Everyone told me to stay away from the McClains’ house. My mom told me, my boyfriend me, the entire tenth grade told me. But what could I do? It was a rainy night and that was the only house for miles. Maybe I should’ve just kept walking. I could’ve found a hotel or a gas station eventually. Now, I’m running through the backwoods with Mama Darla tracking me down with a hunting cleaver.

I’ve never really had a good look at Mama Darla before but I can tell she’s a big woman by the bass in her steps. Crunch, crunch, crunch. I hear them bellow throughout the woods. They’re constantly followed by two sets of softer steps, the ones of her daughters Dahlia and Delilah. The girls can’t be more than eight or nine years old and she’s already using them as bloodhounds.

I take a chance by catching my breath behind a tree but if I run for one more second, my lungs will catch on fire. All those days of skipping gym really came back to bite me in the ass. I suck in the air intensely, gratefully in fact, until I hear the aggressive foot steps. She has to be less than fifteen feet away from me.

“But Mama, I’m tired.”, I hear one of the twins say. From the times I saw them, I was never
able to tell them apart.

“Don’t you start whinin’ now, little girl.” Mama Darla’s voice is gruff and callous. “If your sister can run out huntin’, you can too. Besides, I told ya what would happen if you pitched a fit like this again.”

I can hear the little girl begin to cry.

“Please! Please don’t!...