Cabin Fever
Fiction by Bonnie Bowman
Illustration by Marlena Zuber
There’s a sloped porch and an old Adirondack chair and there’s Sweet Sue, sitting in the wooden chair on the wooden porch attached to the wooden cabin in the woods. She’s smoking a cigarette and drinking something. She sits here, the seasons change, but the porch and the chair and Sue remain.
In the fall, Sue wears her brown cardigan with white elk on it, and a filmy blue scarf, sometimes a black headband over her ears, depending on the bite in the air. She sits half slouched, drinks vodka from a chipped coffee mug. Sometimes she reads a book or just stares into the distance, her lips moving like she’s talking to someone, or to herself.
In the winter, there is the porch and the chair and Sweet Sue. Nothing changes except she wears more layers and drinks brandy from a silver flask. She smokes only one cigarette, inhaling smoke and air cut with ice, before stomping back inside in snowmobile boots.
The spring is breathtaking as everything undoes itself, layers are shed as leaves unfurl, and crocuses push their way to the sun. Sue’s face is winter pale, she drinks beer from a bottle and walks the length of the porch, seeming restless.
This is all bearable.
And then it’s summer. Summer in these parts comes with a vengeance, a brutal, punishing, airless, sodden heat that scorches the grass, wilts the flowers, and saps the life force out of anything with a heartbeat. There is still the porch, the chair
and Sweet Sue, who, in the dead heat of the dead summer, sprawls in the chair, legs akimbo, arms flopped over the sides. She wears a yellow cotton sundress, bleached almost white from the sun, with thin straps falling off her shoulders. She drinks iced tea and vodka from a striped glass and as she rests it between her sweating breasts, her toes curl up. Her legs fall further apart, her head slumps to one side, and it appears she might be napping because you can see everything up inside her skirt if anyone’s watching, and she probably shouldn’t sit like this. But then she pulls her dress up and her hand creeps south. This is where it gets unbearable.
Leonard tears his eye away from the telescope and slams himself against the wall, panting. He leans over, gripping his knees, trying to catch a full breath, sweat dripping from his hair to the floor. The seasons march along, each with their unique pleasures and pleasuring, but inevitably it comes to the unbearable summer. He is a slave to the chair and the porch and Sweet Sue. He could bear it until now but the heat changes everything. The heat is to Leonard like a full moon is to a werewolf, the calling irresistible. He opens his mouth and lets out a sound he’s been holding in for three seasons. Not a howl, but not a sound you would want to hear in the middle of the woods. Leonard looks through the telescope again, one hand braced against a lamp, the other pressing his crotch. Sweet Sue is licking her fingers and he nearly passes out. He can’t stay here, he can’t.
Three seasons is long enough to be patient. Three seasons makes him a fucking saint.
Leonard forces his sweaty legs into a pair of jeans, throws on a ripped T-shirt, and slides his feet into a pair of sneakers. He dunks his head under cold running water from the kitchen faucet and slicks his wet hair back with one careless swipe. Before leaving, he mulls his approach. Why he is in the woods and why he is coming at her. He could say he’s a lost camper and could she direct him to the river, and while he’s here, could he please have a drink because it’s so bloody hot it’s ridiculous, isn’t it. Or should he tell the truth, that he’s a writer and he’s renting this cabin and he’s nearly finished his novel and he needed a damn break.It’s just an accident that he stumbled upon her cabin. And then he doesn’t know. He’s afraid he will smell her, like you smell people’s scents more acutely in the heat, and he won’t be able to control himself. Or he’s afraid he will be able to control himself. He doesn’t know which would be more pathetic. Right now he feels like hurling himself at her, do it right there in the wooden chair that he’s been watching forever, and when they’re finished and spent, do it again, be fucking merciless. She might let him, you don’t know.
As Leonard makes his way down the steep, wooded hill, he experiences a moment of doubt. There is a reason he has held off doing this exact thing. A reason that serves the greater good, and it’s no coincidence The Greater Good is the title of his novel. Not for any other reason would Leonard have such mastery of his urges, not for a threat or even for a wife. The work is everything and isolation key to its success. Distraction is death. He learned that lesson with his last distraction whose name he can’t recall because now he’s distracted by the girl in the cabin whose name he does know.
“Are you sure there’s no neighbours?” Leonard had asked when signing the rental agreement.
