A/N- This was originally written for an English assignment. I got a 93 if you care. A little short story about a vacation gone wrong. Done to death, I know, but fun to write. Please tell me what you think!

Margo, Macie, and Kayla were the best of friends. They did everything together. One day, they decided to take a vacation together. Their only problem was that they couldn’t agree on where to go. Margo wanted to go to Darien Lake, Kayla wanted to go stay at a cottage on the beach, and Macie wanted to go camping in the Adirondacks. They searched online for a popular vacation spot that had everything they wanted to do. They eventually found Mantle Beach. It was a small town in Virginia with beaches, amusement parks, and camp grounds. It was agreed that Margo would drive, because she had had her license for the longest. Kayla made reservations at a campground near the beach. On Saturday morning, they all packed their suitcases and put them in the trunk of Margo’s ‘97 Beetle. After they had all woken up and gotten ready, the piled into the car and drove down to the campground. It had been a long drive, so when the three girls arrived at their cabin, they unpacked their clothes and went right to sleep.

The next day, the girls realized that they hadn’t planned anything, so they put on their bathing suits and drove down to the beach. After four hours of swimming, tanning, and relaxing, they returned to their cabin to find it a mess. They were sure they hadn’t left it that way, but they just shrugged it off. It was, after all, their vacation, and they didn’t want to ruin it by worrying. They found a tourist map of the area and decided that they would go shopping the next day. The girls cleaned the room and went to bed, not a worry in their heads.

When they awoke the next morning, the got dressed, gathered their money together, and set out for a day of nothing but shopping. But as they walked store to store, Macie begin to feel strange. She kept turning around to make sure that no one was behind them, but all she could see were other shoppers. She began to feel paranoid after she heard a hook fall to the ground behind her in one of the stores. She decided to voice her concerns. “Guys?” she said as she looked around nervously. “Is it just me, or do you feel like someone is following us too?”

“Stop being so paranoid. We’re on vacation! You have got to stop watching so many crime shows,” Margo said, rolling her eyes. Macie reluctantly went back to shopping, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was following them. She spent the whole day looking behind her to see nothing but other shoppers. At the end of the day, they decided to stop and get some food. All they had eaten all day was breakfast and they were starving. Luckily, they came across a nice looking Mexican restaurant. They went inside and a waiter came around to take their order. The girls ordered a platter of tacos and sat back to enjoy their meal. When they finished, they called for the waiter to give them their bill. “That man over there already paid for you,” he said, pointing to an empty table on the other side of the room. His expression turned to confusion when he saw that it was now empty. “He must have left. He said he was an old friend of yours.”

Kayla turned to Macie. She began to think that her worries about being followed might have been true. She pondered over it for a moment before dismissing it from her thoughts. The girls left the restaurant and hurried back to their cabin. Kayla did not get any sleep that night. She couldn’t get the thought of someone following them out of her mind. As she thought, she recalled what had they had come back to the night before. She began to feel terrified. She refrained from speaking up about her fears, because she knew that Margo would immediately shoot down the idea, as she had before when Macie had suggested it. So Kayla spent the night staring at the ceiling, trying to fall asleep.

The next morning, Macie began to complain. “We’ve been staying on a campground for two days now and we haven’t spent a single moment in the woods!”

“Fine, we’ll go out in the woods today, but when we get back, I’m calling to see if I can get us ticket for that amusement park near the city,” Margo said with a sigh. Kayla decided to just go along with it. She would have rathered stay near large amounts of people, but she didn’t want to disappoint Macie. Margo grabbed a small backpack that she had brought on the trip and began to fill it with food for the trip. She handed Macie the backpack and said “Since you wanted to go out in the woods so bad, why don’t you carry the food!” Macie groaned, but slung the backpack over her shoulder anyways.

The girls set off into the woods, Margo in the front, Kayla in the middle, and Macie behind them. They hiked through the woods for about three hours before they got tired and decided to stop and eat under the shade of a nearby tree. They had just finished eating when Macie said “Hold on a sec. I got to go the bathroom. I’ll be right back.” She ran off. Margo and Kayla waited and waited. After ten minutes they began to get worried.

“Where the heck is she? She can’t be taking that long to go to the bathroom.” Margo said somewhat franticly. She got up and walked over to where Macie had disappeared to. Kayla followed, worried that she would lose another friend in the woods. She saw Margo standing near a tree and ran over to catch up. Just as she was nearing the tree Margo let out a blood-curling scream.

