Good luck getting that song out of your head, now.
Inside, she had a cot off to the left, directly opposite the wood-burning stove. Shelves stretched from corner to corner of every wall in stacks of five, holding jars filled with liquids and roots and God knows what else. Breaking the lining of shelves, there was a stocked gun and knife rack, which terrified me even more than the madhouse jars. Don’t get me wrong, I love guns—all guns—but some people just shouldn’t be able to own them. A small window on the wall directly opposite the front door also broke apart the shelving. Light speared into the cabin and illuminated a rectangular stretch of dusty, planked flooring. An off-balance table stood in the center of the cabin, two chairs pushed into it.
I wondered if she and her imaginary dead brother ate meals together, laughing like two loons in the night.
I didn’t see any plumbing—no toilets or sinks or showers—let alone running water. I didn’t see any clothes scattered on the floor or hanging from the rafters. No fridge or freezer. No light fixtures or an air conditioning unit. And believe it or not, no Wi-Fi router. How was I supposed to check my fantasy football scores? Also, to Annie’s credit, I didn’t see a boiling cauldron filled with toadstools and the toenails of a rascal, and I didn’t see any broomsticks or black, pointed hats.
“Please, sit down,” she said to Xander in a completely sane voice, gesturing to the table. “No! You can sit on the cot. He’s our guest.” After her sudden outburst, she fixed her shotgun onto the gun rack and sat on the remaining chair. “The contractor forgot to insulate,“ she glanced at me with soft eyes, “so, it’s usually colder than necessary in here without the door being left wide open.”
“Joey,” Xander said, glaring at me, “get in here.”
“I think I’m going to find a hole. See if I can… loosen these burrito cramps.”
“There’s broth in the stove.” Annabel faced the edge of the room where she’d instructed her brother to sit. “You can share. So what if he eats it all? I’ll make more.” Regarding me again, she said, “It’s great for relieving stomach pains. There’s ginger and homemade apple cider in it.”
I grimaced, not wanting to know what she’d mistaken for ginger and apples. “Well, the place isn’t very big, so… if there’s an aromatic issue in the next few minutes, just please, remember that I warned you.”
“Shut the door,” Xander said.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to steel my nerves. I stepped into the cabin and shut the door behind me. My body went weightless for a second as I anticipated…
What had I anticipated? Some asshole to run along the exterior and swing a baseball bat against the siding and the window?
So the hell what? I have killed people for lesser offenses than that. Why had it taken me so long to realize how irrational of a fear I held? Was it because, like most people, I clung to a singular experience and based my entire opinion on a ridiculous situation that had occurred years ago? If I’d only ventured into a cabin at any point after that moment, I would have found my fear… unfounded. I could have tagged along to that bachelor party in Tahoe with some buddies. I could have taken Callie on that vacation she always wanted in Yosemite. How many memories did I miss out on due to an irrational fear? Have I overstated my point, yet? Are you swallowing what I’m feeding you? Confront your fear, no matter how small or crazy it is—I promise you, you won’t regret it.
When nothing fatal happened and I realized my fear was nothing more than a ridiculous memory, I winked one eye open, then the other, and chuckled. The tension fled from my body, and my laughter grew to an uncontrollable, bellowing cackle as I accepted how childish my fear had been.
Annie and Xander both stared at me, judging hard—like a couple of backwoods rednecks attending a transgender wedding.
I didn’t like they way they looked at me, not one iota, but I also found it hard to care as my stomach tightened and my breath shortened from laughing so hard. Planting my elbows on my knees to calm down, something terrible happened. The bending motion paired with my gasping and guffawing created an unfortunate incident. I didn’t just break wind—I shattered it.
My laughter ceased immediately.
Before either of them could respond, I straightened my posture and smirked, scratching the back of my neck. “I warned you both about the dangers of inviting me in here. Should I open the door?”
They didn’t say a word as I crossed the six feet of space to the stove, opened the latch, and saw a cast-iron pot dangling from a hook. I removed it and looked at the contents. Globs of mashed vegetables and a yellowish liquid sloshed around. My throat locked up with disgust, but my stomach cramped and roiled and threatened more pain-relieving thunder. If this meeting led to a trap, to a Scylla or to Circe, and something went down, I was in no shape to fight. I had to do something to fix my tum-tum-boom-boom.
“Spoons are over here,” Annie said, gesturing to a coffee mug filled with silverware and napkins and a yellow wildflower. “You can use mine. I think Andy’s already in a pissy enough mood.” Her eyes darted to the cot. “Ain’t that right?”
I looked over and actually waited for him to respond. The more time I spent in this madhouse, the crazier I became. Would it be rude to deny her stomachache-curing potion and just leave?
Potion, I thought. Holy shit!
I realized that even though she didn’t have a cartoonish bubbling cauldron resting in the middle of her dilapidated cabin, she
