Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 103918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
The silence that followed was thick and heavy and I felt like a jackass for being so outwardly rude. But I was still hurting from the conversation I'd had with King. As I waited for the man behind me to respond, something cold and wet brushed up against my fingers and I let out a little yelp.
"Yeah, well, Mr. Parnell likes it when I send the tenants back home in one piece. Repeat business or something, I guess. But hey, if you want the wilderness experience by getting your own fires going and starting the generator if the power goes, have at it. Come on, Brewer, leave the nice man alone," the man said, his voice tripping over the word nice.
The animal, which I could only assume was a very large, very hairy dog, licked my hands before its nails click-clacked across the linoleum. A moment later, the kitchen door slammed shut and there was nothing but silence once again. I breathed a sigh of relief. I fumbled with my phone long enough to get it turned back on and sent a quick email to the owner of the cabin. It felt strange and unnatural to use the voice-to-text option, but it wasn't like I had a lot of choices.
I dictated a quick message reminding Mr. Parnell about my request to be left alone and then hit send. I'd never met the man, but I’d been in contact with him for the past several weeks as I'd arranged to rent out not only the one cabin, but all three located on the same acreage. The cabins were located deep within the north woods of Maine. The man had sent me countless pictures and a list of all the amenities that would make the remote location both private and comfortable, but obviously I hadn't been able to make use of any of that. When I’d heard that the cabin came with a caretaker, I’d told the owner I wouldn’t need any assistance, but clearly he'd either forgotten that particular part of our conversation or he thought I’d changed my mind.
I hadn’t.
I didn’t care what the cabin looked like or how comfortable it was. I only needed it for two things…to stay lost and to be left alone to say goodbye to the life I’d known.
I forced myself to get up so I could start exploring my new environment. I started by locking the door just in case the nosy caretaker decided to come back. I supposed it didn't really matter if he were to discover me feeling out my surroundings rather than looking at them, but I wasn't ready to answer the inevitable questions that would come afterwards. A silver lining, if you could even call it that, was that at least I wouldn’t have to see all the pitying looks I’d be getting.
I spent a good hour just moving around the different rooms. Turning on lights helped me make out certain shapes of things, but the images were too blurry to identify even the smaller things like the thermostat and the switch for the fireplace. The cabin wasn't overly cold, but having lived in Los Angeles for the better part of my adult life, I wasn't used to the cold. And even though it was technically spring, the woods of northern Maine still tended to get pretty cold at night.
I felt all around the fireplace for the switch that would turn it on but couldn’t find it. Luckily, I’d felt some blankets in a basket by the fireplace, so I could always use those if there were any issues with the heat or I couldn’t figure out how to turn the thermostat up.
Satisfied I wouldn’t freeze to death, I spent the rest of the afternoon getting settled. The car and driver I'd hired to bring me to the cabin had long since left, but he’d left all of my belongings on the porch. It took a good while to get everything inside and up to the room I decided was the master bedroom. It was early by the time I settled between the sheets and willed sleep to claim me. The silence I'd been so certain I needed in order to make sense of things arrived like a freight train. I could hear every tick of the clock in the bedroom as well as the creaking of the house as the winds outside increased and rain began pelting the roof.
In my old life, I would've still been at work dealing with the hustle and bustle that came with running a successful video game company. I would've been surrounded by coders, testers, and developers as we came up with the next hit video game. My days would have been all about me dealing with all the administrative tasks and making decisions about everything from the characters to the themes to the color schemes, but the nights… the nights would be mine.