My Beginning & The End: Where The Road Led [REWRITTEN]

Suffocating ghosts

8.

Set the table with no food.
You present it as a gift, but when it comes to giving, you have nothing left to show. The only meal was the wrap that you wove around the lies you cloak.

The first night in the cabin became a blur. I couldn't remember what happened once I stepped inside. I had thought of about a million ways to escape but ended up going through with none of them. Each time I worked up the courage to carry through with my plans, he would always conveniently interrupt me at just the right moment. I wasn't even sure if I truly was a prisoner. I just locked myself away.

We slept in separate rooms that were right next to each other. At night, I would hear him moving around in his room. The floor creaked quietly. In the morning, when the sun had just set, he would be fast asleep after a long night of bustling and pacing around. I would use the opportunity to look around the cabin. Sometimes, he would lock my door, but other times, he couldn't care less. I never had the guts to ask him why he felt the need to do that. It wasn't as if I had tried to leave yet.

The one thing I could have enjoyed about my stay was his cooking. Each evening, he would present a new gourmet dinner. It was like dining in a five-star restaurant, but also, it's a psychological horror movie, and each meal was miserable because it missed the point. He never sat down to eat with me. Instead, he would usually sit down in the living room and observe me from afar like an animal in a zoo. I didn't enjoy eating anything he made. It felt bland even if it burst with flavor. It felt like eating a display. It was only there for show.

He didn't try to make much conversation. He liked to keep to himself, however when he did talk to me he addressed me with the wrong name. He kept calling me Evelyn. It annoyed me, and I tried arguing with him that he had the wrong woman. I wasn't the one he had been looking for. Each time I brought it up, he ignored every word I said and kept calling me Evelyn either way. I learned quickly that he was stubborn and ignored what he thought didn't fit his ideal fantasy world.
We were like a married couple that fell out of love years ago, but neither could sign the divorce papers and let go. Wandering around silently menouvering around each other. The only thing we were for each other was inconvenient. I wasn't sure what his plan was exactly and if he even had anything in mind. It seemed like he hadn't thought of anything other than that he thought I was Evelyn, which obviously wasn't me.

- - -

I was walking through the forest on a bright summer evening. I was 11 and full of nativity. I felt intact in a sense. Something completed me. The birds chirping in the trees, the crunch of the fallen branches breaking under my step, or the many wildered animals that inhabited the forest made me feel so at home. It was like I was living in one of fathers earlier fairytales. I recalled the memory fondly even though when I got home, he wasn't at all happy. He was slowly becoming incapable of happiness and deprived himself of any chance of hoping for a second try at living, but at the very least he never took my chance away, even if he never got his back.