prologue;

California, desolation in the eyes of all and brinks of weather indescribable. Days too far, and times too lost, delving somewhere unknown and never coming back because that’s just the horror of it. The unknown. West coast, nonsense. Cold weather albeit summer, near the ends of it, near the ends of August and it makes sense now. All practical.

Twelve boys, sitting around in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere so cold, lost almost-like. Logs on the bottoms, positions all sprawled out. Fire brewing in the middle, cackles and cracks from the flames itself. Quiet at first, they all are. But then someone speaks up.

“So, who wants to go first?”

Emptiness, silence, and drawling darkness, winding from the nearest trees to the limbs, to the trunks where the corpses lay, dug inside the holes and hidden in limbs and body parts. Whistles whistle, birds tweet, silence lie for humans, and they just all sit there. No one says a thing, and it’s renowned silence. Unpredictably so jovial, and lively in its own ironical way.

“Anyone?”

Nothing still. Ticks on the chiming clocks, bells ringing once it hits three in the morning. Four hours past curfew but none of them care. The fire still crackles, almost dies out but just springs back to life once someone throws more redwood in. Chars, it turns, red to black immediately and the singes burn their scents.

Postures are defined now, jaws clenched in how it’s so quiet, locked against the turns and screws of human beings. No one moves an inch, because that ruins the premature game that ends it all.

But then someone finally edges in, courages on the end. “I’ll go.” Voices on voices, mutters spread out and someone shushes them, fingers to the mouth and just turns to the person who had spoken initially.

“Go ahead, Sehun. Tell us your story, but remember, what’s said here stays here. Because these are the stories gone wrong.”

Smirks exchanges, smug looks plastered on, frenzy grins, timid looks, legs bent, knees fractured, eyes dimmed, bags underneath, all of it.

“These are the stories gone wrong.”

--