#camp floodpain

[thegoldenreport]

FORBIDDEN STICK

It’s the question of the hour. 

We want to know.

Who has the forbidden stick?

It is important to realize that this is not a plaything or some cool relic to hoard as a souvenir. If you have the stick, please return it immediately.

Camp season has ended and the stick is missing, no longer resting over the wide bookcase at the back of the lodge. No longer protecting us.

We hope you had a good summer. We hope you recognize the value of a sturdy canoe and have taken to it as your primary mode of transportation. We hope the chip injected into your left temple is whispering songs we sung together every night at campfire. We hope you never forget them. We hope you are following it’s instructions.

But amidst all the fun, all the green cloaks, all the dinner parties with the King, our forbidden stick was stolen. You do not understand the consequences if we are not to get it back.

It must have been before lunch on a Tuesday. The last week of camp before close. Our cameras show a ragtag group of teens split off from the ceremony. Apparently able to move by themselves without vocal order from the King. A result of their chips suspiciously malfunctioning. How rude and inconsiderate. 

They carried themselves away and into the lodge. The scrawny one emerged with the stick behind his back. The others followed, giggling as he tossed it to them back and forth. Our artifact. A delicate thing. They weaved their way through the King’s dance. Avoiding the grasping hands of our green cloaks and escaping to the parking lot.

That is when they vanished. In thin air.

It took us three months to track them down. Each had somehow adopted a new identity. Each seemed to suffer some level of memory loss. We took them back into our custody. We fixed their broken chips. We thought this would be simple. But no.

The stick is still missing. And while our thieves are now more productive members of the Floodpain family, none can tell us what happened to it.

So we are asking you. You, the reader.

Please contact us through the Golden Report is you have any information on a gnarled, twisted stick, approximately six feet in length and slathered in a bright, aqua teal paint. Winds are already shifting, changing. The air tastes acidic. The underbelly is groaning. Camp Floodpain is losing the stronghold.

Return the stick.

Or suffer the complete upending of time and space as we know it.

#forbidden stick #the golden report #issue 45 #original #writing #surreal #weird #dark #unreality #camp floodpain