This is an REI co-op studios production.

There's a melon on the edge of a picnic table on a hot late summer day.

You notice it because someone bumped the table and the melon is starting to wobble.

You see it wall wall. You see what's going to happen. And maybe if you move quick,

there's that drop in your stomach and a tightness in your chest and you spring forward a step.

I'm not fast enough.

The smooth roundness slips past your reaching fingers and smashes on the concrete.

You stand there for a moment, just staring at it.

And strangely it reminds you of this week's story because there's something obscene about a very ripe,

very smashed melon. Something about the way that juices ooze in the flesh, glistened.

How the slimy center clings to the seeds like larval secrets.

Somehow, something that a moment ago looked so delicious.

Oh, now you don't want to touch it.

But somebody asked to clean it up.

Put it in the trash, get it out of sight, out of mind.

If only you could forget that night as easily.

You crouch down, start to gather the warm, wet, broken pieces together.

And suddenly you're back in that horrible place.

Back on that narrow country lane in Connecticut,

with the barren trees crowding in around you, that lonely house up ahead.

Those sounds in the dark forest.

And you realize, this is the Camp Monsters podcast.

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