THE SUICIDE CABIN

I SEE A CABIN IN MY DREAMS. I STAND INSIDE OF ITS DECREPIT WALLS. DEATH PERMEATES MY SENSES, NOT JUST MY EYES, NO, MY EARS HEAR THE ECHOS OF TORTURE NOT FAR GONE, MY SKIN TINGLES AS THE COLD CHILL OF DECAY ROLLS OVER IT IN WAVES. PERHAPS WORST OF ALL, THE SMELL OF ATROPHY SUFFOCATES ME LIKE AN IMPENETRABLE FOG.

The wind howls through the rotted wood of the derelict structure, pockmarked with holes. A light rain falls outside and somehow the rotted roof protects me. The shutters rattle on broken frames doing little to cover the shattered windows. Despite all of this, the silence in the cabin is deafening. I hear all of these sounds, but none of them register the way I would expect.

I don’t know why I’m here, but I have a feeling, an insatiable desire for discovery. Something important is here. I don’t know what it may be, but something is here. Desperately, my eyes flit around searching for something, hell anything.

There's a heavy breathing outside, quiet at first, maybe a whisper of wind. But it gets louder, it approaches the cabin, and I know my time is running out. I’m still scanning the cabin when my eyes land on an old wardrobe, yellowed with age, the wood peeling and broken. A rusted chain is looped through the handles, an old padlock haphazardly attached to it.

The breathing is getting closer, and I know I must do something. So I grab the wardrobe’s rusted handles and pull. Hard. The handles themselves fly off the wardrobe with a loud snapping of old wood. But the doors quickly follow, opening to reveal nothing but a small note. The note, was hastily scrawled in a red, splotchy ink. I pick it up, and my body feels as if it’s being pulled a hundred different directions at once.

I’m back at the cabin, but now it’s no longer derelict. A pastel blue paint covers the walls. The center room, which before was barren, now has a lavish leather couch and white fur rug. A coffee table is there, with two mugs set atop its polished wood. Again, I hear that heavy breathing. Louder than before, I spin to find the source of the sound but see only the cabin door, framed by a single curtained window. A lone beam of twilight sun penetrates the curtain and beyond it, two vaguely human shadows move.

The first shadow is that of a small girl. She is hunched over slightly, and if I tilt my head and listen closely, I can hear her crying, ever so quietly. The other shadow is that of a freakishly disproportionate man, he is tall and his arms stretch over the figure of the girl, holding on to her slim frame. The shadows pass over the window and the doorknob begins to rattle as it is unlocked.

Frozen, I stand there horrified as the door opens revealing the man and his unwilling companion. The girl, even younger than I thought, stands crying clutching a small, torn teddy bear. A blue and white plaid dress clings to her gaunt, starved frame. She is pale, almost ghostly. And her hair is long and black, once beautiful but now matted leaves and branches are stuck in the greasy mess that it has become. The man stands tall above her. His proportions, not a trick of the light but the truth. Long arms snake from his torso and are wrapped around the girl's torso. His pale fingers end in wickedly sharp nails. His face, like his body is grossly disproportionate, his eyes seem too big, his mouth a wicked grin.

If the pair sees me, they give no indication that I exist. The man leads the girl into the living room locking the door behind them. As he does so, he asks her in an oily, snakelike voice, “What do you think of your new home, my beautiful?”

In between sobs, the girl responds, “I want to go home, I want my mommy and daddy.”

“Your mommy and daddy are dead beautiful.” Replies the man, “I’m in charge of you now.”

“NO YOU’RE NOT!” The girl screams, and tries in vain to rip away from the man’s grasp.

As she does so, the sharp, claw-like nails of the man catch the fabric of her ragged dress, and there is a tearing sound as they easily rip through the cloth and into the skin underneath. Blood wells up from the ragged cuts and spills onto the white carpet staining it.

The screams of both the girl’s anguish and the man’s anger intermingle as my body is pulled back into the rotted, terrible version of the cabin that I was in originally. As I reorient myself, I see what remains of the couch, and the moth eaten rug. I want to move, get away from this horror. I shouldn’t be here. Naught remains of my curiosity, now I have become paralyzed with fear. I know I shouldn’t, I know I should leave, never come back. The girl, the man, the heavy breathing that is getting closer, all of it terrifies me down to my core. But this is my dream, and I know trying to control it is futile.

I move, involuntarily, towards the rug. Which is now covered in what remains of a long ago destroyed coffee table. I push aside the debris and somewhat to my disbelief, I reveal the long streak of dried blood, old but never forgotten.

Outside the breathing has gotten closer, it seeps through the shoddy walls of the cabin. I can sense another presence, it is closer than before but still far enough away to provide me with a minor sense of false security. I touch the bloodstained carpet and am once again transported to the past version of this hell.

