The Old Cabin

It had been two months since my father passed and left me his old run-down log cabin. There were nothing but bad memories attached to that cabin, and I found it an insult that was the only thing he left me. My father knew I hated that cabin because I hadn’t been back to visit him in it since I was a teenager. He lived far away in the country, basically off the grid. The closest gas station was about fifty miles away and there was no cell service. My dad hated the modern age. Technology and electricity were his biggest enemy. He was a self-diagnosed technophobe. 

My mother raised me because she didn’t want me living the life my father had. She thought he was straight up crazy and didn’t even like me going to visit him. I hated going to visit my dad anyways because I couldn’t talk to my friends and all he wanted to do was hunt. My father loved hunting and using every single part of the animal for something. The deer would be skinned first so we could make clothing out of it. Then we would gut it for its meat and use it for our dinner. If the deer had antlers my father would hang them up somewhere too. He had tons of antlers already hung up around his cabin, showing off all the innocent animals he had slaughtered. I hated hunting. The first time he made me kill an animal I begged him not to. 

“Stop being a little sissy boy and shoot the damn deer son”, he gripped at me. 

He had a rough, raspy voice that sounded like it hurt to talk. His breath smelled of whiskey and cigar smoke. 

“Please, I really don’t want to do this. I don’t even like the way deer meat tastes”, I whined back. He slapped my back and pushed my head towards the sight of the rifle. I was holding back tears and my hands were shaking. I could see the deer in the sight and moved my rifle above it so I would miss. 

“Hurry up and shoot it”, my father said. I pulled the trigger, and the deer took off deep into the woods. My dad snatched the gun out of my hands and slapped me across the face. 

“You did that on purpose you little shit!”, he yelled. I froze from fear. That was the first time he ever hit me. 

Not a single part of me wanted to go clean out my father’s cabin but it kept dawning on me to try to sell it. I was in a bind and needed money so getting the most I could out of the stupid old thing was worth it. I lived in the city so driving to the cabin took about eight hours. Since the drive was so long, I asked my girlfriend, Jenny, to tag along. She was living with me rent free and not working a job so saying no wasn’t really an option. Jenny and I had been on and off for several years and she never met my father, but she knew the stories I would tell her. 

“Your father is fucked up Griffin, who cares about his cabin?”, Jenny asked. She didn’t like the idea of going up to the cabin and was trying to talk me out of it. 

“How else do you think I can afford to live here?”, I asked back. She rolled her eyes, and I started packing up my things. I grabbed a duffle bag from underneath my bed and filled it with warm clothes. New York City was cold in January but near the Canadian border it was frigid. I packed extra jackets for Jenny knowing she would pack light. 

“We need to leave in the morning before it starts snowing again”, I said to Jenny. She just looked at me and gave me a sarcastic smile. I smiled back and she went on to getting her things together too. No matter what happened in my life Jenny was always there for me. I wasn’t the best boyfriend to her, and she deserved way better but she kept coming back. 

We had broken up and hadn’t spoken to each other for months until I called her up. It was the night my dad died, and I needed her more than anything else. I had met Jenny my senior year of high school. She was the new kid, and I sat next to her in our chemistry class. Never in my life had I seen someone as beautiful as Jenny was. She had long silky black hair and big brown eyes that you could get lost in. When she smiled her nose would wrinkle up and her dimples would show. It took me almost the whole school year to get up the nerve to ask her out and I was even more surprised when she said yes. I screw up a lot though and I have lost her too many times to count. When I called her up the night my father died, she answered on the first ring. It was around midnight when I got the call that my dad had died from a heart attack. He was almost eighty years old and had been living out in the woods alone most his life so a part of me felt relief for him. The other part was grief, and it started to take over my mind. 

“Hello? Griffin?”, she asked. I didn’t say anything. “Griffin? Are you okay?”, she asked again. I was trying to hold it together and not cry but I couldn’t do it. 

“Jenny? Please come over. Please?”, I asked her. 

“Why are you okay? What happened?”, she whisphered.

“My father died today, and I don’t want to be alone”. She came over right after I hung up the phone. She took me in her arms and consoled me. I owe her everything. 

Jenny was the closest person to me, and I was thrilled she was coming with me. I honestly don’t think I would be able to go back to the cabin without her help. When we woke up, we loaded everything into my tiny mini cooper and made our way to the Canadian border. Everything was covered in snow for most of the drive and it looked almost surreal, like heaven. The snow was so white it was glowing and making it hard to see the road ahead of me. Jenny fell asleep in the first thirty minutes of the road trip so I put my headphones in so I wouldn’t wake her. The first few hours of the drive went by quickly and when we stopped for gas Jenny took over driving. We played twenty-one questions and the license plate game to pass the time. We eventually made it to the gas station that was closest to the cabin when we switched driving again. The road to my father’s cabin was curvy and long. Everything about the woods the cabin is surrounded by is sinister and I didn’t feel right being back. 

It was still light outside when we finally made it to the cabin and unloaded our stuff. It was cold so I started a fire and grabbed a snack out of one of the coolers Jenny brought. She might not have brought a bunch of warm clothes, but she brought lots of food and alcohol. I was hoping we would only be staying in the cabin one night but Jenny brought enough food in case it took longer. She was always prepared. 

“You want a beer?”, she asked me. 

“Yeah, I’ll take one”, I answered back. I walked towards the ripped-up leather couch that was in front of the fireplace and Jenny threw me a beer. I sat down and cracked it open.

“Thanks babe”, I said. She smiled and came to sit down next to me with a beer in her hand too.

