The Couple in the Cabin

by Daniel Hurst

Things are about to get very crazy, very fast.

That’s when I realise the absurdity of the situation. How my wife just caught me naked with another woman in the cabin in our back garden. A woman I shouldn’t be with, in a cabin I begged to have built. There’s no possible way I can talk my way out of this. No feeble excuse I can offer. Not any way I can say “it’s not how it looks.”

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

The longer this goes on, the more this place that I loved so much is quickly feeling like a prison from which I’ll never escape, and I bet my wife finds it hilarious that I’m being tormented by something I fought so hard to have built.

I’ve thrown away the love of a great woman for the love of a woman who always would have got bored of me in the end.

And my wife’s face lit up as she stands over the growing bonfire and smiles.

That’s because this isn’t the first time I’ve locked two people away.

My husband is a cheat. Just like my father was.

But the weekend will hold no respite for the couple out in the garden.

If I could manage this when I was ten, I can surely manage it now.

If her reaction to being slighted is to restrain somebody and leave them helpless then clearly something very bad happened to her in her childhood.’

‘I just find it hard to believe that this is the first time she has done this! Not with the way she is acting so cool about it!’

I’m scared because I think I might have killed my dad.

There is only one thing that is making me consider unlocking this door and letting Dominic and his woman out. It’s the fear that I might end up just like Mum. Bitter. Angry. Alone.

I have to face it; I was never going to have a truly happy life after what I did when I was young.

‘All I will say is that if you have been feeling like you’re the bad guy in all of this, then it’s time to stop that because your wife has you beat there, and she has you beat easily.’

I only notice them when the blue flashing lights come on.

How could I have done this to other people? And more importantly, why?

Anybody can do something once. But twice is a pattern. Anymore and it will become a habit.

‘I’m talking about how you locked him away. I’m talking about how you let him die. Him and the woman he was with.’

In reality, she had always known she could get out of here at any time, and the reason for that confidence was because she had somebody helping her on the outside.

I also discovered once I was released that the man who had opened the door had been keeping watch over my house and cabin ever since we had been locked up.

In reality, Grace is only dangerous to people she is close to, and even then, the danger only occurs when those people hurt her.

She might be a little crazy, but there’s no denying the men in Grace’s life have let her down badly.

but after the truth had come about Dad’s death, she felt it was her being unkind to me that had really caused it.