“Just Sue,” said the owner. “She’s a sweet girl, but far enough away you’ll never see her. It would take over an hour to get down the hill to her cabin. You won’t even know she’s there.”
The owner probably forgot about the telescope. So, to hell with it. It was bearable up to this point, but the cruel summer heat has burned heroic self control to ashes. A man can only take so much. Besides, thinks Leonard as he scrambles through underbrush, I have every right to pay a neighbourly visit. Just a cold drink and a bit of conversation is all, then back to the book, no harm, no foul. He convinces himself that this face-to-face meeting will, in fact, benefit the writing. Take the edge off. Lately her distance has become more of a distraction than her presence possibly could.
When Leonard reaches the clearing, he is sweaty and breathless. Right now a cold drink is uppermost in his mind, a hot girl second. He squints as the sun bears down on him, his eyes still accustomed to the shade of the forest. The cabin shimmers, the porch wavers, the girl ... is not there. He blinks. She is not there! For days and months and seasons she has been there. She has been his scenery, his companion, he has talked to her every day, fantasized about her every night, even worked her into his novel, which is about as intimate as it gets. Sweet Sue has made the isolation bearable, until it no longer was. Leonard feels panicky for a second, but then he thinks, don’t be retarded, she’s in the cabin. He walks to the porch, peering at the door.
“Hello!” he yells. “Anybody home?”
Nothing. The cabin looks deserted, but it couldn’t have been much more than an hour since he last saw Sweet Sue. At least he thinks so, but the heat could be frying his brain. He steps onto the porch.
“Hello!”
Nothing. Leonard walks the length of the porch, scoping the clearing for either a glimpse of Sweet Sue or, more pressingly, a well, or a water pump. Seeing neither, he walks to the door and knocks.
“Hello? Are you in there?”
In case he might be scaring her, Leonard presses his face to the door and says in a gentler tone, “I’m just looking for a drink of water. It’s a scorcher out here. That’s all I want and I’ll be on my way.”
He leans against the door, swallowing dryly. “My name’s Leonard,” he continues. “I’m renting the cabin on the hill.”
Hearing nothing, Leonard tries the door and it swings open. This is new. He has become so accustomed to the cabin’s exterior, to the porch and the clearing, it seems impossible there is more.
“Hello?” he says, poking his head in. “Anybody here?”
He sees one room that doubles as living room and kitchen. It’s very rustic, very cabiny, and seemingly very deserted. He steps inside and doesn’t feel too bad about the intrusion. After all, she left her door unlocked. Then again, she probably felt safe. Didn’t expect no big, bad writer to come a-callin’. Leonard checks the bedroom and washroom, finding them similarly empty. Having cased the joint, he heads straight for the sink, turns on the cold water, and strips off his T-shirt. After splashing his face and chest and swigging from the tap, he checks the fridge where he finds a jug of iced tea. In a cupboard, he finds a striped glass, the one he’s watched her drink from, and fills it. In another cupboard, he finds vodka and liberally douses his drink. Better. He gulps downs two full glasses in a row while standing.
On drink number three or four, Leonard takes a stroll around the cramped quarters, running his hands over Sweet Sue’s things, trying to imagine what sort of person she is. He is drawn to the desk and bookshelf. If anything can speak to a person’s character, it’s their book collection. Here he finds mostly crime fiction, John Grisham, Scott Turow and the like, along with some true crime books by Ann Rule. He shrugs, could be worse. He tries the desk drawer but it’s locked which makes him wonder what’s in it. Front door open, desk drawer locked. Like an idiot he gets down on one knee and looks underneath the drawer to see if there’s a catch or some way to jimmy it open. Of course there’s nothing, but there are some pieces of paper sticking out the back of the drawer. He carefully tugs on them until they slide out. Sitting cross-legged on the floor he starts to read, feeling no guilt because this is what writers do, they invade. It’s heady stuff. Looks like she might be trying her own hand at writing crime fiction, but this is really hardcore shit. Some scenes are so graphic, Leonard actually cringes. He wonders if she wrote this or copied it, but either way, maybe Sweet Sue ain’t so sweet after all. Finally, vision blurring from vodka or exhaustion, Leonard puts the papers behind the wastebasket to make it look like they fell there. He walks over to the couch, sits down, and puts his feet up on the coffee table. He waits.
Leonard wakes to the bang of a door and a voice: “What are you doing here?”