We cheered and warmed ourselves up by the fireplace. It was getting dark outside, and we had to get up early to clean the house and then find someone interested in selling it. The cabin was not in the greatest shape. It was almost one hundred years old, and my father never permanently fixed anything. It was one story with an attic in it that was filled with extra deer antlers that wouldn’t fit on the wall. The cabin was creepy and was going to need some work to be done on it. 

Jenny went to bed first and I put the fire out. I then made sure the door was locked and set up our heaters. It was hard for me to understand how my father lived without electricity and why he was so afraid of it. I begin to shut my eyes when I hear a noise come from outside the cabin. The noise sounded like an animal clawing at the door. I got up and went outside to investigate but nothing was there. The only thing I could see that proved something was there, a small hove print in the snow. My exhaustion was getting to me, and I laid back down to go to bed. Jenny hadn’t woken up from the sound or me going to check it out. I wrapped my arms around her and finally fell asleep. 

The air was colder in the morning than any other time of the day. I could see my own breath. I unpacked the battery powered hot plate and made breakfast for me and Jenny. We had to drive into town to put the cabin up for sale but first we needed to empty it. It was going to be a long day and I was determined to get everything done before nightfall. I had never been a fan of the outdoors but the woods at night was something I feared. The forest was filled with giant bears and blood thirsty wolves. I didn’t want to be around all that for long if I didn’t have to. The first thing we had to clean out was the insane antler collection my dad had accumulated over the years. It took us most of the morning and some of the afternoon to finish clearing everything out of the cabin. My small trunk was filled to the brim with firearms and hunting accessories. 

“I think we might have to get a truck out here for the furniture”, I said to Jenny. I slammed the trunk closed and got in the driver’s seat of the car. 

“Your dad sure had a lot of crap”, she said back. We drove an hour into town and unloaded everything at the nearest pawn shop. The rifles got me a bit of cash to rent a truck to move the rest of the stuff out of the cabin. 

Once I got the moving truck I drove back to the cabin while Jenny followed behind in the mini cooper. My dad had a couch, a rocking chair, a bed, and a dresser in his cabin. He didn’t have anything other than the furniture he needed. My father had always been an odd bird and I never was able to fully comprehend why he was that way. My mom would tell me about the time they first met and how he was nothing like the man I knew. They met in college at a trendy bar in the city. They were both from Long Island and were experiencing life on their own for the first time. It was an experimental time for recreational drugs and my parents were partaking. My mom told me that my dad did so much acid that his brain rewired itself and made him go crazy. Ever since I was born my parents had been living apart. As a kid I couldn’t call my dad to see how he was doing, and I was only allowed to visit him in the summer. On holidays and birthdays, he would send a letter but making the trip to the city to see me was not something he would do. It was strange not having a relationship with my dad. We didn’t have anything in common except for our last names. 

As I pulled up to the cabin, I noticed the front door was wide open. Luckily it hadn’t been snowing too much. I got out the truck and ran over to the cabin. As I walked inside, I saw a baby deer cozying up in the corner of the room. Jenny is trailing behind me and stops when she sees the doe. 

“Oh my gosh Griffin!”, she says with excitement. “It is so cute”. Jenny then starts to carefully walk towards the deer but gets spooked when it stands up. 

“Maybe we should leave it alone”, I say to her. I grab Jenny’s hand and pull her towards me. The deer is just standing still looking at us. I then hear a clopping sound behind me and see a full-size deer with enormous antlers standing in the doorway.

“Holy shit!”, I say with awe.  Before I can reach into my pocket to grab my phone to take a quick picture the adult deer storms towards me. Its antler cuts my face, and its body knocks me over. Jenny screams and I try to stand back up. The deer then puts its attention on Jenny. I get up quickly and reach for a piece of wood from the fireplace. Jenny is looking at me with fear in her eyes. Before I can do anything, the animal lays down at her feet and nudges its head on her leg. 

“What the heck?”, I say.

“Griffin? Are you okay?”, Jenny asks. I touch my face and look back at my bloody fingertips.

The baby deer walks towards the adult deer and lies down next to it. The two deer are cozied up, picture perfect photo. I go for my phone to take a quick snap so I can tell the unexplainable story on social media to all my friends. As soon as my hand hits the inside of my pocket the big deer jumps up and runs at me. I ran out the door towards the mini cooper for one of the guns I saved for protection in my shifty New York neighborhood. The psychotic stag was hot on my trail, and I barely made it to the car to lock myself in. It began to use its antlers to try to break the windows. I was panicking and didn’t know if I was going to make it. Jenny ran outside and started yelling at the deer, but it didn’t seem to want to take its attention off me. I climb to the back seat and take the gun out of its packaging. I was regretting never taking my dad’s gun lessons seriously because now one shot mattered more than anything. That was all the ammo that was in the gun. One bullet. One chance.  

The glass is breaking, and the adult deer is almost through. My hands felt cold on the wooden stock of the rifle, and I was shaking uncontrollably. I can do this, I told myself over and over. The deer was bucking up for one last ram into the window and I had my sight on it, right in between the eyes. It will be quick I told myself to reassure the pacifist in me. POW. The deer went down right away. I open the car door and make sure I got the job done. Red covered the pure white snow. I began to tear up and then looked at Jenny who was bent down on the ground. The bullet went through the deer’s head and into her stomach. I run over to her and hold her up. 

“Jenny! Can you hear me?”, I cry out. She is bleeding out of her mouth and her eyes look gloomy. 

“I am so sorry Jenny! I am so sorry!”