The final bell rang signaling the end of the school day. Pat Webster waited outside of the front doors for his neighbor Cam Ness so they could walk home together. It was early may and the boys were excited to continue from eighth grade to freshman year in highschool.
Cam and Pat lived in a new development about a mile from school. They had moved there last year and became friends instantly. Cam and pat loved to break things. From windows to plates, they were reckless kids. They would wrestle and push and shove each other like boys their age would.
Walking home, they came across freshly set cement. It had footprint-shaped imprints in it all around the edges. Cam, looked at it wondering what vulgar things he could write in it.
“Can I draw in it?” asked Cam. “Looks like a bunch of people already stepped in it.”
“Let's not go too crazy with it. Maybe just something small.” replied Pat. He was cautious as he looked around hoping a worker wouldn’t come around a corner and see them.
“Why don’t we write our initials in it?” Cam asked.
“Okay, but make it quick! I don't want to be caught,” hollered Pat. Cam started to bend over and was about to draw in it with his finger when Pat stopped him.
“Let’s just use a stick or a pencil, Cam,” proposed Pat. “I don't want to smell like concrete.”
“Oh come on! It’ll be quick! It’s harmless grey mud that we’re gonna stick our fingers into,” Cam exclaimed.
“Okay, well I’m not going to anymore. It looks gross.” Pat started to back away.
“Suit yourself, Pat,” mumbled Cam.
Cam started to write his name into the concrete. He wrote the initials C.N.
“Pat?” said Cam.
“Yes..?”
“My finger is stuck. It won't come out,” Cam hollered.
“What do you mean?”
“Help you twerp!”
“You’re joking, like that one time you said that I was a shaved monkey from the zoo,” Pat said snidely. Cam was starting to pull back and he was huffing and trying to get his finger out. He was bent at the waist and was using all the strength he had to pull back, but he couldn't. The cement had a hold on him. This is when Pat knew something wrong.
Pat ran over to Cam, grabbed his backpack by the straps, and tried to pull him out. Desperately, the boys were screaming and breathing heavily.
“Help! Somebody please!” cried Cam. There was no reply.
“I told you we shouldn’t have done this!” said Pat. “I can't get you out!” Pat sat down and Cam kneeled, his finger still in the cement.
“Should I go get help?” asked Pat.
“No. Please don’t go. Don't leave me!” pleaded Cam.
Suddenly, a bubble rose from the cement. It popped near the surface and the boys looked at each other wondering what was happening.
“It’s pulling me in!” shouted Cam.
“No way! We need someone to help us. You’re being pulled into cement and there are no workers around!” Pat said. Now, Cam’s whole hand was in the cement. Kneeling over the concrete, he started to wail for help.
Pat grabbed ahold of Cam’s backpack again and pulled with all of his might.
“It’s working!” exclaimed Cam. “Keep doing that!” Cam began to sit up straight and started using his own power again.
Suddenly, Cam’s one-strap bookbag broke. The sudden stop in force caused Cam to fall forward into the cement with both hands.
“No! Help! Don't let me get sucked in!” Cam started to cry. He was pulled in the concrete up to his elbows. Pat looked on wondering what he could do. He took a hold of Cam’s shirt but that ripped too.
Cam’s face was right next to the cement now. He was being pulled in quickly, but Pat just looked on horrified, not sure what to do.
Cam’s screams were muffled when the cement enclosed his face. He was being pulled in by his head and arms. His legs gave out under him and he flailed his legs. Eventually he was in all the way to his legs and he was still fighting it. Finally his shoes went under the surface. Ripples still wavered over the surface.
Once the cement calmed down and settled, another footprint-shaped imprint appeared. It was about the size of Cam’s foot.
It appeared exactly where Cam had wrote his initials. Pat pulled a stick off a tree and touched the cement, but the concrete was now dry.
“Each footprint-shaped imprint is a person swallowed by the concrete,” Pat thought to himself. Pat ran home and told Cam’s parents as well as his own.
When they returned to the concrete, Pat ran up to it.
“Right here! It happened right here!” he called. The Ness family and the Webster family hurried over to him.
“Where are the footprints? Where is my son?” Mrs. Ness asked. Pat was confused.
“He was right here, I swear!” said a perplexed Pat. He was recreating the scene in his mind but he was too flustered to understand. Pat and his family went home.
The next morning on his walk to school, Pat asked a construction worker why none of them were there yesterday afternoon.
“We were on break from 3:00 to 4:00,” one worker called out. “Also, we didn’t set any cement yesterday. We were working on the structures and beams of these new houses. The sidewalks were set months ago.”
“Wait, you’re saying that you didn't set cement yesterday?” Pat was intrigued by this.
“Yeah. We’re scheduled to rip apart the sidewalk today. We’ve gotta lay some pipe to go to the water main city pipe.” a man hollered. Cam skipped school so he could see this. When they cracked the sidewalk open, they were horrified.
“Someone call the Five-O!” the workers all looked into the hole made by the excavators. Pat walked up and pushed through the crowd and saw what they were seeing.
Cold, dead, and fossilized in cement, a dozen people with horrified faces stand like statues, encased in cocoons of concrete.
Cam was a dead statue, reaching up and looking directly at Pat.