“Jeremy and Kevin will view me as some kind of tragic story about hopeless life until they are into their 30s when they will realize deceit, tragedy and violence can seep into your life even when you grow up in a clean cul de sac, graduate from a four-year college and have a “real job.” Jeremy will eventually discover the reason his marriage to that sweet, sweet high school sweetheart dissolved for the same reason and he will finally realize the reason was right under his nose the entire time. Well, actually sleeping across the room from him in our beloved Shack that one warm summer night a year when they come back and don’t realize I am watching.”
Daniel’s haunting predictions finally fully absorbed by both of our eyes, Jeremy and I stood silently in The Shack for a few minutes staring at the rotted wood of the floor.
“This is fucked, man,” Jeremy finally broke the silence.
“I know,” I muttered back.
Jeremy tossed the raggedy paper to the floor and kicked at it on its way down.
“Is that shit true?” Jeremy asked and looked to me with wet, bloodshot eyes.
I looked away as fast as I could.
“No,” I lied and I was sure it was obvious, I couldn’t look over at him. “All that shit is crazy, he’s watching us? He was just trying to fuck with us and just got incredibly lucky on all these predictions.”
“There’s no way someone gets that fucking lucky.”
“Well, what? You think he came back here sometime recently, dug up the old cans, wrote down what happened in all our lives, peppered in some bullshit to turn us against each other and now hovers around the woods like some kind of drug-addicted boogeyman?” I asked with a snort. “How did he make sure the prediction was still all faded and aged the way it was? We could barely even read it, it was so old.”
