The Cabin

Edward

When I woke up, Mom was already gone. There was no trace of her, and the entire house was as dark as the vast emptiness of space. So I started searching for the flashlight in my backpack, which was hard to find without any lights, but eventually, I sensed myself around the backpack and found the flashlight. When I turned it on, I saw cracks all over the walls of the house, including the floor. Every step I took felt like I was a giant inside a small house, I carefully looked around for the exit door. The closer and closer I got to the door, the more cracks appeared around me. When I finally got to the door, I could see that there was no turning back. This was the last time I would be able to see this house. Goodbye house, I'll forever have you in my memory.

Then I stepped through, and when I looked back, there was no longer a door, just the outline on the floor, like a fleeting memory. This time around, the forest was raining heavily, the ground was muddy, and all the trees had grown to an absurd amount of length. Things kept changing, so many weird things had been happening that I was wondering if I was ever going to be able to get home. It's like the forest didn't want me to leave. For a while, I felt like there had been a presence on me, I wasn't able to pinpoint the feeling until I went through the door and the feeling turned ever more focused. I looked to my right and left shoulders but saw nothing of the sort.

I guessed that it was better to keep going, and for a while, I walked and walked and walked, but nothing popped up, and I still felt like someone had been watching over me. Man, I missed being in that house. It was like being wrapped in a big warm blanket in the middle of a snowstorm. Nothing could have made things bad. I often had that feeling as a kid, but the more I grew up, the more I felt like I was in a snowstorm. I just had to get through the storm. Maybe there will be a cabin at the end of it.

Eventually, I finally found something else, but this time, it looked smaller than the door, and there seemed to be three small dots in front of it. When I got close enough to see what it was, I found a small TV, one of those old ones, playing Man-Ant 2 with three people watching the movie. One of them had long black pants and a black buttoned-up black shirt. He also had a clerical collar similar to a pastor. Although where his hands were supposed to be, there weren't any. The second one had no shirt on, only torn up cargo pants. He had a lot of muscle. His veins popped all over his upper body. There were also a lot of scars all over him. Most notably, he had chain scars on his wrist and his legs. The third one seemed like an old homeless man from the other world. He had an old dirty beanie on, a hoodie drenched in smell and sweatpants that could barely be held together.

I sat next to the one with the old beanie, I asked him what his name was and he told me 'My name's Edward, nice to meet you" I told him my name and he said "that's an unusual name, which one of your parents named you that?" I told him that it was my dad who gave me my name, but sadly, I was never able to ask him why he named me that. He laughed it off and asked me if I've watched the first Man-Ant and I told him "Yes I used to watch it with my mom when I was younger" he then responded with "I watched it when I was a young adult, when I had money. But now that doesn't matter since we're all stuck in this forest, the three of us have been walking for miles but nothing has come up for us, except doors to places we've been to before" I tell him "The same has been happening to me" a silence becomes of us and for a few minutes I become entranced by the movie.

That after a while, I snapped out of it and looked over the TV to find three trails, all with an arrow pointing to one, each one having someone's name on it. I sit up and tell them to look at what's behind the TV, they sit up and get freaked out, the one with the scars said "how could that be there, there wasn't anything there before" we got close to the entrances and the arrow pointing to the middle said "Edward" then the one pointing to the left one said "Sisyphus" and the last one said "Michael". Edward said "They all have our names on them" I responded with "Except for my name, that means that I'm gonna have to go with one of you" Edward spoke up to say "You can go with me if you'd like" I tell him "Sure I'll go with you" then the other two said goodbye and went to each one of their trails.

I went with Edward, and once more, the trail went on for hours and hours. Every day felt like pushing a rock up a hill, no matter what we had to push ourselves, a battle only we could win...or lose. The forest slowly started turning to night, and eventually, we set camp. Both of us had backpacks full of stuff needed to survive. I guess we both came from the same cabin. By the time it had fully turned to night, the rain had stopped, and so we decided to set camp and start a campfire. We sat around it, looking deep into the fire, burning bright and beautifully in front of us, making us remember a time when there was a fire bursting with passion deep within us. The warmness of the fire comforted us, making us forget for just a second or two of our worries and whether we would ever get out of this forest. Edward started speaking of how he had gotten here, he told me that the last thing he could remember before arriving at the cabin was him falling asleep on the side of the road, on that particular night it was raining heavily, after that he had woken up in the cabin. Then he met the lady in the chair and left on his own journey. He then asked me how I had gotten to the cabin, and I told him that the last thing I could remember was falling asleep while driving. I hadn't slept the night before very well but I decided that I still needed to go to work that day. I told him that I had hoped I would've just stayed home, maybe I wouldn't be here, maybe I could still be with my lovely wife, being able to see her beautiful dark hair one last time, and be with my kids, I hoped that maybe they would miss their old man, even if I hadn't always been there for them. He told me "They definitely miss you, especially now that you're not there with them, when they get older they'll understand what you did for them, they won't look at you as the man that wasn't there for them, they'll look at you as the man that did everything he could, and that's what matters" it took me a second for me to say anything, then I told him "Thank you man, that means a lot" we then started preparing to go to sleep, we took out our sleeping bags, putting them next to the campfire to be able to feel the warmth of such a flame, one last time. Both of us hoped that the flame would rub off deep into our souls, to be able to keep going.