The Outside

Section I

I close the car door behind me, stepping out of the small, cramped cabin. The heater had broken along with the windows a while back, so a heavy sweat had broken out on my brow. Fall was just beginning and summer's heavy heat still hung around like a ten pound weight on my chest. I unbutton my shirt and let the wind blowing through the trees swing against and around my bare chest. I inhale deeply. The scent, a combination of wood smell, the after trace of a fire, something syrupy, and the lightest trace of animal life, flows into me. It caresses me as if telling me that I've found my home. The sun shines brightly down on me, casting yellow light all around me on the vibrant fallen leaves.

    "Edgar," Marion says to my left, "is this the place?"

    I do not look at her. I simply gaze at the small cabin before me, absorbing the yellow sunlight.

    Marion paces around the front of the car to me and tugs on my sleeve, "Edgar?"

    I turn my head down to her, pulling it away from the warm caress of the sun. Her reddish-blonde hair hangs loosely around her shoulders. Her long, long skinny neck pulsates with warm breaths. Shadows cast by the canopy of tree cover fall over her pale skin. Her brown eyes glint dully with the sun's reflection. I boredly say, "Yes."

    She looks at the cabin, and then back at me, "It's kind of run-down isn't it?"

    I pull my arm free of hers and stalk forward on crunching leaves to the cabin's door. The cabin looks hand-built. It is hand-built. The door has no handle and no locks. It's simply logs tied together and mounted with string to a crudely constructed frame. The windows are more modern, I'd had their original, empty holes filled with glass for insulation about a decade or so ago. The shingles on the roof seemed to all be broken or falling off or sitting at a weird angle or, in some cases, a combination of the three. A small swing hangs, swaying in the wind, from the branch of a great, oaken tree just away from the cabin's stone chimney. Marion was right; it is very run down. Extremely so. Only, this place was me and my brothers' home for the first thirteen years of our lives. Tucked away in the middle of dark, heavy woods, it's unknown, hidden, safe from the world. The cabin is a refuge from the storm of society.

    I push the door open lightly, the house creaks in protest. I slide my hand down the rough, rounded, wooden door frame.

Old girl, you've been asleep for a long time.

I rest my forehead against the wood and a tear streaks down my face before I can regain control. I pull myself upright, readjust my shoulders to exude my sense of strength and walk on heavy sounding heels into the foyer.

Under a low hanging, long-broken arch, a room akin to the modern living room-dining room combination arrangement rests its molded, wooden frame. Against the far wall of the room, a more recently built cobbled fireplace waits, cold and forgotten. Six uncomfortable and fragile looking wooden chairs sit surrounding a rickety little table. Tucked away in a corner is a long, tall mirror complete with an ornate frame. Its subtle nuance and classy touch clash with the room and set the mirror apart. Despite sitting in almost purely black shadow, the mirror seems to reflect the sun's beam losslessly into my eyes. It seems as if the mirror was set in just the exactly correct spot in the room in which to collect none of the thick layer of dust that had settled over the rest of the room. In fact, a sort of radius around the mirror was formed by the thick sediment that coated the floor everywhere save for a segment of a circle surrounding the mirror in the corner. The mirror reflects to me the image of the grandfather clock resting like an old man in the corner opposite the mirror.

Marion floats in silently behind me. She breaks the perfectly silent reverie with a loud, "It's kind of gross in here."

    I resettle my glasses on my nose and look down to my side at her. I say, "There is a bit of dust," monotonously.

    She stoops down and runs her finger along the ground. She looks at her finger, grimaces, and holds it up almost touching my nose. She waggles her dirtied finger saying, "A bit of dust!" incredulously, "This is way more than a bit."

    I slowly move her hand down from my face. I look away from her, back at the room and say simply, "A bit more, yes." The corner of my mouth twitches, betraying my distaste for her stuffing her finger in my face.

    She walks over to the table, running her hand along the wall. I turn and swing the rickety, worthless door behind me. I look back to see Marion blow a big puff of dust up off the table. It swirls around in the air and, finally, recollects itself over Marion's face. She scrunches up her nose and swipes at herself, as if fighting off some creature attacking her face. I walk past her as she flails at the air, down the long, dark, dusty, shadowed corridor.

I duck through the doorway into my childhood bedroom. The room is dark like the rest of the house. Little spots of sunlight break through the gaps in the log walls. A heavy layer of dust coats the little, old, rickety, wooden bed from my dreams and memories. The red blanket lies rumpled up and stained. I throw back the blanket, kicking up a swirling cloud of dust. I carefully slide down onto the bed. My feet hang out over the end of the bed. I cross my arms over my chest and lay back my head on the pillow. I stare up at the shifting, creaking, wooden ceiling. Lying here, even overgrown for the bed as I am, it still seems to place me back in my childhood.