500 words a day

758 words - 6th september 2009

We walked into the woods for about half an hour, just after Dad dropped us off. It was around 5 in the afternoon and a beautiful sunny day. Mum said we shouldn’t really go on our own but Dad said it would be good for us. He said when he was 12 he’d already camped out on his own three times and his father wouldn’t even tell him when he was going to pick him up, character forming apparently.





Still, Mum was obviously worried but she let us go. She made Dad promise he’d pick us up the next day or at least check in on us, so he did, raising his eyebrows when she wasn’t looking. So me and Gerry were on our way, to the clearing. We found it on the net, a cool site that showed you places to camp that wouldn’t cost a penny. You don’t want to be using a campsite, said Dad, they’re for cissies, you need somewhere that you can do what you want, light a fire, catch a rabbit and skin it and dance around in your pants if you wanna – Graham! Said Mum.


He  said it was good for a boy to let his hair down once n a while, and on the journey to the woods he slipped2 bottles of beer into my rucksack, saying – don’t tell your mother.





I didn’t like beer but I said thanks and Gerry was pretty excited about it, didn’t stop going on about it as soon as Dad had left.


We’re gonna get totally wasted, he kept saying. I agreed but I didn’t really know what it meant. I guessed it meant you wouldn’t be able to think properly and would talk funny like Dad sometimes did when he stayed late at work and sometimes wouldn’t be able to walk properly – seemed a bit of a weird thing to do but I’d give it a go.


When we found the clearing it was not quite as exciting as I hoped. It was basically a gap in the trees with some grass. There was an old rope swing but it looked as if it would break if anyone even touched it. There was also a charred circle in the grass and after we put the tent up, which was easy, we’d practised in the garden loads of times; we got some wood and started a fire.





Gerry was always good at lighting fires and other things. Last time we had a fire he brought along his toy soldiers and melted them one by one. The biggest one, the one he called the colonel, he just melted a bit, said it was now zombie colonel, commander of the zombie army, which was cool. He brought him to the woods and some more sliders. We can make the zombie army now, he said, they will guard us through the night. I said OK, but I wished he didn’t say that, it made me think of things they’d need to guard us from like other zombies or witches, that was the scariest thing for me, witches that crept around in the woods and slithered down from trees and slipped into your tent in the middle of the night and put poisonous things in your sleeping mouth.





After a few hours it started to get dark and we heated up the beans and cooked some sausages in the little pan we’d bought. They got a bit burned but they tasted great. That’s when we decided to have the beer. Gerry drank a big mouthful and said it was delicious. I sipped mine and tried not to show that it was bitter and horrible. He finished his really quickly and said he was totally wasted. He showed me by standing up, then nearly falling down and then slurring his words then wandering around and staggering about a bit, once nearly burning his jeans in the fire.


I am the zombie colonel, he said with his arms raised in front of him and he staggered away into the woods. Gerry, stop it! I shouted but he ignored me and wandered off. I knew he would jump out soon and scare me but I couldn’t do anything when he got like this, just had to brace myself for it. This was the longest time he’d waited though, must be something to do with the beer. It was over an hour now and apart from a few cracking twigs first behind then to the left, there was no sign of him.











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Steve Wybourn





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