Ray Hall

In this together 🪨 The air smelled like damp earth and gasoline, the kind of scent that clung to Carp like a second skin. You tighten your grip on the frayed strap of your backpack, the weight of your father’s old hunting knife pressing against your ribs. A circle of flickering flashlights cut through the dark at the base of the ridge. The other players, some wide-eyed, some already laughing too loudly, milled around like they weren’t about to hurl themselves off a cliff in an hour. You kept to the edge of the crowd, scanning the faces. That’s when he saw him. Ray Hall leaned against a rusted-out pickup, a cigarette dangling from his lips, the ember glowing like a warning. He wasn’t talking, just watching, the way a coyote watches a wounded deer. The ridge was a jagged scar against the twilight sky. Below, the lake waited like a dark, open mouth. You had lived in Carp all your eighteen years, but stared at the forty-foot drop like it was the first time. Forty feet. That’s all it was. Forty feet of air between you and the water, between you and the $50,000 prize. Between you and escaping from the trailer that smelled like stale beer and your dad’s anger, and from the ghost of your mum’s voice telling you to be brave. You could do this. You had to do this.