The Untimely Death of a Dream

   “I think this is it, Gil.” Hattie flashed the information sheet she had printed from the internet with a picture of their new home at her husband. Gil was quiet. She looked down at the well creased page and up again, comparing the photo to real life. 

  “This is going to be so great!” They struggled to make it down the goat trail that served as a driveway. The couple were pulling a trailer too large for their car which caused the weary sedan to protest in metallic screeches along the bumpy dirt path.

  The brakes cried out in agony as Gil stomped the pedal to the floor and shifted into park. His face was stone. The future was laid out before him and it was not pretty. A cabin, probably civil war era, stood shrouded in leaf litter and broken branches. Tall, spindly trees still naked and sharp from winter huddled together in tangled masses surrounding the property. 

  “Oh no.” He said as he clapped a hand across his forehead and dragged it down his face to his mouth. His eyes searched his wife’s face for answers. She cocked her head to the side, confused by his reaction. 

  “What? It needs a little love but it’s going to be great!” She spoke with the energy and optimism of a kindergarten teacher. Gill looked at her in horror as the gravity of the situation set in. Hindsight vision reminded him of the red flags he had ignored and conjured up  mental images of the things he had given up to be there. Grief consumed his senses so that he was barely aware of what was happening around him. 

  Hattie was out of the car now, arms outstretched, exclaiming. She was actually happy with What she saw. She actually thought they could live there. “Oh no.” He said again as she made her way to the driver’s side door and attempted to open it. It was locked. She knocked on the window. 

  “Gil, open up! Come on!” The man was broken. He unlocked the door and allowed himself to be drug from the car and lead by the hand to the front door of the cabin. Hattie was bubbling over with excitement, saying things like, “fixer upper, and rustic.”

  As he stepped onto the pile of dusty planks that made up the front porch his right foot punched straight through the wood. He looked at his wife, eyes round and bulging from their sockets. 

  “We’ll fix it. That will be an easy fix. Don’t worry! This is so great!” Hattie pushed the front door open, releasing a cloud of stale air and dust that flew into Gil’s face, throwing him into a fit of coughing and gagging that lasted several minutes. His face and eyes instantly swelled up and turned pink with inflammation. 

  His wife didn’t seem to be bothered by his discomfort or the appalling state of what was to be their new home. She was pointing out features of their one room shack as if she were a licensed realtor. 

    A single window at the back of the cabin let in a small amount of light. Just enough to see rough log walls, thick, gray cobwebs and the fecal pellets of, what had to have been, an enormous rodent of some kind. The entire living space was made up of one room. There was a kitchen counter along the back wall,a prehistoric iron stove and a large metal tub in the corner. 

   Questions began to occur to Gil. “Where is the bathroom?” There were things about the cabin that Hattie had decided to keep to herself. One of these things was the cabin adjacent bathroom, also known as an outhouse. 

   She put on her cheeriest face and led him several feet to the North of the cabin. “Right here!” She opened the door to the outhouse and poked her head in. “All of the blogs I read say that once you have an outhouse you will never want to go back to indoor plumbing. “Think about it Gil, it really is disgusting to go to the bathroom in your house!” 

  Gill staggered backwards, nearly tripping over some exposed tree roots. “ Now that I think about it I didn’t see a sink in there.” He pointed to the cabin. “I didn’t see a fridge or light switches either.” 

  There was a moment of silence as Hattie tried to recall how she had planned on telling Gil some of the harder details of their new life without upsetting him. “There is a freshwater spring half a mile up the hill. It is the cleanest, purest water Gil, we just have to go collect it daily.” 

  “We’re hauling our own water now?” 

  “Yeah! and as for electricity, civilization thrived long before its existence!”  Gil was not sure what was happening to him. His breath came and went in rapid, unsteady bursts. He became aware of the sound of his heart in his ears and then things went dark at the corners of his vision as if he were viewing the world through a tube. 

   He made his way to his vehicle where he dumped out the contents of a fast food bag and began breathing into it. The paper crinkled loudly with every inhale and expanded with a whoosh at every exhale. Hattie, mined a Xanax from her purse and forced it down her husband’s throat the way one might do with an anxious chihuahua. 

  “You just rest. I’ll start unloading the trailer.” Gil continued breathing into the greasy bag while Hattie lifted the door to the trailer and began moving the few belongings they had not sold, to make their dream of off grid living a reality, into the cabin. 

  She couldn’t believe that she was finally here. About six months ago she had stumbled across a blog by a woman who lived what she called, “a simple life.” No cell phones or daily news or microwaves. Just wholesome, old fashioned living. This planted a seed that grew, and thrived, and took over Hattie’s every thought. 

 The woman became obsessed with the idea of living this way. She read blog after blog post, captivated by photos of garden vegetables on butcher block counters and hens strutting through dewy morning grass. When she began looking for the ideal place to live out such a whimsical life things like electricity and other conveniences became negative amenities in her mind. 

   Hattie, a high school art teacher and Gil, a gym teacher and football coach had been married five years. They lived in a small but comfortable rental in town and bought soy milk lattes on their way to work. They ate grass fed beef at local micro breweries and Netflixed and chilled on the weekends. 

   Gil was happy with their life and it had taken some convincing for him to give it up. In the end the idea of a rustic cabin in the woods did seem kind of charming to him. 

  Hattie pulled a water bath canner she had ordered from Amazon out of the trailer and envisioned all of the canned soups and jellies she would preserve with it. While she had never actually done most of the tasks required to survive her new lifestyle, she was confident that the many months she’d spent reaching had adequately prepared her. 