He sits up, tries to focus. There’s an empty jug on the coffee table and an empty vodka bottle but the cabin is no longer empty. Sweet Sue is here. In the flesh, and lots of it. She stands beside the couch, barefoot, in a skimpy sundress that leaves little to the imagination, arms crossed under her breasts, skin glistening. Leonard jumps to his feet and sways.
“Oh god, sorry. I was out walking and needed a drink. I knocked but nobody answered and then the door was open and I just—”
“Had a drink?” says Sweet Sue, nodding at the vodka bottle. “Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t realize I drank so much, I must’ve passed out. I’ll replace your vodka.”
He sticks out his hand. “I’m Leonard, by the way. I’m renting the cabin on the hill.”
She shakes his hand. “That’s quite a walk you took. There’s more scenic trails up top, but you decided that climbing down a steep hill through a forest was more, what? Manly?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer but walks to the sink and starts running water.
“I’m making lemonade since all my iced tea is gone.”
Since she doesn’t seem to be kicking him out, Leonard begins to relax. It sinks in that he’s here, that she’s here. The smell of lemons reaches him and he’s mesmerized by the way her ass shakes with each hard chop onto the wooden countertop, by how she shifts her weight from one bare foot to the other. He walks over and stands behind her. He smells her hair, her skin, and touches her bare shoulder. Without turning around, she says, “I’ve got a knife, you know.”
“I know,” he breathes into her hair. “That’s hot.” He places his hands on her hips and turns her around to face him, bending her backwards over the counter. The knife is clutched in her hand, it’s between them, the blade cool against his bare chest. He licks up her throat, tastes salt.
“I’ve been watching you,” he says. “You’re way prettier in person.”
“You’ve been watching me?”
“Best scenery around.”
“So you’re some psycho stalker?”
“I’m no psycho, I’m a writer.”
She is molten lava under his hands.
“There’s a difference?” she breathes.
“Not really,” he murmurs into her neck, risking a nip, getting away with it.
How this is happening is beyond imagination. How this is so easy. Suddenly he is angry at himself for waiting all those months. All that beating off to an image when the real deal was apparently just waiting for him to show up. He grinds himself into her and the knife tip grazes his nipple, but he feels it in his balls. He grabs her knife hand and they both stare at it, a stand-off.
“Let go,” he whispers. “Make me.”
“Maybe I will.”
With his free hand, Leonard grabs the top button of her dress and rips it open in one downward swipe. Just like in the movies, he thinks proudly.
Or, did he read it. Like, in her manuscript maybe? The words he read earlier are lost to him now, but the fucking heat of that thing is all over him. More than that, it’s driving him. And if that grue- some writing came from her head, then it’s likely she would consider a ripped dress nothing more than foreplay. Ignoring the obvious bared breasts, Leonard opts for a blitz attack down under. As expected, no panties. His fingers push roughly into her dampness, his hand clamps down around her heat, and he holds her tight like this, maintaining direct eye contact until he feels her fingers loosen their grip and her hand drop limply to her side. He wins the knife. Laying it on the counter, he grabs her wrists and stretches her arms above her head, her breasts lifting with the motion. There’s a window over the sink, and Leonard gets the idea of tying her wrists to the cord on the blinds. Or she asks him to do it, he’s not entirely clear about this. But it’s the obvious thing to do and so he does it.
“I can’t believe I thought this would be a bad
idea,” says Leonard, unbuttoning his fly.
“You’ll be sorry,” says Sweet Sue, arching into him. Leonard flattens himself against her, his mouth hot against her own and says, “Baby, I’ve been sorry about a lot of things in my life, but this ain’t one of them.”
“Do your worst,” she says.
He pushes into her with such force that she gasps, and the sound of it is, to Leonard’s ears, permission. He drives himself into her again and again, eyes shut tight. He’s not seeing her in the flesh, but he’s seeing her all right. He’s seeing her on the porch, on the chair. He picks up his rhythm as the seasons fall away. He’s seeing her in the fall, the winter, the spring, and now the miraculous, unbearable summer. His cock is the telescope and he’s punishing her with it. His novel is doomed and it’s her fault. His mouth is fastened tight to her own so she can’t speak, and he tastes blood seeping into his mouth from her lip where he’s bitten her, and it tastes real sweet, like Sue. He opens his eyes and removes his mouth to inspect the damage. Sue smiles at him, revealing blood-stained teeth, and it’s so fucking sexy it’s a crime.