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Once again, I am surrounded by the pastel colors, the new furniture, the absence of death. It all feels so surreal. I am transported, just as I was, crouched on the living room floor. Above me, the girl sits on the couch. She is older, by at least 4 years now in her early teenage years. Idly, she is drawing on a sketchpad with vibrantly colored markers. Her captor walks through the door frame that separates the living room from the tiny kitchenette, ducking to fit his body through. He takes a seat next to the girl on the couch. She places the sketchpad down on the couch beside her, and looks up at The Tall Man. Without warning the man shoots his arm out like a piston, long gnarled fingers wrapping around the girl's bony arm. She struggles against his iron grip, trying to escape some inevitable horror. The Tall Man produces a long silver knife from the folds of the drab gray sweatshirt he wears and presses it to the girl's temple. Again, his oily voice hisses forth and he says between gritted teeth, “Don’t move, don’t scream, don’t do anything. It will all be over soon.” He slides the knife down, relaxing his grip on the girl’s arm but still holding her tight. Then, in a flash, he presses her into the couch, and attempts to kiss her, his pointed, rotting teeth barely concealed behind thin lips that forcefully press onto the girl’s What I see next is to horrific to put into words, The Tall Man commits the greatest atrocity I have ever seen. And by the end, the girl is broken and sobbing. Her body spread limply on the couch, unmoving.

The Tall Man gets up, and moves away into the cabin’s bathroom, presumably to cleanse himself. However, he leaves his knife there on the coffee table and the girl seems to notice it. She slowly raises her baren body from the couch and slowly takes the knife in her trembling hands. She takes the knife, along with her drawing, still unfinished, into the cabin’s single bedroom. Laying the sketchpad on the covers, the girl sits down on the edge of the bed.

The knife, razor sharp, cuts cleanly through the pale skin on her wrist. Blood again wells up, but this time as I fade back to the rotted cabin, there are no screams of pain. No sounds of anger. Just the quiet sobs of the girl as the knife cuts into her skin. The last thing I see are her blood and tears falling, in a grotesque mixture, to the floor.

I come back to the cabin filled with death, and now I know, so many worse horrors. I frantically throw myself into the cabin’s bedroom. Knowing what happened here, I have to fight waves of nausea as I enter. Seeing the torn, mildew covered sheets. Seeing the long streaks of blood that cover this floor too. Seeing, worst of all, the long silver knife, even through the years of age, dulling, and rust, the knife is instantly recognizable. I pick it up expecting to be transported back to the past version of the cabin. I’m surprised then when I am not but what surprises me more, is a sound, a sharp tapping on the window.

I hesitantly creep towards the window and peer into the darkness beyond. Staring back at me, is a pale face I would never fail to recognize. The girl stares back, her ghostly skin pale in the moonlight. She is older, her clothes are torn, her hair greasier and more ragged than before.

She speaks, in a whisper that somehow seems louder than a scream. “You know what he did to me. I did this because of him.” She shows me her wrists, crisscrossed with scars, “He did this.”

I am unable to speak. My words aren’t forming. I try to say something, anything, but I can't get past the lump in my throat. The girl gestures to the note, which I unknowingly still clutch in my icy fingers. I look down and for the first time, I read the words thereon.

For years, I have endured your relentless torture. You have subjected me to unspeakable horrors. You have hurt me in ways I cannot begin to describe. But that all ends now. No longer will I play with sharp knives, and shallow scars. No longer will I fail with your leather belt wrapped around my throat like your icy fingers. I’m killing myself tonight, and I hope it hurts you. I hope you cry, you monstrous bastard. You ruined everything, took my purpose out of life for your own sick game. You are the reason the word evil exists

Rot in hell you sick fuck.

* May

For the last time, I feel that pulling sensation as I am thrust back into the pastel covered cabin from so many years ago. This time, I see May, the girl, standing in front of the wardrobe that held the fateful note within. I watch May sit the paper in the bottom of the wardrobe, and pick up a small pistol from within.

She takes the pistol, and ensures that it is loaded. Glancing around, she sees The Tall Man asleep on the couch. His lanky frame hangs over the edge. I follow May into the bathroom, she locks the door behind her – us. I know what’s coming, but I still hate to watch.

May raises the pistol to her temple, and with a deep breath, she smiles and pulls the trigger. The resulting bang is deafening. Blood, brains, and hair, spray against the linoleum floor and walls. Her body slumps, and she falls to the floor.

The door begins to shake, rattle on its hinges as The Tall Man, awoken from his slumber, calls desperately for May through the thin wooden door.

Spinning around me, the facade of beauty fades and I am now back in the cabin that this horrible journey started in. I am standing in the bathroom, and as the lines between facade and reality blur, I hear the rotted wood door rattle. I know who it is, it’s him. The monster who has haunted me for so long. I have been his captive too. Like May, I am broken, I am beaten and bloodied. And like May, I too have given up.

I drop to my knees and search for what I know will be there. My fingers brush cold steel, and I find the gun under the remnants of the cabinets. I follow the same hurried steps as May and many women before me have. I check the chamber. I stare for what feels like an eternity at the one bullet resting there. I take a deep breath, and press the cold steel to my temple, like so many others before me. Then, all goes black as I pull the cold steel trigger.