A STORY by MICHELE ZIMMERMAN
Scouts in the Woods
Girl Scouts Make Snacks
Girl Scouts sitting around a campfire spear oversized marshmallows and roast them until their beloved treats are entirely consumed by flames. After they blow out the embers, they lay the carcasses to rest on honeyed graham crackers. Chocolate squares melted in sticky palms are lain over the deceased like lilies and chrysanthemums. The Scouts do not know that even this ritual is preparation for their future.
Girl Scouts Go for a Walk
Girl Scouts in red bandanas march into the misty forest. The half-moon hangs above. From up here, they are a line of scuttling red ants waiting to be crushed.
Girl Scouts Encounter Death
One Scout trips and falls to the leaf-matted ground with a grunt and a thud. While there, she finds that only the legs of the deer can be seen from under the brush. The legs are tangled in one another. They are loose and limp, like they never had bones. The Scouts huddle around to get a better look. This is their first inkling that we may not be their friend.
Girl Scouts Whisper
“There are rumors about these woods, you know,” one scout whispers to another.
“What do you mean?” The other scout whispers back. Acorns crunch under their feet.
“You’re new, so you don’t know. But I’ve heard my older brothers talking about these woods. They say weird things happen here.” Branches sway and twigs snap.
“What kinds of weird things?”
“Murderers and pedophiles and werewolves.”
“You’re trying to scare me.” Squirrels run spirals up and down trees. Owls hoot and wind rustles dried leaves.
“I’m not. Teenagers come up here at night to look for the weird stuff.”
“They wouldn’t take us here for the Woodland Ranger Badge if it was actually dangerous.”
“Sure they would. This is the only real campsite and path through the woods around here.”
“But other troops have done it before.”
“My brothers said some of them didn’t make it back.”
Girl Scouts are Distracted (While Troop Leaders Recheck the Map Because they are Very Lost)
Under a canopy of maple trees, Girl Scouts chew winter mint lifesavers. Their mouths flash in bursts of blue and green. Their teeth sharply illuminated in the night as they smile. They giggle and shriek, loud animals in the quiet dark. Even if we weren’t already listening, we could hear them from miles away.
Girl Scouts Encounter Death for a Second Time
Two raccoons piled in a heap on the forest floor. All four eyes are open. All eight paws are gone. Their thick striped tails have been knotted together crudely with a red bandana. It is a gift we have left for them.
Fear scatters the Scouts like mice under brush; they run off in all directions and the fun begins.
Girl Scouts Panic (and Forget Everything they have Ever Learned from their Troop Leaders about Safety and Navigation)
Girl Scouts drop flashlights and run screaming into the blackness. Girl Scouts do not check their compasses or refer to any kind of map. Girl Scouts do not look for signs of familiar plant life or weather-beaten trail makers. Girl Scouts do not come together or set up camp or stack kindling together to start fire. Girl Scouts wonder aloud where their mothers are, and question why they came camping in the first place. Girl Scouts give up hope. Girl Scouts pull their jackets closer to their bodies and shiver. Girl Scouts let blood from scratches and thorn pricks run down legs and stain their denim pants. Girl Scouts cry behind thick-trunked trees. Girl Scouts piss their pants. Girl Scouts keep their eyes to the sky for the first signs of light through the maple trees.
One Girl Scout Encounters Death for a Third Time
The Girl Scout who has come to us is fair skinned with a freckled face. She is missing one of her front teeth. Her fingernails have been painted to sparkle and she wears bracelets of charms on her soft wrists. We did not accept her for these things. We accepted her because she was the smartest of all the little creatures. When they ran, she ran the fastest. When some ducked under bushes to catch their breath or rest beside rotten logs from exhaustion, she kept running. Her sneakered feet took her deeper into our woods and when she saw the shelter of our hut, she did not hesitate or look back. She did not let fear overtake her ability to think. This wonderful little girl understood self-preservation better than any of the other Scouts. We accepted her because she learned from the marshmallows and the deer and the raccoons. We accepted her because she saw what can happen in the woods at night, and she sought to save herself from it. We accepted the gift of her body for our meal because we respect her. And because we know that all her running will make her soft wrists that much more flavorful.
Michele Zimmerman (she/her) is a queer writer with an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work appears in Catapult’s Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Tales of Horror, Post Road, LEON: Literary Review and more. She is a winner of the Fractured Literary Anthology II Contest and the Blood Orange Review 2021 Literary Contest. In the past, she has been a Sundress Publications Best of the Net nominee and a two-time finalist for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers. By day, she edits and writes for a magazine about illumination and design. Find her work at michelezimmerman.com.