  The Xanax kicked in allowing Gil the strength and optimism necessary to explore the cabin again. Hattie had unloaded most of the boxes and enlisted his help with the few pieces of furniture they had kept. A small table and chairs, a couple shelves and end tables, a love seat and a bed. 

  It was dusk when the trailer was finally empty and Gill remained, for the most part, in a catatonic state. Hattie kept calling the cabin “cozy” and praised its “open concept layout”. He had been ignoring nature’s call for as long as possible but the situation took a turn towards urgent, forcing him to the outhouse. 

  He peered into the darkness, positive that some horror waited to spring out at him while he was at his most vulnerable.It took a few minutes for him to relax his body enough for it to do what was necessary. Then, A violent cramping doubled him over and the procession commenced.

   His pain made him forget where he was for a moment until he became aware of a high pitched sound barely audible above the rapid cacophony of gunfire currently emitting from his lower region.

  He straightened up a bit, looking around for the source of the sound which was growing louder. Then, a persistent and frantic force banged against his exposed backside alerting him to the presence of a yet to be identified mystery guest. 

   Fight or flight took the helm and before he fully understood what was happening he shot bolt upright and began to run. His feet became tangled in his pants causing him to fall out of the outhouse landing face down in the dirt. Adding to his indignation was the fact that his, still naked, behind was used as a springboard for what turned out to be an extremely distressed chipmunk who  then scurried down the length of his body and ran, chittering into the woods. 

  He lay on the ground longer than necessary collecting his thoughts. He didn’t have the strength to recall the experience to Hattie who was still busy cleaning and unpacking. Gil sat on the love seat  and stared blankly at a wall. Hattie threw open two of the cupboard doors below the kitchen counter and was shocked to discover a colony of rats. 

  Chaos ensued as the community of vermin gathered their families and evacuated the cabin. Hattie jumped aboard the dining table and screamed out for help.Gil just lifted his feet to make way for the horde who hissed at him as they scurried past.

  Once the last tail had dragged across the threshold Hattie climbed down from the table and straightened herself. “It’s just animals in their natural habitat, Gil! It’s to be expected out here in the wilderness. No need to lose your mind over it!” Gil looked at his wife with bewilderment and without saying a word retired to the car.

  The fetid smell of bleach was so strong that Gil’s eyes watered even from behind the car window. He could hear his wife in the heat of battle. She was shrieking and wielding her broom and spray bottle like a trained assassin, sending creepy crawlers of all sizes limping out of the cabin door in retreat. 

   Gil began to cry. It started out as a light, teary sniffle but soon developed into heavy sobs that shook his body. Harsh rapping on his window broke those sobs into an ugly snort that caught in the back of his throat. He wiped his eyes and nose on his sleeve. The dirt from his earlier fall mixed with his tears leaving a thick swipe of mud across his face. Gil looked through the glass at Hattie who was squinting to see him in the darkness. 

  “Are you crying?” disgust was evident in her voice which had become noticeably unhinged. Her once smoothly parted hair now formed a chaotic halo about her head. Sweat glued wispy strands to her face and caused her mascara to run. She reached out and tried to open the car door but upon discovering it to be locked began shouting expletives at her cowering husband. 

  Once the pressure had been released Hattie, righted her shirt, attempted to smooth her hair and spoke gently. “Gil, open the door. It’s going to be great, babe.” She tried the door again but it was still locked.

“Ok, Gil.” She said stepping back from the driver side door and bending at the waist to peer through the window. “I need you to man up a little here. Do you think you can manage that, just this once?” 

 Gil was listening but had become distracted when he noticed movement near the outhouse about forty feet away. He wiped the condensation from the car window with his sleeve and strained his eyes in an attempt to understand what he was looking at but it was too dark. Hattie was making quite a fuss, pounding with closed fists on the car door and calling him words he had never heard her use before. 

  Ignoring all of this, Gil turned the ignition key and flicked on his headlights. The lemon yellow bulbs cast bright beams of  light towards the movement illuminating its source.

   “Run, Hattie!” He shouted making no attempt to open the car door or come to her aid. She stopped attacking the car and tried to hear what he was saying to her. 

  “What?” She asked, squinting at him. She was short of breath and as red as a cherry from all the exertion.

 “Run!” Gil repeated from the safety of the locked car. He tried desperately to recall the poem he’d heard about bears on a survivalist show he watched. He thought out loud to himself “… if it’s brown, lay down…”

  He checked the color of the bear which was  now mere inches away from his wife. “No….it’s not brown…it’s black! Fight back, Hattie! Fight back!” 

  “What are you talking about, Gil?”

   The thumping of the bear dropping from hind legs to all fours behind her finally caught Hattie’s attention. She saw the charging beast, scaled the car and squatted on its roof. Her posture and behavior became primal. She made guttural defense sounds and swung her arms wildly in the air.

The bear, after watching for a moment, decided he wanted nothing to do with her and took his time retreating into the woods behind the cabin. Hattie was still clinging to the roof, shrieking in fear when Gil put the car into drive and headed back for civilization. 

  After many months of therapy and several hard to pronounce prescriptions Hattie and Gil were able to recover from their respective traumas. They now co-write a blog entitled “The somewhat Simple Life,” a platform they use to share their screen free night routine and recipes for homemade soups. 

  Hattie is currently intrigued by the concept of urban homesteading and is trying to convince Gil to get a backyard chicken coop. Meanwhile Gil is writing his first novel, a horror story about a couple who retreat to a remote cabin in search of the simple life.