✨️ There Is A Light That Never Goes Out ✨️

She hops off the bus with a medieval flail of Tamagotchis on her hip, her Claire’s bodyspray tacky on her wrists, sunglasses on to keep an air of mystery, of celebrity. This is the summer to redefine herself. Claim her independence. Get everyone talking. And the campers talk; she hears them as she saunters to her cabin with her monogrammed duffel bag.

Most kids just couldn’t believe she was back at all. And, she’ll admit, it was an arduous uphill battle to convince her parents to sign her up again. They claimed it was not only insensitive of her, but potentially traumatizing to stick her back mere feet from where her brother had disappeared. She insisted she was fine, she was a big girl, twelve is much too old to get hung up on baby crap like losing her twin. Aw, she can’t be dressed up like a little doll in the same exact outfit as him? She can’t get mistaken for him whenever she puts her hair in a ponytail anymore, or compared to him for knowing way less about early US History? Somehow she’d live.

At first, it’s a huge ego boost to be welcomed back with all the staring, all the whispering. If she doesn’t think about it hard, she can live under the delusion that it’s simply due to her dramatic pubescent transformation. She’s taller, and she’s fuller, and yes she is one of the only girls wearing a real bra, certainly the only girl with actual highlights instead of some CVS hair chalk.

But standing on the dock of the lake, looking over the gaggle of goggles and swim caps, she hears his name on repeat, “Didn’t Grady–” “Isn’t this where Grady–” “Well, I heard Grady–”, and the immersion shatters.

All she’s heard for the past twelve years was how frickin’ great Grady was, and great at everything. Gracyn couldn’t have one thing to herself. No personal identity. Grady was the smart one and the funny one and the kind one and the cool one; Gracyn was the twin. And now here she is, pulling out all the stops–the LipSmackers and the Con-Air crimping iron and the Livestrong bracelets–and her stupid dead brother is still overshadowing her.

It’s like. What was even the point of him drowning in the first place?

Her cafeteria tray is stacked high with condolences before she even sits down to eat dinner. Forced to sift through fond memories of Grady, backwash of his funny little quirks swimming through her lemonade. By the time they all gather round the campfire for their inaugural Scary Stories Circle, no matter how many s’mores she houses, she can’t get the taste of secondhand mourning out of her mouth.

She might as well stick her fingers down her throat and share the experience. “I’m going to tell you,” she says coldly, “what really happened to Grady.”

She just needs some semblance of control. She needs the power she so desperately craves, and it sure as [shit] isn’t happening by way of her own charm.

Fine. They all wanna talk about Grady? 

She’ll talk about Grady.

She’ll talk about how he wandered off during stargazing night, when the cabin lights were snuffed and it plunged the grounds in pitch black. Grady lost his way in a matter of minutes. The trail slipped out underneath him, his ankle snapped as he tumbled down a sudden drop so that even when he finally settled he could only lay there, bone protruding from his skin, weeping viscera in a steady pulse. Ripe for the taking. And someone eventually did, they took him up on that with gratitude. 

A hulking thing, putrid, a sloughing sack of rot stitched into a vague human shape, though its arms were different lengths, its head forever lolling on its shoulders like its neck was broken. They called it The Meat Man. It came out of the pitch black when it smelled Grady’s blood, a fresh and innocent kill. With an effortless swing it sunk its hooked hands into either of Grady’s cheeks, and it dragged him through the woods, and he screamed like he always did at the dentist, all teeth and no lips, high pitched so he sounded more like an animal than a kid, and the Meat Man let him scream. They were way too far out by then for anyone to hear, and the Meat Man took him even further. All the way out to the slaughterhouse, the old building you pass on your way to the Dave & Buster’s near the mall–and it strapped Grady to a table. By now his mouth just a few ragged flaps of flesh, his teeth and his gums free to shine in the overhead light of the operation table.

The Meat Man only had dull blades. Rusted from years of use. It took a while for it to saw through Grady’s shoulder, all the while keeping completely quiet while the kid thrashed, while he called helplessly for his sister, his mommy and daddy, slowly losing grip on his sanity as the thing tore him apart at the joints once the knives stopped being effective, his skin stretched, the weaving of his musculature pulled thin until it snapped like rubber bands. But Grady was still alive. The Meat Man made sure of it. Even after Grady was limbless, lipless, tired from hours of fruitless howling, his heart was still beating. He wanted it to end. He begged for it. But the Meat Man isn’t a killer. It’s a creator.

Grady was stitched back together. Everything in its rightful place, more or less. The Meat Man makes some guesses. Takes some artistic liberties. Grady was left a gross approximation of his original self.  Effectively the same in many ways, sure, but only technically. Only on a very obscured surface level.

 Satisfied with its work, the Meat Man sent him back out into the world to stumble, gurgle blood and bile as he helplessly wandered the woods. A walking advertisement boasting the Meat Man’s artistic prowess.

It’s all very disturbing.

“It’s all very bullcrap,” a camper says. “I thought your brother drowned.”

“That’s just what the police want you to think,” Gracyn spits matter-of-factly. “But did they ever find a body? No. It’s a cover-up.”

“Why? Why would the police want us to think that?” Someone else asks.

“Because they want to hide the truth.”

“But why? Is the Meat Man, like… does he work for the government?”

“No–”

“Okay, so then why wouldn’t the police just tell everyone?”

“You’re being stupid,” Gracyn relents.

“This story is stupid!” The campers are getting a little heated now. “Your brother drowned in the lake, we all know that. They put it in the newspaper.”

“It’s why we took the test today. They don’t want more kids drowning ‘cause they can’t swim.”

Gracyn makes a face, overtly and performatively annoyed. “Guys, I know how to swim. Me and Grady both did. Do.” She stands to look down upon her lesser campers with contempt. “I’m trying to tell you this, like. Really scary story about my brother and you all don’t believe me.”

A few of the campers roll their eyes, shrug simply. “Can you prove it?”

And. 

Well.

This probably isn’t what the campers mean by “prove it,” Gracyn knows. But what else can she do? There is no Meat Man, obviously; her brother wasn’t decapitated or dismembered even a little bit. He drowned, plain and simple and boring. But how humiliating, right? All that bravado, just to watch it bellyflop and sink unceremoniously to the bottom of the lake? She can’t keep being the lesser twin. She can’t lose a competition to someone who kicked it a year ago.

She’d rather die. Metaphorically.

The campers watch her strip awkwardly to her undies, tip-toe through the grass until she’s at the lake’s soggy bank, feet sinking into the sludge, and all of them call after her in an increasingly worried pitch while she braces herself for the plunge. The camp takes a collective deep inhale.

If Gracyn jumped, they never heard it. Like the water merely opened, sucked her in, swallowed her up. Spat her back out a few minutes later. Because she does come back. She trudges up through the slop of algae with triumph, panting light like her head is swimming with adrenaline. The campers watch her dripping shadow shamble towards the fire, and its face splits to show a glimmering, satisfied mouth of teeth.

“Alright,” one of the campers shrugs. “So you can swim, big whoop. Doesn’t mean all that other crap’s true.”

Gracyn stands lopsided just outside the fire’s reach. Its head craned at an odd angle.