Folded Cabin

Reeking of soiled white, the windows, the doors, the thin walls were. The window 

glasses – cold, and whitely coated. Surely it was snowing outside, but to such an 

extend no one could imagine. No one, to be exact, it was only Jake, there wasn’t 

anyone else to begin with. 

Jake exhaled some cold air and rubbed his dry like ice big hands together, 

generating at least some warmth. His trivial endeavours of successfully making a 

lighter flame out, succeeded. The little heat burning close to his face felt 

magnificent. He kept the flame and lit a thick candle. More heat, more relief. Just 

next to that, the very next was that he held a cigarette between his lips and lit it 

immediately. Let the warmth indulge inside him. He straightened his spine and 

gave his broad back a squeeze between muscles. Middle age comes with many 

physical drawbacks, even for a huge ands sturdy person like himself. 

Nothing bigger than a one room cabin, however, through years Jake had prepared 

most of the facilities he desired to survive in that cabin, food, electricity, 

communication services. So much effort and the verge of necessity, there is

nothing at hand. Jake stumbled across the mess of his room and stopped before a 

window; by the look outside, going out in a land flooded with snow – impossible.

Just a few hours of blizzard and the snow level would reach the windows too. He 

stepped back and took a gaze over the room he sure would be staying for the 

next, maybe one to two days. It was junk. Even a high scholar on weed would keep 

his place cleaner. Couches coated in dust, it was red once, strange and 

unidentified papers built roots over it, they too were white once. Tables – mash of 

letters, books, and weird little wooden and broken statues too, of bears, dwarfs,

and more bears. The small kitchen, which he still had to inspect, looked already 

grimy enough, let alone the squeaking of ugly rats. Jake let off smoke and reached 

for the pile on the couch. Loosely kept the papers didn’t ever struck his mind. 

Living a social ordinary life took a lot from him, the papers housed his long done 

scribbles. Written out of early adult passion, were mostly exercising columns, 

sonnets and stories. Quiet fascinating, isn’t it? Jake thought to himself. How much 

had he written over years and forgotten. Kept them all in a lonely cabin far off 

sight from his daily struggle. He slipped a sheet into his palm; it was handwritten, 

beautifully. Not much could be seen though, so he dash off, brought the candle 

and set to the closest table. Ah! He could read now. At last, some nostalgia and 

analyzing his younger self would not be bad to pass the time. ‘The loathing lips’ 

read the heading of a poem he picked. He ran through every word and phrase like 

a teacher for his backbencher students. Always full of silly mistakes. He stopped 

halfway through, he felt disgusted. 

Building a cabin, close to a hill, during early winter – Jake and his so called father 

did their last thing together. Jake a young, tough boy with his old man, survived 

building this cabin within years, extending through delays and pauses, at final it 

was made just to be abundant. It is normal for any child to remember his parent’s 

last nostalgic things, either to curse it or cherish it. Either way, it leaves an 

impression. Jake had nothing like it. He flunks the sheet on top of others without 

reading it full and head into the kitchen. His mouth had a bad taste now. Shelves –

empty, the counters had only a few cans of frozen meals. Some rotten fruits, a 

packet of crackers and ‘Pringles’. He took off the lid and brought the box into light. 

It was empty. All that left edible were crackers and frozen canned food. However, 

food was just a motive of misdirection. His frustration was over what he read. He 

settled in with crackers losing his cigarette to the floor, dropped himself on the 

couch munching soundly. He took the first sheet once again, ‘the loathing lips’ he 

read it again. How atrocious, how ghastly, how embarrassing. Every line 

represented the young Jake so full of optimism and passion, it felt wrong to him. 

He let down the sheet, took a sigh and left in wonder, why did he leave writing 

when he was so good at it. It brought down memories, and those memories 

brought back more memories. Another cigarette lit by the candle, Jake puffed the 

smoke out and rest his back. 

“It all began and ended with my mother’s death” Jake said, to himself quickly 

followed by a short grin. Too dramatic, the line was. Then again, dramatic could a 

suited word for it. His mother could not make it through harsh seasons, given her 

weak body but she would always manage to enjoy whatever her son wrote. Jake 

was young and at brim of teenage, when times are quacking and ready to take off, 

when his mother collapsed. Moreover, his father – he left, right before she died,

leaving behind everything. Jake’s passion had gradually diminished after that, and 

quickly he imposed himself into the turmoil of struggle. Living isolated between

cooperate slavery and loneliness. He slipped in another sheet filled with typed 

columns of his own. He tapped the end of his cigarette to drop the ashes and 

gently leaned sideways towards the candle, put the sheet forward and lit it on fire. 

Flames caught wild on old crinkly sheet and he gazed at it, menacingly. The young 

Jake disgusted him; He envied him. The sheet on flames dropped to the ground 

turning into ashes. He stood up sloppily while trying to reach the candle. He 

stretched his arm and received it; however, the endeavour shook the pile. The pile 

flowed down and stretched across the floor. The fire was still lit and the papers fell 

over it. All his heart gave was a huge bump. The fire immediately began taking 

over the crisp papers. Burning madly, across the heap. Jake wobbled back, 

knowing not what to do. They meant to burn anyway, right? It’d be better to get 

rid of them all at once, his thoughts keeping bubbling – hot. He cautioned the 

floor’s space by shifting wooden furniture away immediately. Watching fire take 

over and warmth fill the cabin. He stood there, unsettled. What is the point of 

keeping them? He asked himself. The heat splashed in his skin as he starred down 

to watch his writings burn.

‘It’s all my writings after all’. Jake darted off, towards the kitchen, tore down the 

shelves and get himself a gallon of preserved water. He splashed all of it over the 

fire, over the papers. It surely somehow was not enough. He jumped across the 

couch and stopped before the window, exercised all his strength to open the 

frozen panels. The blizzard gushed in with terrible force; however, he stretched his 

arm outside and lowered it until he could dig into ice. He scooped up as much as 

he could and quickly threw it over the simmering fire. As much as needed, maybe 

more but the burning heap eventually layered with ice. The windows shut again 

and Jake sat on the floor, legs stretched. He wiped off the ice and pulled back the 

papers spared from burning. Even though he might claim to lose such passion, he 

could not lose the appreciation of ‘great work’. 

Piling up the remaining survivors it resulted nearly a quarter of the pervious 

height. He scratched his head, feeling stupid. There was ashes and ice mixed on 

the floor and he had to light the candle again. He kept it beside him for the while. 

He held in the pile giving at thought of taking it back home, when his eyes fell onto 

the context of the topmost paper. It was not his writing at all. It was not any 

columns, nor poems, nor sonnets or stories. It was writings from his mother. A 

letter to him. 

What could have she done lying in bed for weeks and months? She looked outside 

cursing her life; wishing to recover more than anything does, hoping to become 

the beautiful person who could wear lipsticks and nail polishes of varieties of 

colours, play with her only son for the daylong. She regretted being miserable to 

the bed, enough to become a burden that her beloved husband had to leave her, 

Jake thought until now. As he let off a small grin while reading page to page of her 

beautiful words, tears rolled down the tough skin. 

‘I was always happy’ she wrote, ‘thanks for taking care of me’, and furthermore, 

‘be like your father’, she wrote. A handsome man was his father, refined and loyal 

and trustworthy, but a bit weak. Weak enough to fall before the despair of losing 

his outmost treasure, his wife. Lastly, somehow what he could expect her to say 

and forever wanted to tell him the last time in his life, ‘keep writing my son’. 

Jake huffed out smoke with a grin, finally selecting what to do next; he lowered his 

cigarette and gazed at it. “Guess I never liked smoking after all”.