"Why don't we just pull over and ask for directions?" The exasperated voice of Jaime asked from the passenger seat, pouring over an unfolded map across the dashboard. I rolled my eyes while taking a turn along the road with a smooth turn of the steering wheel, passing a rural house with a rubbernecking local following our car from his front porch.

"Because we don't NEED to ask for directions. I told you we're not lost, I know exactly where we're going." I replied, ignoring the scolding gaze he mustered while looking up from his dime store atlas. "This places layout just doesn't make any sense. It's like a literal tourist trap or something."

"Ha, a trap your family couldn't escape, huh Alfred?" A voice from one of the back seats interjected. I looked into the rear-view mirror seeing Gunnar making a snide look like he was oh so proud of himself. His arm was wrapped around his boyfriend Kane who was just as smug in support of the anemic little remark. Beside them Wes was leaning against the window and made an exaggerated expression as if on my behalf.

"You're both just pissy because this is the closest you'll have ever gotten to having a real summer vacation." Wes snarked, though the other two acted like they hadn't heard him. I just chuckled and set my eyes back on the road. We were packed in pretty tight, eight koopas in a Toyota Highlander that seriously exaggerated the space provided by its seating accommodations, not to mention our luggage tied onto the roof.  Me and Jaime in the front seats, the jokers in the middle row, and three in the back seats too far removed to contribute to the back and forth. Aside from the occasional -

"Are we there yet?" Savini whined, only to be shushed. Not that everyone else wasn't also completely sick of this car ride, it took an hour just to get out into the boonies and there was only so much time that a road trip make out could kill before every bump and turn just felt tedious. Yes, despite how cramped the car was for so many passengers, there wasn't much complaining in that regard since the three courses of couples were practically sitting in each others laps anyway. Only Wes and his boyfriend John didn't get to sit together, but they seemed fine sharing backwards glances and holding hands like slow burn newly weds.

Stephen peeked over Gunnar's head and pushed his glasses up his nose by the rim before clucking out. "Umm can we stop at the next gas station? I need to uhh, go to the bathroom." He added hastily as an excuse, making Savini snicker beside him and fooling absolutely nobody.

"Fine, one munchies pit stop coming up." I answered, making the bespectacled Koopa huff and sit back and bringing a chuckle from everyone else in the car, aside from Jaime who just folded up his map and failing to hide his excitement at getting an opportunity to ask for his precious directions. "It's the last gas station before hitting the lake anyway. Might as well fill up the tank and get one last taste of civilization before we go off the grid."

After a few more minutes of driving, untamed forest threatening to overtake the asphalt road, I finally pulled into the last real pit stop for miles around. The out of the way gas station only had three active pumps, the other seven having Out Of Order signs on them with a distinct look of disrepair. The sign showing the price for gas was written up in faded paper stick ins, and the name of the place over the station was missing letters. The title of the gas station was as on the nose as it could get: The Last Stop, only with the debilitated look it read T e L st   op.

The only thing that looked out of place was a new billboard that had been put up just off to the side of the gas station turn off. An advertisement for a new summer camp attraction, bright pastel colors of a lake filled with tiny turtles splashing around in the water, and around the edges of the advert representations of other camp activities like archery and hiking. In broad fresh painted wording it seemed to silently shout with pride: "Spend your summer at Koopa Lake!" and just below it "Let the Quiet of Camp Cluck envelope you completely~"

"Your cousin really didn't skimp on the advertising budget." Jaime observed as he hopped out of the SUV, the other passengers all following suit happy for a chance to stretch their legs at the very least. We'd passed several other billboards that looked exactly like it on the way here, but this last one being put up beside such a run down little gas station presented quite the cogitative dissonance. One wondered what gullible parents would think if they knew this place was the last their kids would see through the windows of the bus before making it to this hip new summer camp.

"I still don't know how you convinced us to agree to spend our whole summer break as camp counselors." Kane grunted through a stretch as I hopped out of the drivers seat, priming the car to fill it up with gas.

"I offered you each fifty bucks, remember?" I replied with a slight taunt.

"Wait, you guys are getting paid?" John asked as he walked by, along with Stephen who didn't bother to pause to contribute to the conversation as he beelined for the station. "I thought we were just going to take turns chaperoning so we could... you know..."

"Spend all summer in the FUCK shack~?" Savini offered loud and shamelessly, making John and Wes fluster while Kane and Gunnar just chuckled and fist bumped each other and voiced their agreement with the summation.

"What can I say, they were the only ones who needed extra convincing." I said with a shrug, waddling towards the station with Jaime getting a slight lead in front of me. "Next time negotiate better!" I threw out over my shoulder, leaving the five behind while they milled around the SUV.

