Jaycee Woods

Below is some raw draft dialogue from my short story with a working title, “Lost woman – Zeke and Britney.”

City girl Britney was abandoned in the woods by her ‘friends.’ After getting lost, she encounters Zeke. The story dramatizes the disconnect and biased hostility between a city girl lost in the woods and a good ol’ boy in flyover country.

Poor Zeke ends up having to help the entitled and rude Britney because she ignorantly ate some poisonous wild berries from his land.

**** Snip from beginning ****

Britney: “Hello?! Anybody!?”

Britney: “Can anyone hear me?!”

Britney: “Hello?! Help me! Please! Somebody help me!”

Britney: “Is anybody there? Can anyone hear me? Please help me. I’m lost.”

Britney: “Please someone help me! I’m lost in the forest!”

Zeke: “Shut up! You are scaring off the deer.” The male voice came from a deer-stand over her head.

Britney: She stops yelling and looks up, “Wh-wh- where are you!? How did you get up there?!”

Zeke: “Shhhh. Stop messing with the deer, noisy woman.”

Britney: “Don’t call me that, mister! I have a name!”

Zeke: “Loud mouth?”

Britney: “No, you jerk! My name is Britney!”

Zeke: “Go away Britney. You are trespassing.”

Britney: “I’m not trespassing! I got lost in the stupid woods!”

Zeke: “Are these your woods? No, so you are a trespasser. Leave before I shoot you.”

Britney: “You’re going to shoot me for just being here?”

Zeke: “That is what my no trespassing signs said. If I don’t shoot you, then it could hurt my reputation.”

Britney: “You’re joking, right? You aren’t going to shoot me? Please don’t shoot me. I’m lost and scared. Please help me.”

Zeke: “Walk east; it is the shortest way off my property.”

Britney: “Okay, okay. I’ll go. But you are mean and horrible, and I hate you.”

Zeke: “Hush woman, cuz I only care about you leaving quietly. If I have to get down to cut out your tongue, then I am gonna be big mad.”

Britney: “Don’t be a jerk, I’m going. Just wait until I tell everybody back at the town what a big meanie face you are.”

Zeke: “Fine. I don’t know ’em, so I don’t care. When you leave my property, my neighbor has bear traps on his private property. He has plausible deniability because there are bear about, but they are for catching trespassers. I don’t know what he does with the pretty things he catches.”

Britney: “What do you mean ‘pretty things’? You’re not saying…?”

Zeke: “There are stories and rumors about young women who went missing in the woods.”

Britney: She gulps and starts walking faster.

Zeke: “Git. Dummy, that way ain’t east. Do you have no sense of direction?”

Britney: “Shut up, you moron! I’m trying my best!”

Zeke: “I ain’t the one who got lost in the woods. You don’t even have a compass.”