“Did I hurt you?” he asks.
“Is that all you got?”
“God no, I’m just getting warmed up.”
Sue yanks her arms down hard and snaps the cord off the blinds. Wrists still bound together, she loops them over Leonard’s head and nearly strangles him as she pulls his face closer.
“Bring it, asshole,” she whispers.
“You’ll be sorry.”
“Don’t steal my line, plagiarizer.” “You’re gonna pay for that.”
“No, I think you are.”
And, bound together, Leonard still deep inside her, they hit the floor with a sickening thud. Disentangling himself, Leonard rolls Sweet Sue onto her stomach, holding her down by her shoulders.
“This is for the greater good,” he says.
“I know what you mean,” says Sweet Sue.
The climb back up the hill is murderous and dusk is beginning to close in. Leonard has to stop at least four times to catch his breath and gather his thoughts. What the hell was that? He clearly remembers the lemons, and the knife, and then the rough plank floor. But when he tries to picture Sweet Sue, he can’t. For months, her face has been the most vivid thing in his head, but now it is indistinct. As he pushes through the trees, he feels battered. There are bloody scratches on his chest and arms from tree branches or Sweet Sue, his knees feel bruised, all his muscles weak and ineffectual. Yet he can’t help but feel elated. When finally he reaches his cabin, likely two hours later, it’s dark outside and the lights from his windows are a welcome sight. It doesn’t occur to him that the lights were off when he left this morning. Just as it doesn’t register that there’s a strange car parked outside. It’s only when he puts the key in the lock and the door swings open unaided, that he experiences a moment of déjà vu.
“Hello? Anybody here?”
Leonard stands in the doorway, staring. The cabin is not as he left it. Papers are in disarray, drawers opened, books strewn about the floor, and chair cushions upended. While he’s processing the scene of an apparent burglary, he hears the toilet flush and grabs the closest heavy object which happens to be a wooden bust of Hemingway, and really, if anyone can crack a skull, it’s Hemingway. He stands, tense and wary, holding it at shoulder height, wishing he weren’t so drained from the climb. The bathroom door opens and a man comes out, sees Leonard and stops in his tracks.
“Are you Leonard Haskell?” the man asks.
Leonard puts down his weapon and sags with relief. “Yes, officer, I am.”
“I’m Constable Greene,” the cop says, flashing a badge. “Why don’t we sit down. You’re not looking so hot.”
Leonard sits gratefully. “I’m not feeling so hot, actually. What happened here? I can’t think of anything worth stealing.”
The cop gives him a weird look and says, “Nothing was stolen.”
As Leonard tries to make sense of this, another cop enters from outside.
“The perimeter checks out,” he says, and then notices Leonard. “This the perp?”
Greene nods confirmation while Leonard looks back and forth between them. Perp?
“What’s going on?” he says. “Who trashed my cabin?”
“That would be us,” Greene says. “Mr. Haskell, you’ve been charged with rape.”
“What? By who?”
“Susan Miller.”
“Who’s that?”
“She’s the sweet girl that lives down the hill. And by the looks of you, that hill just about did you in. Are you denying you didn’t just come from there?”
“No, but, rape? That’s impossible.”
The second officer swings a leg over a kitchen chair, straddling it, and says, “Are you denying you had sex with Ms Miller? Because that would be stupid. She’s got DNA evidence all over her.”
“No, I’m not denying I had sex with her, but that’s all it was. Sex. Not rape. She wanted it.”
Constable Greene grimaces. “Did she also want to be cut up with a knife?”
“What? No! Well, I mean there was a knife, but. . . I didn’t cut her!”
The second officer, whose name escapes Leonard, is asking if he wants a lawyer.
Leonard’s head swims as accusations fly at him, as the verbal pummeling begins by the second officer, who is obviously bad cop.
“You like it rough? You get off on tying women up?”
Good cop Greene holds up a gloved hand to silence his partner.
“Look, buddy, folks can go a bit crazy being isolated in these woods for months. It’s called cabin fever. The last guy who rented this place offed himself, just last summer. I get it. I’m guessing you been watching her for months through that telescope and you finally snapped.”
“No! I didn’t snap! She’s lying!”
“She says you ripped the dress right offa her. Is she lying about that?”
“No,” Leonard says weakly. “Look, it was consensual.”
