The Cabin
Victoria Arnett
The first thing me and my friends noticed was the smell. That intoxicating, terrible, rotting, haunting smell that I will never be able to forget. Me and all my friends were exploring the forest with these huge, old, doming trees and these old, and abandoned cabins that are on the outskirts of our small town. We go here all the time with each other. It's the best hang out. It is cool, kind of creepy, and the best part of all: no adults. We can do whatever we want here. The freedom is amazing. We stopped coming here about a week and a half ago though. Ever since our friend Nate went missing, it just isn’t the same coming here to hang out. It’s too sentimental almost. But we decided to come out here one more time today just for the memories. We all are thinking that we should go explore and see what this god-awful smell is. After all, we had nothing better to do. We walk into one of the older, larger cabins, and then suddenly the smell got ten times stronger at least. As we are looking around and we find and lift one of the loose wooden panel floorboards. And then there it is, a dead, lifeless body staring back at us with those haunting, glazed eyes. I look over at my other friends. They all have that same look on their face, that traumatizing look as they struggle to rip their eyes from this terrible sight. They all are pale and look like they might throw up. And the worst part, we know this person.
That lifeless body lying there in front of us looked like it was smashed and crushed into this small space in between those floorboards was our friend, Nate. The police did this huge investigation and they had concluded that he ran away or some other kind of accident since they couldn’t find a body. I’m so disgusted by this sight. I want to throw up. I don’t know that to think, or what to do. His body is mangled, ripped up, and destroyed. Those lifeless eyes of his I feel are staring into my very soul. Its like they are trying to give me a warning or something. There is a look of fear and dread is frozen onto his dead face that he must have had in his last moments. Something bad happened here.
I don’t feel safe. Something is wrong. My friends can feel it too. We crossed our boundaries; we aren’t supposed to be here. I get this feeling that it’s like I am being watched. We look around searching for whatever is bringing us that dreadful feeling. I feel it before I see it all. There is a chill in the air. I start getting goosebumps and chills all over and the hair on my skin is rising. I get this feeling deep in my gut, like I know I’m not making it out of here. Then this huge shadowy figure approaches from behind me. This feeling of dread and fear surrounds me, overwhelms me. One of the last things I feel is this painful, violent smashing against the back of my skull. I fall to the ground. The pain is almost unbearable. I can’t think properly. I start to feel this blood running down the side of my head, getting into my eyes. I can't see from it or move my head to even look around. I can’t move anything, I’m in too much pain. The world around me is dimming as I start losing conscious. I try to keep my eyes open, trying to savor these last moments, but it is pointless. All I feel is gut wrenching pain. And then all at once I start feeling very light, and the pain starts going away too. I’m dying. The reality hits me hard, but I'm not scared. I'm just waiting. The last thing I hear before the world completely fades around me are the terrible screams full of fear and the panicked running footsteps of my friends as they are trying to escape. They won’t be able to. They will all have the same fate as me. We should have never come here.
"Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else has ever thought." -Albert Einstein