Inside the station Stephen was grabbing as many bags of snacks off the shelves as he could carry, while Jaime was at the front counter trying to talk to a jaded looking station attendant about the best way to make it to the lake. I tapped his blue shell on the back to get him to move aside, and addressed the lone employee as well. "Ten gallons on pump one my good sir."

The attendant met my gaze with a bit more curiosity than he gave to Jaime, and shook his head as he replied derisively. “We aint got no gas.”

I slumped my shoulder and looked over to Jaime, taken off guard by the response. “You’re out of gas?” I parroted, asking a stupid question. “But three of them are, uh, In Order.”

“The tank’s empty. Not enough people coming through. And those are all the out of order signs I could afford.” He clarified, leaning his shoulders on the counter. "You boys heading out for the lake? What fer?" He asked, Jaime letting out a slight huff at his efforts to guarantee we would indeed actually make it to the lake were going ignored.

I nodded while taking the offered change. "Yup! My cousin bought the lake, well the ground around the lake I guess. My family used to vacation here a lot, so he and SO thought it'd be a good idea to refurbish and reopen that old camp ground from like fifty years ago or something."

The attendant gave me a stony stare and nodded his head towards the window, the billboard clearly visible from the register seat. "Yeah, I knew that part. So you folks campers or something?"

Jaime snickered next to me, and Stephen bounced on his heels behind us with his arms overflowing with snacks. "Ah well, me and my friends are going to help him out and be counselors, to manage all the kids you know? You'll probably see them drive by tomorrow, we're going in early so everything will be set up once they get here."

The attendant nodded as he started ringing Stephen up, who rather bluntly asked. "So you been in business here for a long time?"

"Long enough. And not for much longer neither, things being the way they are." He answered, bagging up the stoner snacks. "Some city slicker renaming the lake is the last nail in the coffin. Folk used to come around to take in the local culture, enjoy the beauty of nature. Now they'll just be passing through to ditch their kids for the season. Doubt I'll be here to stock you boys up again next year."

Me and Jaime listened to his fatalistic summation with an awkward shuffle, though it seemed to go in one ear and out the other for Stephen who just nodded and grabbed the snack bags and ran out. He fixed us with a gaze that seemed to dare us to try and refute him, but I just looked off to the side and rubbed my shoulder looking desperately for a way to shuffle to the exit without making this even more awkward.

"Rename the lake?" Jaime asked, shattering the silence with genuine curiosity. It was a detail that'd gone over my head during the little monologue and I looked from him back to the attendant.

"Aye. Lake used to be named Zola." The matter of fact answer was met by another silence, only for Jaime to smile and elbow me in the side.

"That's a way better name than Lake Koopa. Your cousins' a douchebag." He teased through a shit eating grin, then started shoving me out of the station and gave the attendant a nod. As I was rushed out I could just about make out the attendants lips curving up in a smile as well, so that was a relief.

As I was pushed out Jaime slunk back into the station, leaving me looking out from the doorway. Stephen made it back to the SUV and they were all crowded around letting me see each one of them clearly. Stephen with his orange shell and glasses reflecting the setting sunlight, his boyfriend Savini with yellow shell who started pawing over their supply of munchies. John and Wes both with green shells and quietly snuggling together off in their own little world. Gunnar and Kane with spiked shells, purple and green respectively, whose idea of a romantic exchange was arm wrestling on the hood of the car. Then there was me in my red shell, and Jaime badgering the gas station employee for unnecessary directions in his blue shell. Those kids would be in for an interesting summer with the lot of us, that was for sure.

"Satisfied now?" I asked with a knowing arch to my brow as Jaime walked out of the station alongside me, sighing. Pushy and know it all that he was, he was definitely the most reliable koopa I knew. And the only one who didn't have a boyfriend.

"Not the word I'd use. But I guess I can accept we're going in the right direction now." He replied, rubbing the bridge of his nose while I just chuckled and slung my arm around his shoulders and nearly put him in a playful headlock.

"I told you to trust me! Hehe you don't have to overcompensate by being a busybody just because you're the only one who won't be getting any ass this summer." Jaime tried to push me back and huffed from my busting his balls, only making me chuckle as he freed himself from my hold mid stride.

"Kn-knock it off! Writing dirty letters to your fiance all summer doesn't count as 'getting ass' you know!" He refuted, stomping towards the car in a huff while I chuckled. Without any gas to pump into the car I took the downtime to stretch my legs some more before cramming back into the drivers seat. I strode off from the station lot onto the road, looking down the stretch that winded through more tree covered bends and inevitably lead off towards the lake. The sun was just beginning to wind down in the sky.