Bad cop flips open his phone and shoves a photo in front of Leonard. It looks like Sweet Sue, but, holy shit. Leonard flinches.
“That look like the result of consensual sex?”
“She didn’t look like that when I left her,” Leonard protests.
Greene lays it out. He hits the highlights. He tells Leonard about some kind of mental illness defence. He’s practically begging Leonard to confess, but he can’t, he won’t, it’s surreal. Greene stands up and stretches. He walks over to Leonard’s desk and picks up a stack of papers.
“What about this?” he asks, walking back.
“It’s my novel.”
Greene stands over Leonard, holding the manuscript. “What’s it about?”
“Why? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Humour me,” says Greene.
“My partner’s into books,” sneers bad cop.
“Okay... well, it’s a story about a guy who’s been unlucky in love—”
Bad cop snorts. Greene says, “Go on.”
“And, well, he decides to isolate himself for a year to get his shit together, y’know, it’s about his personal journey to find himself—”
Bad cop says: “And he finds himself in deep shit?”
Good cop says: “So you decided to rent this cabin to get into the character’s head? That makes sense.”
Leonard looks at Greene with gratitude. “Yes, exactly, thank you. I had to experience it.”
“I’ve skimmed most of it, while waiting for you. You’re a good writer.”
Leonard almost blushes with the unexpected praise. “Thank you, that’s very kind.”
Greene flips through the pages. “I like the passages about the landscape and the juxtaposition with the character’s mood. It’s very bucolic in the beginning.”
Leonard grins. Bad cop yawns and scratches his balls.
“You really nailed the summers up here, the heat, like, this part,” Greene shuffles the pages and reads, “Summer in these parts comes with a vengeance, a brutal, punishing, airless, sodden heat that scorches the grass, wilts the flowers, and saps the life force out of anything with a heartbeat.”
He looks up at Leonard. “That’s nice. I like that part.”
Leonard vaguely remembers writing that, and thanks the cop for his compliment. Greene continues flipping through pages.
“But then it seems to take a shift, subtle at first—”
“Yes,” Leonard says eagerly. “I’m glad you caught that.”
“And it becomes something else entirely,” says Greene, stopping at a page, and frowning. “It becomes this,” he says, holding a page out to Leonard. “Perhaps you could explain it.”
“Sure,” says Leonard, pleased to oblige this literate lawman. “Sometimes nuance is difficult to fathom, I’d be happy to elucidate.”
Leonard reads the page and looks up at Greene.
“I didn’t write this,” he says. “This is sick, it’s perverted.” “That’s the only part I understood,” says bad cop.
Greene hands him another page. “It gets worse,” he says.
Leonard’s eyes flick over the words, disgusting, violent words, and he feels ill.
“Do you recognize the female character?” says Greene.
Bad cop laughs. “Dude, you wrote your own confession. We never get this lucky.”
Leonard stands up and grabs his forehead, starts pacing. “It didn’t happen,” he says, hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I didn’t write that, I didn’t rape her!”
“Doesn’t look that way,” says Greene. “Seems Ms Miller remembers it a whole lot differently than you do.”
Leonard feels defeated. He sinks onto the couch and picks up random pages. Each page unveils a fresh horror but he can’t seem to stop reading, he can’t stop going over the day’s events in his mind. It’s all there in black and white. Bits of what he remembers—the knife, binding her hands, biting her—but a deeply twisted version. How could he have written about it before it even happened, or is it possible he made it happen. Somehow it’s familiar. He recalls Sue’s manuscript and how the grisly heat of it pushed him into being so bold. He thinks it’s the same thing maybe. The same story?
“Leonard Haskell, stand up,” says Greene, unsnapping his handcuffs. “You’re under arrest for the rape of Susan Miller.”
As Leonard dutifully holds out his wrists, he says, “Y’know, I think someone else wrote that stuff, officer.”
Bad cop says, “Split personality defence? Nice try.”
Greene says, “I think he means it was an out-of-body experience.”
“No, I mean I read something like this before, at Sue’s cabin. I think she might have written it. God, she could’ve planted it!”
Bad cop smacks him upside the head. “Blaming the victim now? That’s rich.”
Leonard dimly hears bad cop reading his rights as Greene leads him out the door. He takes one last look at the cabin, at the damning telescope, and whether he’s found innocent or not, he is already thinking about jail. About how a jail cell is probably air conditioned. Probably a very nice place to write. Leonard thinks it could be bearable. »