The loud squeaking of peepers fills the air of the still-warm summer night. The cacophonous sound of summer night creatures overtakes the gentle sounds of the wind blowing over the midwestern hills. The trees dance under the darkness of the night, illuminated only by the stars, the moon having hidden itself behind its current phase.

  A small orange ember falls from the end of my cigarette as I tap it gently. With a long exhale, a cloud of white smoke fills the air in front of me. I accidentally tap it too hard, and the paper wrapping snaps, and the lit end of my smoke falls to the ground. I loudly cuss before producing my lighter. I flick it a few times and find I may now be out of butane. I sigh, throwing the useless filter and what little tobacco that is left into the freshly dug pit next to me.

  I lie back onto the pasture grass and stare at the stars for a while longer. The darkness of the night doesn't feel so bad right now since the stars sparkle like diamonds. It's almost possible to see a fair distance thanks to how brightly the Milky Way has shown up tonight. It's a sight I never can get enough of. The static stars are broken up by the flashing light of a single airliner passing by, the red and green contrasting against the white-blue stars.

  I look to my right and stare at the bed of my old truck with a heavy sigh. I finally decide to finish my work and get up off the ground. I walk over to my truck and drop the tailgate. This causes my muddy shovel to fall over, but I ignore it for now. The dropping tailgate is like a gunshot in the natural sounds of the night. As it drops, it reveals the three garbage bags I have in the back.

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  With a grunt, I drag the two biggest out of the truck and into the pit I had dug. One of the bags tears and I can see the white hair of the contents of the bag. The perm is matted with blood. I grimace, and with my boot I kick the bag back closed. The last bag, the smallest, begins violently moving as the thing inside of it isn't actually dead like I believed it to be. The squeals of the unnatural being fill the night air, and I drag it from my truck and toss it with the other two. I pick up the shovel just as its claws make it through the hefty bag.

  In the dark, I can see the huge black eyes of the creature, and for a moment it starts to sound like a child crying, but knowing that this creature's game, and that it doesn't actually sound like that, I bring the flat of the shovel down onto its head. The loud ping of the shovel slamming into meat rings out, and I repeat this process until I am certain it is dead, as the skull is reduced to mush.

  I frown and go to the front of my truck, and from the glove compartment I pull out my backup matches. I pocket them and take the gas cans from the bed of the truck. I dump the gas onto the bodies within the bags and toss the cans into the pit. I light a match and toss it in, but it extinguishes in flight. I cuss, and then squat so I can carefully light a new match, and light the gas which nearly burns my hand as the fire rapidly ignites.