And I was just hoping that my cousin and his husband wouldn't be indecent by the time we arrived.

-----

There was a beautiful sunset glow across the camp grounds by the time we drove up to the main cabin, the light reflecting off the water from the lake nearby making it a lot brighter than it would be normally. There was still enough daylight for some last minute chores to be done around the site if they were distributed between everyone, but that just meant I would end up working through sunset because the instant I turned off the engine all the loverbirds in the car rushed out and started running up to the cabin to find empty bedrooms.

"Horndogs." I said with an eye roll, hopping out to head into the cabin while Jaime started unloading our luggage from the roof of the SUV. While the couples sped through the main room and upstairs, I assessed the layout a bit in a slow stroll. We'd be staying here together all summer, and it looked like it was up to the task. Enough bedrooms to go around for the ten of us, a localized power grid and satellite TV would keep us from getting bored when we weren't corralling the junior koopas, and the pantry and fridge were stocked with food. That was when I found the note, written up by my cousin and left for me to find.

It provided the checklist of the leftover things that needed to be done before we could turn in for the night, and the unnecessary detail that they would be unwinding from doing all the "real work" down by the lake. Shaking the mental image of what their idea of "unwinding" was out of my head, I made my way back across the lodge nearly running into Jaime who was carrying six duffle bags too many on his way in.

"Forget something?" He asked, shouldering some of the carry on as he stepped inside and made room for me to slip passed. I'd feel more guilty about letting him overwork himself, if it weren't for the way he always did it without even being asked to.

No I'm just going to meet up and touch base with my cousin first. They're umm, sex on the beach kinda guys." I explained, getting a curt exhale of understanding from Jaime before he lumbered the rest of the way inside. I slipped the list of chores into the neckring of his shell and gave him a pat on the shoulder before shimmying outside, ignoring any clucks of confusion I heard behind me through the closing door frame.

As I walked over to the lake I felt a sense of nostalgia sweep over me. We spent plenty of summers here in my youth, me and my family and usually no one else. It always felt like a resort only we knew about! The leftover ruins of long abandoned camp grounds never occurred to me as something to pay attention to at the time, but it must have always stuck in my cousins head. It seemed like a surprise to me when he came up with the idea of bring that old camp back to life, but it must have been an idea he'd mulled over ever since we were kids!

I looked around for any sign of him once I made it to the waters edge, and I found it when I saw the sunset light shining on a green shell back. Smiling to myself I waddled over towards it, expecting to give my cousin a shock by surprising him from behind. Instead I found the shell completely empty, no turtle to be found. I cocked my head looked down at the green shell, and then looked around me in complete befuddlement. My cousin wasn't the kind of guy to run around in his skivvies, even if he had the place to himself and his partner.

I plucked the shell up for lack of any other idea of what to do, and slowly waddled back to the cabin. I didn't know what to think, but the only reasonable idea that made sense in my head was that my cousin was inside the cabin with his husband and they'd just left his shell behind in their excitement?

"Hey guys! Have you seen my cousin in there?" I shouted out once the cabin was back in view. I saw John walked passed the window with Wes and waved to get his attention. Before I could tell if they noticed though, I felt and heard a sudden wet splat against my back. A second of confusion was wasted before I was yanked back, yelping out as the green shell fell out of my hands as I flew backwards through the air. I saw the cabin recede away from me, my feet off the floor and my arms flailing helplessly.

All at once the rushing wind and sunlight of the outside world was replaced with a hot and wet darkness. I was too disoriented to know what was happening, my body squirming on instinct and incoherent clucks spilling from my lips. I felt humid walls squishing around me, engulfing me from head to toe. And then a loud compressing sound filled my ears, and reverberated through my body.

GULP!

Just like that I understood, a primal comprehension honed by thousands of generations of my species being at the bottom of the food chain. I wailed out as what I now recognized as tight clenching gullet flesh dragged me down, and just like that I dropped into what could only be a waiting and hungry belly. And yet it was bizarre, I could now feel sunset light again. And more then that I could see out at forest trees and lake water in front of me, though it was distorted as if I was looking through a window smeared with vasoline. My body reacted on instinct as being curled up into a stomach, moving and pushing around hoping for any means of escape. Being surprised and disoriented from the experience of being snatched up and devoured out of nowhere I couldn't truly think through what had happened or what was around me except in the most basic animalistic of ways.

It was warm, wet, smelly, and noisy. I was in a stomach, it was squeezing against me from every angle. I heard the breathing of whatever I was inside of from all around. And without giving me a chance to catch my breath and collect my thoughts, I felt a puddle of gastric juices soak against my tail and up to my ankles.

I screamed, but it was drowned out by an erupting belch.