Kayla ran up to where she was standing and said “What are you trying to do give me a hea-”. She stopped talking when she saw what had made Margo scream so loudly. Lying at Margo’s feet was the body of Macie. Kayla turned white at the sight of her friend’s body, but was unable to let out a scream. Instead, she dropped to the ground beside Macie’s body and stared. She saw that there was a single knife wound in her chest, and that she was surrounded by a pool of blood that was slowly soaking into the woodland floor. As she began too comprehend what had happened, she burst into tears. Margo slowly kneeled down next to her, still in shock at what she had discovered, and pulled Kayla into a hug. They stayed like that for several minutes, unsure of what to do. Eventually, Kayla pulled herself together and realized that they had to leave the woods. Whatever had happened to Marcie could happen to one of them next.

“We have to leave! We’ll come back for her later, but right now, we have to worry about what’s going to happen to us!” Kayla said standing up. She pulled the hysterical Margo to her feet. “Come on! We have to hurry!”

“But we can’t just leave her here! We have to help her!” Margo screamed. She was crying hysterically.

Kayla grabbed Margo by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. She too, was still crying. She shook her head and quietly said “There’s nothing we can do to help her now.” At hearing those words finally spoken, Margo and Kayla both burst into another fit of tears. Before either of the girls realized what was happening, they had both been hit on the head and knocked unconscious. They fell to the woodland floor. The unknown assailant tied Kayla to a tree. He looked at the body of unconscious body of Margo that was lying beside Macie and didn’t think twice before shoving the knife repeatedly through her chest, just to make sure she was gone. Now, he would finally have his girl back.

Kayla regained consciousness a half hour later. She tried to get up, but she realized that she had been tied to a tree. She struggled and struggled, but whoever had tied the knots had tied them well. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to calm herself down. She opened her eyes and took in her surroundings. She was still in the woods, and near where Margo had found Macie’s body. As her eyes trailed the forest, looking for the way out, she froze at what she saw. There, lying beside Macie’s body, was the body of Margo. The sight of her two best friends’ bodies lying there, dead, was enough to send Kayla into a fit of tears. She couldn’t control herself. She began to scream at the top of her lungs. That was a big mistake. The man who had knocked her unconscious and killed Margo and Macie heard her screams and realized that she had awakened. He walked back to where he had tied Kayla up and took pleasure at the fact that her eyes widened when she saw who he was.

“Mike! What are you doing?” she screamed at him, becoming more terrified by the second. “I haven’t seen you since we broke up!”

“What do you think I’m doing? You shouldn’t have broken up with me! We were perfect together! We loved each other!” he screamed.

“You were way to over protective! You wanted to know where I was and who I was with every second of every day! You wouldn’t leave me alone! I loved you, but I couldn’t take it anymore!” Kayla screamed back.

“I was only trying to keep you safe! You don’t understand how terrible the world can be! Look what happened to your friends! They weren’t careful, and now they’re dead! I couldn’t let that happen to you!” Mike said stepping closer to her.

“Stay back! You’re the one that killed them! They would still be alive if you had just left me alone and moved on!” Kayla said kicking out her feet at him, trying to keep him from coming any closer. Mike grabbed her foot as it came near him and twisted it until he heard a crack. A scream of pain erupted from Kayla as she felt pain shoot up her leg.

“I only killed them to teach you a lesson! It was to help you! Just like what I’m about to do now,” he pulled out the pocket knife that he had used to stab both Margo and Macie and opened it and stepped closer and closer to Kayla.

“Please! Stop! How will killing me help me? Then I’ll be gone!” Kayla shouted at him, willing to try anything to keep him from killing her.

“After you’re gone, I can join you. That way, you’ll always be safe and we can be together forever!” Mike said with a smile. He took the last few steps toward the tree and stopped right in front of Kayla. “I promise it won’t hurt. It’ll be over in just one second, and then I can join you and we’ll always be happy…together,” he said as he put the knife right under her chin. Kayla kicked out with all the force she could and ended up kicking Mike in the stomach. He dropped his knife and fell backwards. While he was struggling to get up off of the ground, Kayla struggled with the ropes, hoping that they would give away. Alas, it was no use. When Mike realized what she was trying to do he forgot about his own pain and quickly jumped up from the ground. He retrieved his knife and cuts Kayla’s throat quickly and swiftly. Before she had a chance to say another word, she was dead. Mike grabbed her hand and said two final words before slitting his own throat. “Together forever.”

A/N- So what did you think? I wasn’t too happy with the end, but it’s okay. Please review!