It’d been plotted out meticulously and deviously and in the way only a deeply pained and morally destroyed individual could.
It started when I woke up one morning to find a chain padlocked tightly around my ankle. The key-slit on the padlock was jammed with some kind of quick dry cement. I had my dress pants and a shirt on from the previous night, but no socks or shoes.
I was laying on a bare mattress in a wood panelled room. The chain on my ankle trailed across the floor and out of a doorless entryway into a kitchen.
I followed the chain through the bare kitchen and into a living room which had a sheet of paper hanging on the wall. Below the paper was old fishing tackle and an ancient fishing rod. The paper had simple handwriting scrawled across it: “If you can survive three months on whatever fish you catch, I’ll give you a lock cutter and let you go free.”
The chain continued through the living room and out the front door.
From there, I stood on the edge of the wooden deck of an old cabin. I was looking out at a beautiful backyard that backed onto a completely unpopulated lake. At the edge of the water, there was a wooden deck that led out twenty feet.
The chain around my ankle led off to the right, where there was a fire pit and a large tree. The chain looped around the tree and was padlocked with the key-slit jammed.
I walked in every direction, as far as the chain would allow, and made note of the distance from the tree. I had enough chain slack to get into the bedroom of the cabin. To get to the edge of the dock. And then seventy feet to the left or right of the cabin in a 140 foot diameter tether.
I yelled. I screamed.
But the lake and the woods swallowed up my voice. I knew I was placed here because I’d never be found. Everything was planned out too well.
I had no idea where I was. There was no way to call or communicate to
anyone. And I was completely alone.
That night, I managed to collect enough kindling and wood to start a fire in the pit. I went to sleep hungry, knowing the next day wasn’t going to have me waking from this nightmare.
I’d be right back there in the morning.
And I was.
My second morning there, I drew upon the basic survival methods I knew to stay alive and implemented them around the cabin.
By the end of the first week, I managed to create and maintain fires. Then I built small traps to catch squirrels and chipmunks.
The traps caught several squirrels on the first night. I roasted them and ate the meat I could. I saved small bits and used them for fish bait on the rusty hooks from the tackle box.
The first day of fishing went surprisingly well. I got some bites and managed to catch two Pickerel and one Lake Trout.
Using some old fishing line, I tied together several sticks and built a sort of grill that sat just high enough above the fire to smoke them.
I felt like I was becoming one with the land. I actually kind of felt alive. Like I was accomplishing real-life feats that would mean more at the end of my life than everything that preceded. College. Law school. All the pro-bono. Then the switch to Prosecution. Putting away horrible people. At least most of them were.
But the only thing that mattered here was survival. It was me and nature.
So I kept the traps going and kept fishing and over the next few weeks, I found there were more and more bites. I began to catch five, six, sometimes seven fish a day. And they were getting larger and larger.
I spent the nights trying to remember what happened before I woke up at the cabin.
I remembered working late, clearing out my office on the last day before my early retirement. I went to my car in the parking garage, got in and then… black.
I’m guessing that was when it happened. Where I was knocked out in some way. My memory blurred by impact or chemicals. Because I woke up here. And I knew who did it.
His name was Patrick Wilkins. And unfortunately, I’d only made his acquaintance when my car had t-boned his. I was driving home alone from a dinner with a coworker. I’d been drinking enough that I’ll admit I shouldn’t have been driving. But I was.
Patrick was in his twenties and had a wife in the front seat. As it turned out, she’d just discovered she was pregnant.
Patrick’s wife died in the accident, but he survived.
I was nearing retirement and after all the years of courtroom drama, I was looking forward to quiet. Perhaps at a cottage. Which was painfully ironic. My wife passed away when our daughter, Anne, was just going off to college.
Now, Anne worked in a shop in the city. I’d always hoped she’d have a big family one day that would come visit me wherever I decided to play out my retirement.
After the accident, I knew how to talk to the right people to tilt the investigation in my favour. The crash had occurred on a country road intersection… only some prankster had removed the stop signs.
Technically it wasn’t my fault. But still, I’d been drinking and was driving way too fast. I called in every favour I had and managed to get rid of the toxicology, fudged the information for the tire mark skid lengths on the road, the impact details and eventually had the case thrown out.
I’d already planned my retirement so it was a quiet exit.
I’d hired a private investigator to look into Patrick, who’d disappeared after the case died. But before I got the file on Patrick, I was finishing my last day of work. Then I was walking to my car. Then I was getting into it.
