Page 6 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

Before me lies the reason for my self-chosen loneliness. I destroy everything and, afterward, remember nothing. There seems to be an evil inside of me that I can’t grasp.

Move aside…

I heard it, didn’t I? Frantically, I search for more images, thinking hard about the boy, but he is deaf, blind, and mute. I can’t connect with him.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

I bang the back of my head against the wall to use the pain to distract myself from the fear of going insane. The fact that I had another flashback hits me harder than a slap on the neck. I thought that by living in the wild, I would finally get rid of these attacks. No triggers. No flashes. Damn! I haul myself upright, relieved that nothing but my head hurts.

Inspecting the cabin, I assess the severity of my blackout. The door to the pantry is still intact—I didn’t kick it in. Good! The front door is also fine. Even better! A few pots lie on the floor in front of the tiny countertop. The blue and green plate I ate canned venison off of today broke. At least I can see colors again. The attack is over and there is no longer any danger that I could lose it again at any moment.

I wipe my forehead with a groan. It is soaked with sweat and swollen in the middle.

Why did it hit me again? And why the hell do I never remember what happened?

I glance around a second time, helpless. I have to clean up the kerosene. Hastily, I throw a kitchen towel on it, my eyes falling on the laptop. The screensaver’s bubbles float over the image of the blonde girl who captivated me so earlier.

She still looks at me with her huge blue eyes as if she wants to whisper a secret into my ears.

Little Miss Sunshine. Louisa Scriver.

Sunshine. Sun girl. Alaskan sky.

Did she trigger the flash? And if so, why?

As if in a trance, I approach the computer, overjoyed that I didn’t demolish it in my madness. Fuck the oil lamp! I kneel in front of the laptop and pull it closer to me. With a click on the enter key, the dancing soap bubbles disappear.

There’s that hot and cold chill inside me again and I still don’t know why or what it means.

“Louisa,” I say softly. A lovely name for my pretty Little Miss Sunshine. Everything about her is sweet and light.

Something changes inside me but I don’t know what it is. It’s definitely not another attack because it feels too good for that. Warm and new. Suddenly, I smell the smoke from the stove and the chemical petroleum intensely. The spicy smell of deer meat hangs in between… A few feet away, the burning wood crackles and pops and the Chinook howls over the wooden slats on the roof.

With a strange feeling in my stomach, I look around. The glass of the oil lamp reflects the light of the other lamps. A bright flash fills the room again and again. It looks mysterious, like a magical sign from another world. Why have I never noticed this before?

I get up and take a few steps toward the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling in front of the window. At the same time, my gaze falls outside. A silver, oversized moon bathes the frozen lake and snow-covered trees in crystal clear light. In the middle, almost next to the water hole, I discover a pack of wolves. I can see at least fifteen of them with black and gray fur.

My heart beats faster. I would love to go outside for a walk across the lake with them. Run. Just run. A few of them stay on the ice while the others move on. Movement on the east bank distracts me from the wolves.

Along the bare aspen, where the embankment is steeper, a beaver darts into its escape tunnel. Another follows. A few partridges flutter up and disappear again into a leafless clump of brush. Two wolves change course.

Nature suddenly appears full of life as if it had awakened early from hibernation.

I look once more at the radiant blonde girl on my laptop, and my stomach clenches with a wondrous feeling.

Maybe it’s not nature coming to life, maybe I finally realized that I’m not dead yet!

Without thinking, without wasting a thought about the danger of the wolf pack, I put on my jacket and shoes and go outside.

And then I’m really running. Just like that in the dark.

Chapter

Two

Ispend the next day in a strange frenzy, doing all the tasks I didn’t have the strength for the previous days. At minus four degrees, I finally climb onto the roof and repair the rotten spot on the north side above the pantry. I fire up the chainsaw and, in the haze of the smell of gasoline, cut the spruce into neat logs. I fetch several buckets of water and manage to wash myself thoroughly at an inside temperature of fifty-one degrees. Then, I patch the hole in my down jacket and the one in the pot holder with the cheesy heart. Afterwards, I go to the pantry with a pad and pen and make a list of my inventory. I’m down to ten cans of Mexican bean stew, an almost full sack of flour, two sacks of rice, five packages of powdered milk, and ten packs of hard cheese sealed in plastic, not counting the more than fifty cans of meats and vegetables, but I’m out of carrots. I note forty pounds of pasta, ten pounds of margarine, and ten boxes of granola still stacked on top of each other on the back shelf. Next to it I find twenty tubes of tomato paste and sixty cans of brown bread. I don’t need to worry. If need be, I can make it last through two winters.

Later, when the sun stands like a fireball over the western mountain range, I load the rifle.

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