THE FACELESS MONSTER OF HICKORY HILLS Matthew Panayos
Bergen County Academies
The soil wasn’t soft. It was as if the rock protruding from the ground nearby was part of a much larger unseen rock, a rock that was mostly buried underneath a shallow layer of dirt. All this rock had to experience the world was a small portion exposed to the air. It could feel a few drops of rain, a gust of wind here and there, and even an animal from time to time, but the thick canopy ensured it could never feel direct sunlight, so it sat in darkness, incapable of escaping its tie to the ever-present ground. Rine was uncomfortable on the unseen rock, lying in a ball so close to the truth. He knew he should get up and run for the people, his only hope of survival, but he didn’t. Something he could almost feel, something he had never understood before, kept him pinned to the ground. He knew his suit should be ripped, and his hair should be a matted mess, and yet, minus the dirt from the forest floor and the blood, his suit was in-tact, and his hair was neat. Rine waited for silence that he knew would never come. He hoped to sleep, to forget his mistakes, but the sound, like a dog whistle in his head, kept him awake and thinking. Rine thought of his failure-ridden past and his grim future, but he did not think of the present. He could not think of the present without making his headache worse, without knowing that his life was over; everything he had worked so hard to build lay on a floor far too different from the one he lay on now.
Short Story
shaky voice. When he turned to look at Rine, Felm’s face was wet, and his eyes were red like he had been peppersprayed. Rine had always thought of Felm as strong; he didn’t think even something as bad as pepper-spray couldget a reaction out of him, let alone knock him down. “Who pepper-sprayed you?” Rine asked as Felm pulled himself onto the stump. “No one,” Felm said as he wiped his face dry on his shirt. Rine didn’t understand why Felm would so clearly lie to him, but he didn’t particularly care to find out. “You got my pops?” Rine inquired. Felm acted weird. It was as if his body and face weighed significantly more than they had before, and yet he didn’t look any fatter. “Yeah, whatever. Here,” Felm responded as he pulled a single popsicle from his American-flag printed lunch box. “On second thought, take both today, I’m not hungry.” Even his voice sounds duller today, Rine thought. “Where are the other three?” “What are you talking about?” Felm asked as his face appeared to scrunch up. “Well, you didn’t give me any last week, so now you got to repay me.” Felm didn’t respond; he just stared at Rine with an odd look on his face. His eyebrows had slanted inward, and his mouth curled down. Why did people always make faces when Rine opened his mouth? He thought Felm was different. He thought Felm would never make faces at him. After a moment, Felm stood up and walked loudly away. Rine opened a popsicle and began licking its mostly melted remains while trying to understand why Felm was acting so weird. Maybe Felm didn’t see any benefit in talking to him any more. Rine never really knew why Felm had kept giving him popsicles in the first place. Rine never gave anything back. Why should he?
20 years ago Felm finally came back after being out of school for a week, something about his parents and a car crash. Rine thought that, after being out for so long, Felm might have to repeat fifth grade. Would they still eat lunch together if Felm was held back? And more importantly, would Felm still give Rine his extra popsicle at lunch? For now, Rine put these questions away in the back of his mind. He was really good at that. Rine figured he should go claim the five popsicles Felm owed him from the days he had been absent, so he went to their normal lunch spot in the woods. Well, Rine didn’t think it exactly fit the definition of “woods.” It was more of a patch of trees surrounded by open fields, but they called it “the woods” anyway. Rine strolled up to the pair of stumps seemingly made for them and found Felm next to his stump instead of on top of it. “Hey, Felm, what’re you doing on the floor?” “Nothing,” his friend responded in an unreasonably
6:00 AM Rine snapped awake as his eyes darted around the room taking in the unfamiliar surroundings; his headache surged, and his brain slowly started to catch up with his eyes. He saw himself in a picture frame on the wall, and his headache subsided. Rine had lived here for almost a year now, and every morning, he went through the same process: wake up lost, headache, recognize his room. He had moved to Hickory Hills with his family because he thought it would give the children an opportunity to grow up in a better neighborhood; after all, he had designed
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