinks of it, but here, now, the sensations were almost overpowering. The cold moonlight glitters on the remains of the pond, now shrunk to a sad puddle sitting in the centre of a wide plain of black mud.
Becky, standing now just inside the dead curtain of brittle reeds and grasses, shivers at the sight. It has changed... it has changed so much, she thinks, yet in some ways not nearly enough. The smell of the wet earth alone almost drives her away... it smelled too much of Tanya's last gurgling breath. Peering at the thinning shoreline marked by the reeds, Becky has a hard time picturing where the water had lapped, where the muddy ground dissolved into a watery morass which formed two graves...
It had taken her nearly an hour to leave her place in the mud, staring at the patch of wet slurry which had swallowed up Tanya. Another two or three hours passed before she was able to drag Donny's battered body to the same place and roll it in, noting with a shudder the speed at which his naked corpse slipped under the churned mud. Clothing and the blanket followed....
Becky had waited on edge for the phone call, the knock at the door, the whispers. Days stretched into weeks into months into years, times when it took all her nerve not to flinch at the mention of Donny or Tanya's names. But time buries old wounds...

Then this trip, this moment, and as Becky stands by the muddy edge she realizes some things cannot be buried as deep as one wants... She gives her head a shake and breathes a deep lungful of crisp fall air. Stupid girl... stupid... Coming down here... The others will be wondering. Hell, they may even search for her, and that might open... Becky turns to leave, wondering why the hell she came here in the first place. The fact her wanderings brought her here is.... worrisome.
She takes a step into the dried reeds when she hears something, rustling nearby. A field mouse, maybe? Frowning, Becky pauses. Under the rustling she could hear... giggling? Breathing? Scowling, she wonders if perhaps one or more of those back at the fire had followed her...
"Joan? Daphne? Freddy? Is that you?" Becky hesitates, alarm and dread stabbing her unexpectedly. The giggle is familiar... but that wasn't possible. Anger flares now, and she plows through the reeds. Ahead, she sees a glint, a flash of bare skin, and her anger fades to annoyance.

Of course... Joan and Fred. They've been making eyes at each other all evening, and now that Fred's broken up with his wife...
Peeking through the dried curtain of reeds, she glimpses a pair of forms, quite naked, very feminine legs wrapped tightly around a male torso, bare feet rubbing along the length of his limbs. Smiling, Becky backs away, only to brush against a cloth of some sort. Looking down, she feels her throat constrict and an icicle of fear stabs through her. Bending, she picks it up, and stares into the striped pattern of an old and very muddy blanket...
Whirling, Becky gasps as the two naked people stand just on the other side of the reeds, visible from the waist up. Neither looks unusual at first glance, except neither expels clouds of vapor as Becky does, who recognizes both of them...

Oh God... they haven't changed a bit...

Donny stands behind Tanya, arms folded around her. He smiles at Becky as his hands gently stroke her bare breasts. Tanya moving silently against him, eyes half open yet never leaving Becky for a moment.
"Oh, God....no..." Becky stammers, backing away. Somehow, seeing them like this, so healthy and young, was worse than if they crawled with the slime of being 15 years dead... Donny smiles, and nuzzles Tanya's neck. She closes her eyes in quiet pleasure, then open again to stare right at Becky. The couple moves forward as one, revealing their naked glory to her, who keeps backing up, her eyes locked on the sight. There wasn't a speck of mud on them, despite walking on it.... their skin betrays no trace of decay, as perfect as the day they died...
They keep moving towards her, their feet squelching in the mud, yet still clean of its filthy touch...

"No... no..." Becky croaks, her sandaled feet now trodding on the black mud of the pond's bank. It is dried stiff, and she is trying to gather up the nerve to turn and run... but she couldn't turn her back on these... things. She backs her way closer to the middle of what was once the pond's bottom, even as the couple matches her step by step.
When the mud suddenly dissolves into a cool jelly beneath her, Becky lets out a squawk of surprise as she plunges thigh deep. The cold mud instantly seals her jeans to her legs, forcing out the air into bubbles around its jiggling mass. Her feet, tilted downward, feel nothing but slime, and with a squeal she could feel herself being drawn rapidly downwards. Struggling, all she succeeds in doing is stirring the mud into a looser slurry, which slops and gurgles happily around her..
In no time Becky is up to her waist, and in her panic to escape she fails to notice the couple standing over her. The cold mud holds her pelvis tightly, its wet mass pressing heavily against her trapped limbs and groin. Now seeing Donny and Tanya standing within a few feet of her, a shrill scream bubbles past her lips.
Tanya then stretches out on the mud in front of Becky, as she struggles to stay afloat, rolling onto her right side. Lifting her left leg and bending her knee so it stood akimbo, she sighs, her mouth moving mutely as Donny, smiling, positions himself behind her.

The quiet, hungry look in her eyes chills Becky, even as the mud gulps her down to her breasts. Donny presses himself behind Tanya and enters her. He pumps her slowly, and the pair begin writhing, yet they keep their glittering eyes on Becky, watching as she flails away on the mire's churning surface...
This can't be happening... it can't be, she thinks, feeling the wet press of the mud which cradles her breasts beneath her yellow top... which coldly licks against her submerged bare midriff even as it squeezes her tight... She can clearly hear the squelching of the bog which gurgles and bubbles around her... Yet through it all, through their squirmings, neither Donny nor Tanya make a sound, or disturb the mud's dark surface, which leaves no trace on their bodies...

Becky gasps, her breath shortened by the heavy, sticky press of the wet earth. Her breasts submerge, and she is disturbed to discover her nipples are stiff from the cold and the sensations of the quicksand rubbing against them through the fabric. Shuddering, she feels the cold clammy muck ooze over her shoulders, her jacket being sealed wetly against her skin. Through a great effort she manages to keep her arms above the mire, but all they can do is claw shallow trenches in the mud, which quickly fill with moisture and collapse. Helplessly, she continues to sink as the lovers copulate, and when the slimy ooze surrounds her neck she realizes they want her to see this... make it so she can't help but see it...
The mud now pressing against her lower jaw, Becky watches as their motions quicken. Tanya's mouth opens wide in silent pleasure... she writhes and bucks against Donny's thrusts, his strong arms enfolding her tightly.... yet their eyes keep staring lifelessly into Becky's own. Unable to keep her arms up any longer, she lets the bog drag them under, a motion which drops her past her mouth into the mire. Her nose now mere moments from slipping under, her ears stopped up with mud so the only sound she hears is the hammering of her heart and her raspy breathing, Becky stares on, watching the scene...

This... this is a nightmare... Becky thinks.... I'm going to wake up next to the fire... bad weed... that's it... and then her eyes bulge in a combination of terror and impending suffocation, for as her nose goes under.... as Donny and Tanya silently mime screams of raw pleasure.... their bodies collapse... crumble... dissolve into the slime of death... Their muddy, flesh stripped skulls gape at her for a moment before melting into shapeless decay...
Screaming below the mud, Becky thrashes in horror, and in her panic sucks in a choking mouthful of foul liquid earth. Coughing, gurgling, her movements prove to be her last, as her struggles allow the mire to draw the rest of her down with a shuddering slurp, the top of her head slipping smoothly under its churning, bubbling surface...