AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I took out almost every penny of my bank account, and used the cash to pay for everything on the trip to the hunting cabin. My phone, the one I’d spent twenty precious moments pulling pictures off of and sending them to my email for safekeeping, was in a garbage can outside of a convenience store back in Ohio.
I had… so little.
A couple bags full of clothes I’d bought on clearance, a comforter and pillow with the same backstory, a couple of books because, well, I had a feeling there would be a lot of long, boring days ahead of me. And, yeah, some houseware goods and food.
That was it.
No more social media.
No laptop with wifi to make the hours pass more quickly.
“It’ll all shake out,” I told myself out loud, feeling another stab of grief at that old, familiar saying.
I blinked the tears out of my eyes as I saw the small pile of bricks that marked the ‘driveway’ to the cabin.
I could cry later.
I had to get to the cabin.
I had to get my things inside.
Do some cleaning.
Make sure the wood-burning stove was operational.
Say a silent prayer that the water catchment and filtering system would be sufficient and not leave me writhing in pain and dying from some unknown illness.
It was a short five-minute drive before the cabin finally came into view.
The story was that my grandfather and uncle had built it with their own hands over a summer, and I could never tell if there was actually any truth to that story or not. But it definitely looked like a place that three unskilled builders could have knocked together.
The wood had softened to a gray color over the years on the simple rectangular structure with too few windows and a sharp saltbox-style roof in the back, so the large amounts of snowfall in the winter would simply slide right off.
“Home sweet home,” I said as I cut the engine.
It took actual effort to force myself out of the car, to grab my bags, then make my way to the front door.
There was no need to fumble for a keychain or look for some rock with a key hidden underneath. The cabin was always left unlocked. Apparently, it was some unspoken rule. In case someone found themselves trapped in the woods, and needed an escape from the elements.
I always thought that was kind of sweet.
Now, though, it felt like I was a single woman without protection alone in the woods with no lock on the door.
I pushed those thoughts away, reminding myself that I’d been careful to make sure no one could track me here, that I was smack-dab in the middle of thirty acres of property. With nothing but more preserved land on each side.
No one would happen upon me.
I was as safe as I could possibly expect to be.
The inside of the cabin felt stuffy and smelled dusty and stale. I propped open the door with a boot rack inside the door, letting some fresh air into the space that so desperately needed it.
It was a space that was painfully obvious had only been inhabited by men. There was nothing cozy about it, save for maybe the warm honey-toned wooden interior walls.
The small wood-burning stove was situated directly in the center of the space on a platform made of red bricks, with a brick wall behind it as well.
Directly across from there was a twin bed that I knew had a trundle tucked underneath. The mattress was secured in a water/mite/bug proof plastic style liner, and stripped of all the bedding.
I’d forgotten about that when I’d been buying supplies. But the single flat sheet I had would have to serve as my bedding.
