Disclaimer: Camp Camp is not mine.

Some people smiled even in death, it seemed.

Honestly, they all should have seen it coming. From the way light died in his eyes a little bit every day. The longer and longer that it had started taking him to bounce back when everything went wrong (as always). From one second, to five seconds, to half a minute, to a whole minute. The way his smile grew more and more fixed with every passing week. And he completely gave up on trying to get people to listen to his campfire songs, singing them to himself in quiet bouncy tunes behind the counselors' cabin in the late evenings.

Everyone was at least a little worried, though no one in their right mind admitted it. (Space kid was not in his right mind, quite frankly.)

The only one who came close to admitting that she might care (just a little bit) was Gwen, when she snapped, in his face: "What the fuck is with you, David?"

He bounced at that, oblivious as always, and with a wide grin he let her know in grave detail about the very exciting activity he was going to have with the campers tomorrow and how much they would love it.

A regular David response. But something was off.

Max claimed that David had finally come to terms with how shit everything really was.

A week later, David was gone.

A cheerful note was left on the dresser:

Gwen,

I'm sorry, I had to leave a week before camp ended, but I know you can handle it, (I believe in you!)

I prepared a lot of fun activities to keep the kids busy. (They're in the topdrawer).

I hope you all have lots of fun!

Gwen, thank you for being the best Co-counselor ever! Please let the kids know that I'm really sorry I had to disappear like this and tell Max that he's my favorite! :)

David.

Sadly, or luckily, the little demons, I mean, kids, got to the note first. Specifically, Max, Neil and Nikki.

Promptly Max decided that David was 'definitely hiding something' and claimed that 'the smiling shitface doesn't have a life' and 'the hell is he busy with anyways?'

"Maybe he's running away from his problems."

"He's been abducted!"

"Well… it's clear that we have no choice. We need to hunt him down."

The group concluded that David was probably hiding (or being held prisoner) deep in the woods, and they had to hunt him down and figure out what the hell he's up to.

Thus, Gwen awoke to a crumpled note, and three missing campers. She did the obvious and responsible thing, which was to take all of the remaining campers as a search party through the woods to find Tweedle-ikki, Tweedle-eil and Tweedle-fuck.

What she found was the last thing she expected. The three were standing still as death itself, staring at something that swung back and forth gently with a wind, hung by a rope beside the creek, it eyes glassy and head lopsided, its mouth stuck in a permanent smile.

"David?" There was no point in talking to a lifeless corpse, but she did it anyways, caught in morbid fascination, emotions boiling inside of her, bubbling, looking for a way out.

Then she pulled herself together. "C'mon kids we found them, nothing to fucking see here."

"Is David dead?"

She was too out of it to process who had said it, but the answer came out of her mouth easily. "Yes. We're going back to camp now."

It took a while to corral them, to stop the confusion, and slowly tow the lot back to camp, through the shouting and confusion and 'is that a body?', 'can I touch it?', 'is that David?', 'David killed himself?', and finally: 'we all saw it coming'.

After what felt like an eternity, they were back at the camp, the campers much quieter now, more subdued, whispering among themselves. Gwen decided 'fuck it' and took a nap.

"He fucking killed himself."

"Figures."

"Everyone knew he wasn't really happy, right?"

"Wanna bet on who'll off themselves next?"

It only took a couple of days for it all to blow over, for everyone to pretend nothing happened, to let themselves pretend to forget all about it just in time for them to go home.

And in winter the woods were barren, all but Quartermaster who never left the camp, and David's body, who would watch over the forest forever, even when all of his flesh had rotted away, leaving only a smiling skeleton, hanging there until the end of the world.