My name is Jory. I'm fifteen. I look older though because I have to shave
every day and I'm really big. I like it here. I like it here because I have
friends here and I never really had friends before. Here is this beat up old
cabin in the woods in Tennessee somewhere. I don't know who owns it. Maybe
nobody does. I've lived here for three months and nobody has showed up to
tell me to leave. That makes me happy. It's summer now and it's warm out and
birds are singing and maybe my friends will be back tonight. I like my
friends.
I didn't always live here though. I used to live in an orphanage. I guess my
mother and father didn't like me. The people in the orphanage didn't like me
either. I guess nobody really liked me because if they did they would've
adopted me but they didn't. I'm not very smart. The other kids used to pick
on me. I didn't like that so I ran away. I manage to find work sometimes.
Not very good work though because I'm not very smart. But I stay alive. But
now I have a good job. Now I work part time for a man who has a bunch of
metal garages that people pay him to use. I don't know why people pay to use
the metal garages but they do. I clean up the garages after the people are
done using them. I sweep the floors and mop the floors and pick up papers
and beer cans and carry junk to the dumpster and the man who has the garages
pays me in cash money so I don't have to try to cash a check which is a good
thing because I don't have a checking account. Sometimes I make a hundred
dollars a week and sometimes more. Most times it's less than that but it's
the most money I ever made before and the man doesn't yell at me so I like
the job. The only thing I don't like is that sometimes people poop in the
metal garages and I don't like cleaning that up but the rest of the job is
good so I do it. I don't know why people poop in the garages especially when
there's a lot of woods behind the metal garage place they could poop in. I
asked the man why and he said he doesn't know either.
I wasn't living in this old cabin when I first started working at the metal
garage place. Then I was renting this little room in this house down the
road a ways. Other people lived there in other rooms and they picked on me
all the time. They called me names and said I was a moron which I'm not
really sure what that means but I think it means dumb. I am dumb but it
still hurt my feelings and I got scared I'd get mad and hit somebody and I'm
really big and thought if I hit somebody I might hurt them really bad so I
left. I didn't know where to go and didn't want to tell the man at the metal
garage place that I didn't have no place to live because I thought he'd fire
me. I did ask him if people ever lived in the metal garages and he said no.
I asked him why and he said because it's illegal so I forgot about that
idea. Then I told him that I wanted to go camping and asked him where could
I buy a tent and a sleeping bag and other stuff like that. He said there was
a place that sold that kind of stuff about two miles down the road. He also
said I could probably buy enough stuff to get me started for about two
hundred dollars which was more money than I had. I told him this and he gave
me a whole two week's worth of money before I even worked for it which was
nice of him. So I went and bought some camping stuff. The guy at the camping
stuff store laughed and told me to look out for bigfoot. I asked him what
bigfoot was and he said it was just a story city folks made up about a
really big ape man that was supposed to be scary and live in the woods. I
knew he was laughing at me but I didn't care and took my camping stuff and
walked back into the woods about two miles and found this cabin that was at
the foot of this mountain. It was beat up but nobody was using it so I fixed
it up a little and I've been living here ever since. It's only got one room
and doesn't have a bathroom but it has a fireplace and a back porch and it's
plenty good enough for me.
I didn't see my friends until I'd been living here for about a month. I was
sitting on the back porch just looking at things when I saw this movement
over by this big tree. I turned my head and looked and didn't see anything.
Then I did see something but I wasn't sure what it was. It was just this big
blurry thing. I blinked because I thought maybe I had something in my eye
and when I opened my eyes again there it was. It was this really big guy
even bigger than me who was all hairy and wasn't wearing any clothes. He had
really long arms too and just stood there looking at me. I guessed he was
one of those bigfoot things the guy at the camping stuff store told me
about. I thought how fast he must be because I never even saw how he got
there. He was just there. I wasn't scared at all. I just looked back at him
and he looked back at me. Then he started walking away and then he was just
gone. After that I started to sit out on the back porch all the time just
watching for him. He came back later and brought a lady bigfoot with him
and later some little bigfoots which I guess were his and the lady bigfoot's
kids. I was glad the bigfoot and the lady bigfoot liked their kids and
didn't put them in a bigfoot orphanage or something. They all became my
friends even though we didn't play any games together or nothing. All we
ever did was look at each other. I wanted to talk to them but I didn't know
if they spoke English so I didn't. Sometimes I would leave food on the back
porch and in the morning it would always be gone so I figured they ate it.
It made me feel good to be able to help something out instead of always
being the one being helped out because it kinda made be feel big in a
different way than just my size. That's when I really started to think of
the bigfoots as my friends.
I'm scared now because something bad happened yesterday. Two people found
this cabin. They were a man and a woman and they walked down the mountain
and right up to the cabin. They were carrying camping stuff on their backs
and they were friendly at first so I wasn't worried at first. I started
talking to them and they started talking to me and I got really stupid and
told them all about my bigfoot friends because I was proud of having them as
friends and the people got kind of scared looking. When that happened I knew
I made a mistake and started telling them I was just kidding but I could
tell they didn't believe I was just kidding. They looked at me funny and
went back up the mountain. I was afraid they might tell somebody I was
living in this cabin and they'd come and make me leave and I didn't want to
leave so I waited a while and then I followed them. Even though I'm really
big and not very smart I can walk real quiet in the woods when I want to and
I never get lost in the woods either. It didn't take me too long to find out
where the man and the woman went which was to a trail about a mile or so up
the mountain. There was a sign there that said Appalachian Trail. I followed
their tracks down this trail for about five miles. By then it was dark but
it didn't matter to me. I found their tent. They were inside it and they
were talking.
I heard the man say, As big as he is he's still a kid. He should be in a
home or something, the way he was going on like that about his bigfoot
buddies. And he sure as hell doesn't own that cabin.
Then I heard the woman say, Maybe he's an innocent.
Then the man said, What in the hell are you talking about?
Then the woman said, Haven't you ever heard stories about how only children
can see fairies?
Then the man said, He wasn't talking about fairies, he was talking about
bigfoot.
Then the woman said, Maybe they're the same thing to an innocent. Maybe
innocents are the only ones who can truly see either.
Then the man said, You're talking like a space cadet but it doesn't matter.
We've got to get the authorities involved. There's something wrong with that
kid and he shouldn't be living there by himself. Okay?
When I heard the woman say Okay I killed them both. I didn't want to do it
because they were nice but I didn't want to be taken away from the only real
friends I ever had. Then I packed up all their camping stuff and strapped it
to my back and I dragged both of them back to my cabin which I guess I think
of as my cabin even though it isn't really. I erased all the drag marks with
a broken off tree branch as I went. Then I burned all their clothes in the
fireplace and left their bodies on the back porch for my friends. The bodies
were still there in the morning but maybe they'll be gone tomorrow.
I hope I never have to leave this place. I would really miss my friends if I
did.
I wonder what an innocent is? |
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