Pink Camera

by Mananaan
(Austria)

Think of it whatever you want.

When I was younger, my parents worked late on Fridays, so I often slept over at a friend's on weekends. Her house was right up the hill, in the village next to the one I lived in. As I lived in the city during the week I loved it to stroll around in woods, fields and creeks with my friend. My parents and my parents friends hated it when we did that, they said it was far too dangerous for us to run around in the wilderness alone.

At the end of the village was our favourite place: Away from the street, very close to one of the big woods there is a creek which runs through the wood and then comes out into a dell located underneath a very steep hillslope. There were only a few trees, and we loved to sit in their branches above the water. Sometimes we heard weird noises and hid because we did not want the farmers and rangers to know were we had our "camp".(Childish, I know)

One day we were bored and decided to climb up the hillslope, we never went up there before and thought of it like climbing a mountain or something. Going up we noticed a lot of garbage like ropes, planks, rags, old wheels, one or two shoes... the stuff was piled up around 65 inches of length every four or five yards. We found a treasure! So much stuff to build a fort with! On top we found a pile that looked... well, quite new in some way. The planks weren`t green and the stuff on top looked also quite usable. So we started to grab stuff and pull it away. Suddenly my friend screamed and I turned in total shock.

"There is something soft underneath! I felt it!", she yelled. I ran over to her side and looked. "Of course you felt something soft you douchebag, look at it, there is a big bunch of cloths or rags or whatever!" I pulled at it and got hold of a bigger piece of cloth. When I unfolded it, it turned out to be a stained blue dress. Inside was a little pink plastic camera, you know, the ones children play with. By pulling out the dress I made a small opening underneath the planks, small but deep. As we were staring at the camera and the dress, a horrible smell gathered around us. We grabbed the camera and ran, ran home, ran as fast as we could.

Once we were home we showed the camera to our parents and told them about the piles, the smell and the dress. Our parents looked at us and smiled. "Well I guess its only a bait for some animal out in the woods. Do not go near this place anymore, you might disturb it. Oh please, you two, go wash your hands, we will have dinner in 20 minutes!" We calmed down and laughed about us being so stupid. Afraid of some ranger's foxbait, how embarrassing!


As I grew older I forgot about it, but one day it hit me: Why would you put a bait underneath so much stuff? Why would a ranger, who protects the woods, throw away a piece of plastic like that toy camera, wrapped in a little dress? Its not even heavy, it does not help keeping down whatever was buried there.

So in the end I have weird thoughts which follow me since those days:

Whoever set up those piles, did he see me and my friend?

What was buried with that children's toy?

If it was a bait...

MOTHER OF GOD, WHAT WERE THEY HUNTING IN THOSE WOODS?