Leech River

Kay, an autistic skilled outsdoors woman and athlete, is looking forward to studying at the Conservatory of Music. She wants to celebrate by going camping with a friend, however Tasha cancels because her Mother has to be taken to the hospital for an injured ankle. She phones another, and is turned down. She then phones Liam and Gertie with whom she's gone camping a few years previous and who also turn her down. Unbeknownst to Kay, Gertie harbours jealousy against Kay's personal successes. Liam points to this out to Gertie who denies this. Not to be deterred by her friends' cancellations, Kay decides to go camping solo by the Leech River and an old abandoned goldmining town in Kapoor Regional Park. After saying good-bye to her Mother, Kay rides her bike onto the trail to and through the park. She stakes up a simple camp, but as she eats her late supper, Kay suspects she is not alone. She sleeps restlessly until she wakes with the terrible foreboding that she is being watched. Every time, the camp fire ebbs low, she hears approaching footsteps in the dry leaves. She adds another log, stoking the embers, humming to herself for comfort until the footsteps retreat. An hour before dawn breaks, Kay runs out of logs, yet is very aware of the creature or person is hiding in the thickest part of the trees close to her camp fire. Just before the sun rises above the trees, the 'thing' or 'individual' runs away. Once she feels safe, Kay quickly packs up all her gear and high-tails it on her bike through the park - and home. Her Mother, surprised that Kay is back from her one night of camping so early, sees that the light is flashing on their answering machine. Kay and her Mother listen, in surprise and puzzlement, to Gertie's voice: "Sleep well?" In the last scene, we see Liam, dead with a knife in his back, in an abandoned, dusty old shed and Gertie stepping over his body. NOTE: The locations of this fiction are based on an actual regional park and rural area of the author's home town.