Autumn Shanklin
Holy shit! RUN!
It was a normal Friday night. Erin, Zack, Jimmy, Adam, Tyler, MC, and I were all crammed into Zack’s tiny basement kitchen. The room was stuffy and still which made the all the cigarette smoke linger in one spot. Jimmy broke the silence finally. “One time me and Jeff were cutting through the cemetery and I swear to god we saw a hobo sleeping on a head stone.” Instantly a light bulb popped above mine and Erin’s head. In perfect harmony, we both screamed “LETS GO HOBO HUNTING!” almost as if we planned it. They all looked at us like we have five heads and one eye. “Um I don’t really think I would feel right killing a hobo, I mean after all they are humans too” Jimmy sarcastically said. “No, lets go find the hobo!” Erin said as she rolled her eyes. After a minute of contemplating it we all piled into the car. We parked on a dead end street, jumped out of the car and started to cut through thick woods to get to the graveyard. Suddenly there was a loud scream, everyone whipped their heads around to see that I had slipped and fell straight on my butt. After several minutes of laughing, I got up and we continued into the woods. Once inside the cemetery we decided it would be more productive to separate into two groups. Erin, Zack, Adam, and I went to the left while the others went to the right. We started fooling around to act like we weren’t scared but in reality none of us had been more scared in our life. It was a foggy night and there was a cold breeze coming from the woods. The full moon let off a little glow every time the clouds allowed it to. We stood at the top of a steep hill working up the courage to go down it. It was a steep hill that was surrounded by trees which drowned out any moonlight. I gripped Adam’s hand tight just as Erin grabbed Zack’s and we pushed forward down the hill. Adam started throwing anything he could find at trash cans to make sure the hobo didn’t crawl into one of them for the night. He threw a big rock at the metal trash can and just as it made a clinking noise we heard the crunch of leaves. I turned around to see a dark figure standing in the grass, thinking it was the hobo I started to run and left my friends standing there. After sprinting about 50 yards I noticed my friend never came so I decided to go back and see why. Half way back I saw more people standing where I had left my friends, and laughter started to fill the air. I get back to see all my friends standing there, turns out the dark figure I had seen was just MC. Embarrassed, I said “ Well if you weren’t so black I’d be able to see you better! Maybe we should all stay together now, I feel a lot safer with MC and Tyler because the black people always die first.” After we all got a few more jokes in we decided to find our way back to the car. After an hour of walking someone finally said “Does anyone know where we are because I’m pretty sure we should have been back to the car by now…” Zack confidently said “I know how to get out, trust me!” We walked on for another 15 minutes when something stopped us all in our tracks. We were at the top of a hill looking down at what looked to be a person. No one moved, including the person at the bottom of the hill. After what seemed like years someone noticed that “person” has leaves growing out of every part of its body. At this point we were all letting our imagination get the best of us. Moments later something else stopped us dead in our tracks, this time it was moving and everyone took off running except Erin. “Why are you running? There is nothing there!” she screamed. Zack and I hesitantly walked back to point out what we saw. “I still don’t see anything! You guys are just fuc...” Before she could finish her sentence she saw the hobo move. We ran faster than we have ever run before. In no time we caught up to the others. With the hobo nowhere in sight we stopped to catch a breath. Almost as if it was magic, the hobo appeared right behind us. This is about the time “flight or fight” comes into play. Like they say, great minds think alike, so we all quickly decided flight would be the better option. As we were running something dark and apparently hard hit Zack in the eye but nothing could stop us from running. Suddenly MC turned around, picked up the dark object, and slipped in back onto his foot. AS he looked back up to start running he was face-to-face with the hobo. Once he saw how big the hobo actually was he decided flight would be the better option again. As we were running the hobo kept appearing and disappearing as if he was playing a game with us, a game that we didn’t want to play anymore. Eventually we found our way back to the car. In a panic, we were all trying to open doors to feel the security of the car. All the doors were locked and Zack was frantically rummaging through his pockets. He turned every pocket inside out but the keys were nowhere to be found. “Guys… I think I lost my keys while we were running. We are gonna have to go back and find them or we aren’t going anywhere tonight.” Zack said with a crack in his voice. We all sighed and took a moment to catch our breath. Thinking about everything that just happened we were terrified to go back in there, the hobo could be anywhere waiting for us to come back. We walked slowly back into the woods looking around every which way. This time we all had our cell phones out for a little extra light. We were walking with our heads down which turned out to be very dangerous. Jimmy got clothes lined by a long branch. This lightened the mood a little and gave us all a chance to laugh. Luckily we found Zack’s keys not too far from the entrance of the cemetery. Excited to get home and away from any hobos, we jogged back to the car. This time the mood of the car was different, the crammed car made everyone feel a sense of security. Now that we were all safe and hobo-free we started laughing about the whole situation. “Dude, what if we woke up and we were all hobos?” Jimmy asked with a serious face. We all laughed and the jokes continued. I have never been happier in my life to be alive then I was at that moment. A few weeks later we were all once again in Zack’s basement kitchen. “So I brought some numb chucks, I thought we could go find the hobo again. I will protect us.” Erin said as she started to twirl her black numb chucks above her head. “Um Erin, those are foam and couldn’t hurt a fly. And you would be the last person I would trust to save my life.” Jimmy said laughing to himself. “Whatever douche bag!” Erin said as the numb chucks flew out of her hand and hit Jimmy in the mouth. Jimmy’s hand instantly flew over his mouth. “Oh sorry I thought they couldn’t harm a fly.” Jimmy was now the joke of the night. After about a half hour our stomachs started to growl. We filled the car and went to Schnucks to get some food for dinner, passing the cemetery on the way. There was flashing red and blue lights coming from the cemetery with yellow crime scene tap blocking off the main entrance. “I hope the hobo didn’t die!” Zack said. We went into Schnucks and got to big frozen pizzas. As we were on our way home we noticed a big white crime unit van pulling out of the cemetery. We rushed home, threw the pizzas in the oven and flipped the TV on to channel two. The news wasn’t on so we thought nothing serious had happened. The next day I woke up from a mass text message saying that police had ironically found a dead body in the cemetery. None of us have ever put one foot into that cemetery since then.