I sighed to myself and looked outside the door. This world was aptly named judging by my surroundings. There were swathes of luscious green everywhere. Aside from the dirt clearing around the cabin, I couldn’t look anywhere without seeing something green. The problem, of course, was that there were no signs of civilization.

Who am I going to influence out here?

There could be a busy town or city just beyond the trees, but all I could hear were birds and occasional animal sounds. I couldn't even make out a path away from the cabin.

What on earth am I going to do? Wait. Do I need to say "what on verdant" now?

The shadows spread long across the yard as the forest darkened with the setting sun. The "yard" seemed to be a small space of shrubbery and flowers losing a battle against the forest. In a few years, this cabin would be swallowed up.

I looked over at the bed with its lone pine for an occupant. I knew it wouldn't be long before everything in here was rotted and grown over. The shafts of light that were all over the cabin before the angel dude came had faded away with the sun. Soon it would be dark, and I would discover whether ghosts slept peacefully or haunted their homes out of boredom.

“Those are cheery thoughts!" I said out loud to shake off my mood.

I had already tried to leave the cabin through the door and failed. Likewise with the window beside it. The pine tree that went through the bed and up through the ceiling must have flourished with the sunlight coming through the window and the water dripping from the roof.

That's how its getting water, but how did a pine tree grow here anyway? There aren't any other plants growing in the cabin.

I drifted over to the tree and took a look under the bed at the trees roots. There was something metallic deep under the bed, but other than that, only leaves, some rotted clothes, and ruin. I floated up the trunk to the ceiling to see if I could glimpse the forest behind the cabin, then discovered that I passed through the roof.

I'm not limited to the cabin!

I looked back down the trunk into the cabin. I had clearly moved above the roof. I couldn't travel far from the tree, but it seemed the tree was considered part of the "Redemption Zone".

Moving to the top of the tree, I could rise no higher, but I did get to see more of the outlying area. The tree was young, which meant it was not as tall as the trees in the forest outside the front door, but I could still see behind the cabin. The land sloped downward, and in the distance I could see a river making its serpentine way through the forest. There seemed to be a path behind the house that went downhill towards the river, though I couldn’t see how far down the hill the path reached. I turned back to view the front of the cabin.

Off to the left of the front door were logs stacked in piles. They were too long to be intended for the small cabin that was my prison. Beyond the piles was a road, overgrown and poorly maintained. Beyond that? Trees, more trees, and forest.

“This isn’t just a log cabin; it’s a logging cabin! I'm still in the middle of nowhere, however. It looks like this area has been abandoned. Just like me. Ha."

If I was supposed to convince people to have faith in me by making like Casper and befriending them, I was doomed.

Wait. Who is Casper? That's not my name, right?

No. It didn't ring true. It must be a memory from Earth. I had no idea who I was, and I still didn't believe I deserved to be stuck in the boonies with no hope of getting free.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

After a while, the sky was filled with stars with nary a recognizable constellation. I watched the two moons rise and then set, and by the time I watched the sun rise on my second day in this prison, I had my answer about sleep.

─── ⋆⋅🪽⋅⋆ ───

I wish I could say that I spent the last few days filled with mighty purpose, anxiously engaged in finding a solution to my problem, but I'm afraid I just moped about. In fact, I found it surprisingly easy to be lazy in this form. I had no need for food, so I didn't need to forage. I lived rent free in a dump in the forest, so there were no living expenses. I was neither hot nor cold, so I had no need for clothing. I also had no one to help or haunt, which meant I had a terrible amount of free time. I didn't even have the chippunk to watch since I had scared it away. To keep myself entertained, I explored my environment, which was a broken-down home and a tree.

All of which meant that by the time I greeted my third day on this world, I had a terminal case of "cabin fever".

“Waaaaaaa!” I shouted as I hovered near the tree. Absolutely nothing noticed me, never mind responded. Since I was incorporeal, if anybody noticed, they'd be more puzzled a tree was shouting at them than be scared by it.

I could see sunshine glistening off the river below; teal-colored "crows" flew overhead; and deep in the forest behind me, some creature cried "Glop!" over and over again. No one was coming to my aid. Never mind seeing me, they probably couldn't even hear me. I was alone. The angels had really set me up.

I couldn't tell if three days of self-pity was a record for me since I still didn't even remember my name, but I could declare that I was fed up with moping as the sun rose on another dull day. I just didn’t understand the point of this second chance. Why go through all this torture? Honestly, though, what could I do about my situation?

Nothing! There was nothing to do about it. Everywhere I looked I saw one thing: trees. Lots and lots of trees. The area around the cabin remained barren, but a few steps beyond the door, the forest was reclaiming all the cleared land. It seemed that although the cabin was abandoned, the land around the cabin had still been used recently. Perhaps the season for logging had ended, or perhaps the lumberjacks moved from area to area to avoid deforestation.

Whatever. There’s nobody here now.

The big thought on my mind was that if I had to rely on the angels’ plan, I was doomed. That was by design, right? So I needed to either attract people here or get out of this idiotic zone to interact with humans. I mean, I had until this cabin ceased to exist to get somebody to believe I was real, but I could do that outside of the redemption zone. But how could I get out?

I had already tested the boundaries. I couldn't exit out the door or window, but I could move up the tree onto the roof. I wondered if the tree was included in the zone or had broken through the zone. To test it, all I'd need to do was get a plant that grew sideways through the door to see if it would help me take a step outside. Of course, I'd need to leave the cabin to find that plant in the first place, and I couldn't dig it up, drag it over here, and then put it back into the ground in front of the door since I couldn't touch anything. Maybe that wouldn't work anyway. Maybe I needed to grow the plant from a seed from the earth in the zone. I had a lot of questions and no way to answer them.

However, I did manage to scare that chippunk. I needed to identify what was different about the first time I tried to catch its attention and the second time.

I remember being frustrated. I didn't like being ignored by it. It made me angry. So I was determined to get it to notice me. Maybe anger was the key? But anger was surely the quick and deadly path. Certain to work, but also certain to get me exorcised, not that anybody was around to notice me terrorize chippunks.

Wait. Maybe determination is the key.

It occurred to me that determination was a kind of faith. But was anger a kind of faith? That didn’t seem correct to me. Anger was more like a lens that focused determination. Maybe determination is what helped me out onto the roof. Yet I was determined to leave the cabin the first time, so that couldn’t be it. I couldn't pass through the doorway, and I was very determined to get away from that creep. Scaring the chippunk took effort, and floating up the tree onto the roof took no effort at all.

This is stupid. The tree was part of the Redemption Zone. You already decided that. It’s a separate problem.

I felt as if I was on the verge of figuring things out. I could feel it in my bones. Well, I could feel it deep inside me, at any rate. But as I went round and round in my head, I still couldn't make sense of it. What was the trigger? I needed to interact with that chippunk more.

Then a depressing thought occurred to me.

I can't test this out. I scared the chippunk away!

I was back to square one before even starting.