The Cabin of Despair

Sydney checked her mail after a long day of work at the office.  

“Bills, bills, and more bills,” she said, disgusted. As she threw it on a pile on the counter, something fell out and caught her attention.  

It was a photo of a winter log cabin advertising to stay here without phone or internet for 30 days. It offered $1,000,000 if a participant could do it.  

That is so what I need, Sydney thought to herself. She looked through it and saw a 24-hour contact office number. She immediately picked up her cell and dialed. 

The next day, Saturday, found her packing and driving to the office of the log cabin where she locked up her cell phone and devices for a month.  

No internet, no texting, no phone calls, no social media, Sydney thought. This is exactly what I need.  

When she pulled up the snowy path to the log cabin after a two-hour drive, she looked up and realized just then how deserted she really was from everything. She pulled up, put the car in park, and stepped out. Staring up at the one-bedroom/one bath cabin, she began to feel more alone and isolated than she felt in months. Sydney had been dealing with depression since she was 16. Now, she felt scared. What if something happened to her out here, alone in this abandoned old cabin? She began to have doubts.  

Pulling herself out of her thoughts, she grabbed her lone suitcase out of her car, clicked her fob to lock the door, and walked to the dilapidated front stoop.   

The smell upon entering was musty and mildewy. Sydney reached for the light switch and snapped it on. Nothing happened.  

Drats, must be a dead bulb, she thought to herself as she looked around the shadows of the place she would be staying for a month. Why ever did I sign up for this? she wondered in her mind.  

She set her suitcase down and looked around for the bathroom. She saw a slightly open door off to her right. As she pushed the door open, she saw a bulb hanging down. She pulled the light switch. Again, nothing. Sighing, she sat on the toilet to do her business.  

“At least there’s toilet paper,” Sydney said out loud in the dank darkness. She had noticed the temperature in the cabin was a bit chilly — goosebumps prickled her arms and legs.  

“Great,” she uttered as she left the bathroom to unpack her suitcase and hang her clothes up in the closet. The bedroom was tiny, as well. She didn’t even bother to turn on the light in there.  

“Someone probably forgot to pay the electric bill.” Sydney laughed to herself as she threw the contents of her suitcase on the tiny bed frame and mattress.  

Her clothes hanging in the closet, Sydney stepped out the front door to gather some fresh air. When her right foot touched the porch, she hurriedly turned back inside and locked the door.  

She peeked out the curtain on the front picture window. A bear.

A big, black grizzly bear.  

Having had enough for one day, Sydney lay on the tiny bed and tried to close her eyes. The mattress was thinner than it looked and felt very uncomfortable. She admitted it to herself — she was frightened. What if she didn’t make it out of this resort alive? 10 minutes later, she finally fell asleep.  

Morning light shone through the windows. Sydney’s eyes slowly began to open. She groped for her phone. Then, she remembered where she was.  

She quickly glanced out the front window upon walking into the living room, basically the only big room in the entire cabin. She saw nothing except for silence and stillness. The winter sun glared at her. 

“Morning,” she muttered quietly to herself as she yawned and turned around.  

The small kitchenette had a gas stove with a kettle. Over a breakfast of a stale bagel and some hot water, she debated her options. She could pack up, get in her car, leave, and never look back, or she could wait this out and see if she really got the money. She decided to leave. The money really wasn’t that important.  

After breakfast, she packed up and left the cabin — only to discover that during the night, she had received a flat tire on her black Jetta.  With no spare tire in her trunk, she was stuck.

Her thoughts whirled. With no cell phone and no internet, she was screwed. The nearest neighbor was a 100 or so miles away. She was literally stuck in a place she didn’t want to be…

Sydney was sitting down at the table after her first full day in the ‘cabin of despair’ (her new phrase for it in her mind). She had made what she had found in the cabinets — a pot of canned stew and almost stale bread to go with it. She had found a manual can opener in one of the drawers and heated up the canned stew on the gas stove she had made hot water on earlier that morning.  

During the course of the day, she had racked her brain for ways to send help, including writing SOS in the snow and waving her hands in the air -- no jets seemed to fly by today -- and starting a fire in the fire pit to send out smoke signals. She was thankful she hadn’t seen any more furry creatures outside; however, a skunk did wander by as she was heading back inside to brainstorm some more. Around 3 pm, she got a bit hungry and rummaged through the kitchen.  

As she sat there, chewing on her stale bread, spoon sipping her beef stew, and drinking some cold tap water, she had an idea. This was bound to work!  

When she finished every morsel of her food, she went to the closet by the front door. Running her fingers on the top shelf, she discovered it. This cabin had a flare gun for emergencies! Tonight, she would shoot off a flare and hope for the best.  

She quickly ran into a problem: she couldn’t find the flares for the gun.  

She ransacked every room in the tiny cabin — which wasn’t very hard to do — and found nothing. Absolutely nothing!

Frustrated and discouraged, she lay on her bed and — letting her depression sink in again — contemplated suicide. She even began to look for a rope to hang herself, but could find nothing, of course.  

She fell asleep. Her body woke with a start. Her watch read 12:00 am. Midnight. The witching hour. Feeling creeped out, she got up to use the bathroom.  

While sitting on the toilet, she noticed something. There was a door on the bathroom wall. Why she hadn’t noticed the latch before, she did not know, but when she was done, she fidgeted with the latch. It swung open easily!

On the other side was a dark space with lots of dirt. She cautiously stepped inside, feeling her fingers along the walls. She brushed something.  

Taking a closer look, she saw it was a metal box with a latch. It was an electrical box!

Let there be light, she thought as she opened it and started pressing the buttons. The cabin lit up. She saw a light dangling down in front of her in the little dark room she was in and pulled on it. It lit up, as well. Sydney was ecstatic, especially when she saw a cable leading out from the wall from a — phone jack?!  

There was an old-fashioned, black, rotary phone sitting on the shelf along the wall. Sydney picked up the handset and listened. There was a solid dial tone.  

“9-1-1. What’s your emergency?”

Breathless and in shock to hear another voice after almost 2 days, Sydney gave her location.  

She ran out of the room, forgetting to close the door behind her, and waited in the main room for help to arrive.  

As she waited, a cat walked out from behind the bathroom door. She picked it up.  

“Hi, kitty, I didn’t know you were trapped back there,” she said sadly. “I’ll take you home with me.”

Sydney did not notice the demonic glint in the cat’s eye as she rubbed the cat against her cheek.