Page 2 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

A soft cracking sound pulls me back to the present. I stop dead in my tracks and peer down at my feet. There is a fine crack in the transparent ice floe between my boots. I wait for it to rupture with fascination and horror. My breath paints itself as a white cloud in the air. Nothing happens except for the floe drifting away from the others like a raft. I would now have to jump far to find my footing again.

Should I stay put? Everything goes away then. The emptiness, the darkness. The loneliness.

The ground beneath me begins to sway from right to left and back. I instinctively stretch my arms out to the side for balance, but I’m too heavy and my weight pushes the plate down. Ice water floods my boots, but it doesn’t matter. My boots disappear under the opaque surface of the water. A few bubbles rise to the top. I’m not doing anything, just looking down. The gray water stares back like a dead man’s eye. So dark…so deep beneath the earth…

Suddenly, there is only panic. Without thinking, I prepare to jump onto the neighboring ice floe, praying the thin ice will withstand the force of the jump. Then it cracks again. The ice breaks.

Something heavy is pulling me down. It’s so cold I can’t breathe. My arms flail in the air. Everything happens way too fast. Reflexively, I thrust my torso forward, toward the saving slab of ice while pressing my foot against a portion of the sinking floe. I catch the edge of the thick neighboring slab, grab hold of it, and hoist myself onto my forearms. My legs burn from the cold, but I manage to lift one knee onto the firm layer of ice. Panting, I push myself forward, inch by inch until I’m lying flat on the ice. Exhausted, I roll onto my back. The blue sky turns red and seems to come toward me like a scarf flapping in the wind.

I can’t feel anything anymore, only my racing heart pounding in my ears.

For a few seconds, I don’t dare move. I fixate on the unsettling groans of the ice, waiting for the inevitable rupture beneath me, but there is no other sound to break the silence except for the Chinook.

Eventually, I slowly raise my head and examine the sheet I saved myself on. It is thick and strong. I’m not going to drown, nor freeze to death, if I get up now and start moving.

After a few deep breaths, I carefully heave myself to my feet. My clothes are soaked through and already freezing in the air, and I’m not just shivering from the cold. I’m dizzy from what I had just attempted. With trembling hands, I shade my eyes and gaze out across the white landscape toward the mountains, the crests of which stand out distinctly against the blue sky.

Nothing has changed. The air is fresh and pure like nowhere else in the world, yet I don’t care. I feel nothing.

I shake my head as if to banish the gloomy thoughts and walk back.

During the next few minutes, I hack open the water hole, mechanically fill the buckets with water, and carry them toward the cabin. My lungs ache as I breathe, my clothes are frozen stiff, reminding me with every step how close I am to losing my mind.

How could I have ventured so far out onto the lake?

Something must happen, I just don’t know what. Only one thing is clear to me: If I don’t get a hold of myself, I won’t survive the winter.

Inside the cabin, I set the filled water buckets on the plywood floor and stand in the low room. The sun is low over the mountain range and colors the peaks in glowing reds. I glance at the clock. Four p.m. How much time have I actually spent out there on the lake?

I can’t start the chainsaw at dusk, let alone climb onto the roof to patch the leak with new slats but I could check my supplies. Still undecided, I look at the door that leads to the annex and sink to the floor. It’s cold and damp and a glance at the thermometer shows me a room temperature of fifty-three degrees. I should throw some logs in the wood-burning stove, but I can’t even bring myself to do that. Taking off my shoes and frozen pants wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. Or the hat and gloves.

Still, I just sit there with my back against the logs and stare out the glass front. The sun sinks lower and lower and the sky turns into a gray sea with wisps of orange and pink clouds.

Maybe it would have been better if I had never discovered this cabin. The people who leased the property before me and built the cabin must have been a couple. Everything comes in pairs of two. The only room on the lower floor has two handmade wooden chairs and a simple table. The patchwork sofa with two sagging seats is placed behind a trunk with a smoothly sanded surface that serves as a coffee table. When I first found the cabin, there were even two plates on it. The rung ladder next to the couch leads to a bunk lined with two animal pelts. It’s so big that I feel lost in it, so I crash on the couch.

Tired, I put my head in my hands, smell my wet gloves, and think of the work I didn’t get done. Life would definitely be more comfortable in a residential area. And easier. I’ve spent the last two winters in Faro, a town with no more than five hundred inhabitants. After the summer months in the RV, being close to others almost felt like relief. I only had to go to the supermarket to reassure myself that I wasn’t the only person in the world. But even that didn’t go down well.

I push the budding memory away. I don’t want to think about my flashbacks.

With difficulty, I heave myself up and force my body to be active. I mentally tell myself what to do, like I’ve done on so many nights. First, I change my clothes and hang the wet items on a hook at the entrance. Then, I heat the water in the kettle, make tea from peppermint leaves and throw a few spruce logs on the paltry fire.

After the sun has set, I light the three oil lamps that hang from the ceiling like hanging baskets. For a moment, I consider drawing but can’t find energy left even for this.

Everything seems pointless. During the first few weeks, I got the cabin in shape, which I was able to do even in the twilight, but that work is now finished.

Far too early in the evening, I go to the pantry to choose my dinner. I really should make a new inventory list or I might end up eating elk goulash and rice for a month. Right now, I can’t even bring myself to care about that.

I grab a can of venison goulash and a can of peas at random and heat both up on the gas stove. I eat but hardly taste anything. I keep looking outside. By now, millions and millions of stars blanket the sky—they glitter and twinkle like winner-confetti made of gold and silver. I’ve never seen as many stars in Los Angeles as in the Yukon. I think Canada’s sky would make any girl’s heart beat faster.

Girls’ hearts…the words sound strange. Kind of foreign, maybe even extraterrestrial. Girls’ hearts. It sounds so absurd I shake my head at myself. I’ve truly been alone for too long to think about stuff like that.

While doing the dishes, I catch myself thinking about that expression over and over again. Perhaps I’m truly going insane now.

A solid three hours of staring outside go by before I finally give in to my urge and grab the old laptop from out of the top kitchen cupboard.

Maybe I should just check out some girls. Maybe this will help me feel better. Last winter in Faro, I did that to distract myself from my miserable life, even if it didn’t change anything. Maybe some pretty girls will cheer me up a little tonight.

With that thought in mind, I carry the generator outside and pull the starter cord. Luckily, it doesn’t give me a hard time and starts revving right away. The intense smell of gasoline in the night air is disgusting. Covering my nose with my forearm, I roll out the extension cord back to the cabin and squeeze it through the gap in the door. What else needs to be recharged besides the satellite modem and laptop? I think of the battery charger—my flashlight hasn’t worked in two days, and the battery-powered ceiling light needs to be tested.

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