Carolina
It’s day fourteen. It’s been exactly two weeks since I left my entire life behind. All I’ve known as home until now had disappeared when I moved out to this little wooden lodge, deep in a forest north of Seattle. My biggest worry at first was the lack of human encounters, but as the days go by, slowly and identical to the ones before, my fear of encountering this human contact grows more than anything. I had to leave home to get away from someone. The threat of this one person being in my life started forming a chain of more individuals whom I should avoid at all costs. Leaving was my only option.
So, day fourteen. Another day of being woken up by the sunlight that creeps through the window in my small bedroom every morning, precisely at eight in the morning. What follows is my well-practiced routine of a shower, feeding the dog, collecting the berries I grow behind the lodge while letting the dog out for a walk, and then baking cupcakes using the fruit I had collected earlier. I cook and bake every single day. I produce small portions of whatever it is I’m cooking, since it’s only me who gets to enjoy it later. When it comes to baking, however, it’s hard for me to stop myself from producing any less than two batches of cupcakes. The clock is about to strike two in the afternoon as I’m mixing together my second batch in my favourite pink bowl. My only bowl. The smell of blueberry cupcakes that I just took out of the oven barely overpowers the fresh smell of the air, coming in through the kitchen window right in front of me. I’m listening to “Cold Little Heart” by Michael Kiwanuka. It was my mother’s favourite song to bake to, one we would always listen to together. It’s the only record I took with me in the abrupt time that I had to leave and so, the only song I listen to everyday. A fresh breeze of wind lightly hits my face, as my eyes get lost in the pale sunlight stuck between the gaps in the branches of the trees that stare at me with a straight view past the kitchen window.
It’s only a moment later that the second chorus in “Cold Little Heart” begins, and the phone rings. I stop mixing and put down the bowl. A million thoughts rush through my head before I even get the chance to turn around at the landline in the living room behind me. How did this person find me? Why are they calling me? Is this it? Did it really take fourteen days? Only fourteen days for them to find me? I unsettlingly start making my way to the living room. The last thing I hear before the voice on the other end of the line are the birds chirping outside every corner of the lodge. Yet they weren’t the last familiar sound. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ sounded more familiar than anything I’ve ever known. I knew exactly who it was. And so, I knew exactly what I had to do next. I can’t believe it took only fourteen days.
Comments