The Selfish Boy

He felt the water spilling out of the dam he had created around himself.

“What kind of financial problems are they always arguing about?” William asked, tilting his head in confusion. He seemed genuinely curious.

“They always yell at each other for not paying certain bills. This morning, Mom yelled at Father for making us get months behind on the car bill, which he was supposed to be in charge of paying. We don’t have a car, anymore.” Jonathan explained.

“Oh, I see. But aren’t the shoes you’re wearing a bit expensive? They look brand new.” William observed, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s because they are. I demanded to my mother to get me these specific shoes.” Jonathan beamed.  

“You just said that your parents are having financial issues.” William countered slowly, enunciating each word.

“Yes, but I wanted these shoes.” Jonathan simply answered.

William’s face turned stone cold. “Would you like to hear a legend about this lake, Jonathan?”

“Sure.” Jonathan answered shrugging his shoulders, not really interested.

“It is said that a boy, around my age, and his family were camping in these woods not too long ago. Right before going to bed one night, the boy and his parents had a very big argument about leaving. The boy wanted to leave ‘these boring woods’, as he put it, but his parents told him they couldn’t, for they were tired from the long drive they took to get here. The boy left the trailer. The slam the door made when stormed out echoed throughout the trees. On his way out, he shouted that he hated them. If he had known, though, that the trailer was leaking gas from the engine and that the gas would cause the trailer to go up in flames, he wouldn’t have said what he had did.”

Jonathan’s ears perked up and all his attention was suddenly focused on the stranger’s story.

“When he returned from his fuming, he made it just in time to be blasted into a tree by the explosion made by the ruptured engine. The boy slowly died while listening to the sound of his parents’ agonized screams. The only thing crossing his mind, right before his death, was how his parents would die thinking he truly hated them. It is said that the boy’s restless ghost still haunts this place, waiting for a perfect victim.”

Jonathan frowned. “What do you mean by ‘a perfect victim’?”

William suddenly grinned. Jonathan didn’t understand why, but, to him, it looked sardonic. “To switch places with him, of course. And, today, it seems he has found his perfect victim.”

Jonathan’s shoulders tensed up and he shook his head in confusion. And also fear. “What do you mean the boy has found his perfect victim? What do you mean switching places? You said it was a legend; it’s all made up. You don’t really believe all that, do you?”

William laughed. Along with his laugh came a cold swift wind, one that almost blew Jonathan backwards. He stumbled. The laugh was an unpleasant sound, sending shivers down his spine and causing the hairs to rise up on his arms. It was a sound he thought a human being was incapable of making.

“Oh, Jonathan, I pity you. You have no absolutely no idea what you’re about to lose. Would you like to know what you are about to lose?” William asked, cheerily.

Jonathan didn’t want to wait for him to continue. He quickly turned around and dashed back into the trees. His sprint was wild and fast, pushed vigorously by the adrenaline of fear.Pushing branches away, he frantically searched for a familiar tree or bush; anything that would signal a way out.