[please, if i aleady told you this story, tell noone the ending. i want honest reactions as this story unfolds. that's the only way to get good constructive criticism. besides, the story might have changed from what i told you.]

 

Big People

[a little fairy tale in several parts]

 

It was not a dark and stormy night.

There are many words one might use to describe it: how it was so dry the wind blew the chap off your lips; how the day had been so hot that it was still sweaty long after the sun went down, like an oven cooling from broil on a warm day. One might even be inclined to note how the dogs ambled around, mouths hanging open but no tongue sticking out, not because they weren't panting but because their lickers stuck to the roofs of their mouths.

But one would not call it dark and stormy.

One might, however,  call it restless. Perhaps it was a residual effect of the heat. Men often become lethargic during a hot day, which makes their wives quarrelsome at night, because nothing had been accomplished. Not that much was ever accomplished anyway. People in Benson, Arizona hardly accomplished anything at all. Their legislators and public relations committee knew them as "the gateway to Southeastern Arizona" and "an important transportation hub," but the actual citizens, who usually have a bit more common sense than their elected officials, knew it simply as "the town."

No, Benson was not really that much of a gateway, or a hub for that matter. Truckers stopped in on occasion, but for the most part people drove right on through to Sierra Vista without stopping. The inhabitants of Benson took this as a sign, and thereby refused to fraternize with the outside world. Oh, sure, the young ones got antsy and as soon as they could drive they'd make their way up to Tucson, visit the M.O.C.A. or the independent film theater, putter around a bit, realize that city life just wasn't their cup of tea, and return home just after curfew in a funk, grumbling that they should have seen the Biosphere 2 or run away to Flagstaff: "Then we wouldn't have come back at all," they would insist. But their listless attitude would dissipate and be forgotten by the start of school in the fall.

But tonight, everyone was restless. Maybe it was the heat. But more likely, it was the hills. Nearly every backyard and picture window in Benson had a stunning perspective of some very strange, very grey, mountains. The hills used to be green, but the townsfolk, for reasons they'd rather not talk about with strangers, had cut down most of the trees, so that the only part of the Great Woods beyond the hills that still spilled over into the valley that cradled Benson was beyond the northeast corner of town, in the foothills of Casandres. Not that anybody minded those trees. Noone in their right mind ever walked those hills anyway.

Dakota Clayton's mother was not in her right mind.

"Just a picnic," she had said. "A dinner picnic."

Dakota slammed her face down into her pillow once again. Noone has dinner picnics, she thought to herself angrily. Why did I–why couldn't she have asked for something normal, like pizza and a movie? Why didn't I warn her?

It's not that her mother didn't know that the woods were dangerous. Her mother knew better than most. Teri Clayton had been attacked in those woods before, miraculously escaping the clutches of a rabid dog, only to be hospitalized for a week. And her job–Teri was a lobbyist with a PAC organized to help pass legislation aimed at protecting the Saguaro Woods from further damages. Surely the Citizens for Saguaro Immunity (CSI was a favorite show of Teri's) understood the dangers of the woods they purported to protect.

So why had Teri Clayton insisted that her daughter come with her to hike the foothills in the Northeast for a "dinner picnic?" This was the question, the one raging through Dakota's mind, curling her stubby fingers, flaring her parched nostrils, beating behind her yet unblossomed chest.

It was almost as if Teri Clayton had wanted her daughter to watch her die.