King's Den

Chapter Nineteen: Black - Part One

READ THIS AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Hey guys, I highly recommend you listen to the song above before/while reading. It is very central to the feel of introduction. Speaking of the intro...
DISCLAIMER:
The introduction (and parts of this chapter in general) have heavy themes of RAPE, MURDER, and DRUG USE. Although the crimes are not mentioned in detail, the events are made clear to have happened. If you are easily upset by such themes, please skip this chapter and comment that you have skipped it so that I can give a brief summary in the next chapter.

A gust of wind gently blew the leaves from the trees. It was late summer in Bowig, Alabama and the forest was starting to change color. The air was still very humid, but the night time cool lessened the severity of the heat.

It was a quiet little place with families who were in bed by ten and awake by eight. With a population of 4,223, neighbors were familiar, but faces tended to blend together.

And that's where the boys from out of town came in. The suburbs were asleep, but the bar was busy on the night of August 13th, 2016. Four lanky boys--or young men, depending on how you view 22-year-olds--from the outskirts of the neighboring town came lumbering onto the black top of a local Quikstop. 

Their eyes were red from green they had smoked and their legs--though long--were weak. Disoriented, the pack stumbled from the woods looking for solid ground. Each of them had a beer in the right hand and a cigarette burning away between their lips. Two of the boys were too wasted to remember to inhale, so they just let the poison wither away until all that remained was ash.

The sweet end of summer was upon them, and in their hearts they grew restless. The boys itched for something to drown out their inner monologues; thoughts that frequently reminded them they had another year of college ahead of them. The pack recalls that night and that date so clearly because it held the defining moments of their lives...

But Bowig remembers that frightful night because it was a day before the start of school. A school that, when pressed by the news, became a prison yard of mourning.

Slowly but surely, those troubled boys staggered farther onto the asphalt; closer to their doom... and delight.

Lying on the hard tar not even twenty feet away from them was a girl. Her blonde hair was in stark constrast to the blackness all around her. Her once tame locks fanned out in a matted mess that accented the look of a halo wrapping around her head. Next to her unconscious body was a reeking puddle of vomit. She had far too much to drink that night.

It took a moment for the college kids to process what they saw and, when they figured it out, the concerned look in the twenty-something year olds' faces quickly clouded over to be something much more malevolent. 

One whistled and another cooed, "Hey, sweetcheeks. Need some help up?"

The girl stirred slightly but didn't reply.

The eldest of the four grinned at his group in a showy flash of sharp teeth. He was human enough, but an animalistic glint lit up his eyes.

They thought she was a lost girl. Never belonging to one place or one person... just drifting from town to town. How else could they explain a girl sleeping on the blacktop?

It never crossed their minds that maybe she had been at the last party of the summer and got embarrassed by some of her classmates. Those drunk men never even dabbed their toes into murkier waters--a more detailed story. It never occured to them that in her shame, she took too many shots and left the party. That the pretty girl with blonde hair stumbled her way to the Quikstop's parking lot in an attempt to escape her colorful mind.