Then… black.
I understood why Patrick would want revenge. I just didn’t understand this. Why the cabin and the fishing and the three months?
Wondering about it didn’t help. I supposed all I could do was survive the three months. There wasn’t another choice.
So I made more traps and caught more rodents and made more bait and caught more fish and got more wood and made more fires and ate more meals. The cycle continued through the days and weeks.
Finally, three months passed.
I woke up that morning and found an old standard television and VCR. There was a VHS tape on top.
The VHS had a piece of white tape on it with the words PLAY ME written in Sharpie.
It’d been three long months since I’d seen or spoken to anyone and the only communication I’d received was to survive this length of time.
So all I’d done was trap, fish, eat, find firewood and burn it, all the while my mind was constantly wondering what the point of it all was. My days were basically what I’d wanted to do in the first place upon retirement, only not so roughing it.
Finally, three months were up. The answer was here. And I was terrified.
I put the tape in the VCR. It started up from the perspective on an old camcorder held shakily from the backseat of a car at night. I recognized the dash and mirror-hanging air freshener immediately.
It was my daughter Anne’s car.
I watched the camera as it recorded gloved hands covering a rag in starter fluid. Then the camera turned out the window and I saw Anne close-up and lock her store for the night.
Then Anne walked to her car. The one the camcorder was waiting in.
I yelled at the screen but knew the moment was long past.
Anne got in the car, not seeing whoever was in the back and didn’t even get the keys in the ignition before they sprung on her and gagged her with the rag.
Anne fought and struggled. But the grip was too tight and she finally passed out.
The camcorder cut to a new angle, staring out the windshield of a new car and showing country roads passing by.
The car drove further into the woods which became denser around it. We went through a gate, up a lengthy driveway and there I saw the cottage. The one I was in.
The camcorder cut again, and now we were moving down the path towards the back dock. The angle turned back and showed the handler of the camera was dragging Anne, who was bound and unconscious, along behind them.
The camera continued down the path towards the dock.
As we got closer, I noticed there were things laid out on the dock.
Namely, a rectangular length of fence was unspooled and flat along the wood panels. It looked like it was six feet tall by nine feet long.
Underneath the length of fence, were two sets of chains, each with its own padlock on one end.
Anne’s body was dragged to the fence and laid out on it.
The camcorder was put down, facing Anne’s body from the side.
A voice muttered over the camcorder, “Here’re your fuckin’ lock cutters.”
And a large pair of bolt cutters dropped into frame, landing on Anne’s torso.
Anne stirred. She was still alive.
The fence was quickly grabbed and wrapped over Anne, swaddling her in layers of the metal mesh like tobacco in a cigarette.
The chains under the fence were picked up and padlocked together, sealing Anne in completely.
The length of the rolled fence was dragged to the end of the dock, where two cinder blocks and more chains were waiting. The blocks were chained to opposite ends of the rolled fence.
The camcorder settled on the roll of fence, and the voice came back again.
“I always loved the solitude of this side of the lake. One thing though, never had good fishing here. But I think the fish just never had anything to eat. And now, they do, and you do too.”
I punched the television screen as I saw the cinder blocks being kicked over the edge of the dock. I sprinted out of the cabin and down to the water and jumped in, swimming along the side of the dock.
I swam down as far as the chain would allow., trying to see the bottom. But it was too deep and dark where she’d be.
And there was nothing I could do for her anyway. She’d been eaten by the fish. And they’d been eaten by me.
I threw-up onshore and couldn’t think straight for two days.
I didn’t know if I wanted to live. But I knew I didn’t want to die like this.
So I gathered all the loose kindling and wood in the area. I filled the cabin with it all and started a bonfire in the centre. Then walked out to the water and laid in it, watching the cabin go up in flames. The fire spread to the surrounding trees.
In little time, it took out several acres, attracting Wildlife and Emergency Services attention.
They found me there, alive, floating thirty feet out in the water, beside a charring dock and still chained to a tree that was amongst the inferno.
I was saved and treated for all kinds of injuries and infections in a nearby hospital.
I told the police about Patrick, but he was beyond their authority. It turned out, Patrick had committed suicide after he dropped off the VHS tape for me to watch in the cabin.
Patrick didn’t know I got out. He didn’t know I escaped and he’d made no plan to even attempt to deal with the possibility that I might.
The only plan he’d made, was for a horrible revenge.