My name is Hannah. Hannah Kozlowski if you want my full name, though most people call me Han. I’m twenty-five years old and I’ve lived in Edmonton, Alberta for my entire life. Edmonton’s fine – it’s home at least. I’m writing this because I don’t know how much longer I’ll be alive, and I want to share a story I’ve kept secret for the past three years. At the time, the story was ridiculous… well… it’s still ridiculous, but at this point I don’t care if I get judged for it – I just want to get the truth out there and tell everyone to keep away from Whitewater Lake.
Like I mentioned, it all started three years ago when I was invited to spend a long weekend with my Uncle Koz at his cabin. The Kozlowski’s are a big family – and I mean big – a few dozen cousins, six uncles, and half as many aunts, just on my father’s side. It’s what you’d expect from an old Polish catholic family that’s been in Canada for generations. Aside from my parents, Uncle Koz was always my favourite – he was something of the black sheep of his brothers, the one who never married, never went to school, always had big wads of cash near at hand, brought us the best presents, and drank the most at any family gathering.
Uncle Koz had always liked me the best out of all his nieces and nephews, since I was the one that loved being around him. He would always be telling stories of drunken adventures and summer romances to the kids until his brothers and sisters shut him up and hurried him out of the room. When the coast was clear and nobody was watching me, I would sneak out to the yard and sit with Uncle Koz while he chain smoked, the two of us trying our best to muffle our laughter while he told me stories of my parents being stupid kids.
It was safe to say that as I grew up, Uncle Koz and I were best friends. I was the only one he would invite to his house at White Water Lake – so once I was old enough to have my own car, I would spend almost every long weekend at the cabin as long as school or work wasn’t too crazy.
This story truly begins about three years ago, on the July long weekend. I was twenty-two and Uncle Koz had called me to invite me to the Lake for Canada day weekend. I had been invited to a party or two, but a chance to retreat to the lake was far more appealing to me than the idea of hanging out with drunk frat guys and sorority girls.
I tossed a few bags of clothes and toiletries into the trunk of my car, along with a huge case of beer, and slammed it down with a big grin on my face – it was going to be a great weekend. The drive to Whitewater lake took about three or four hours, depending a lot on the weather, and also depending on what had happened in the forest since you had last been there. You see, the thing with Whitewater lake is that… well for one I don’t think that’s its name, not officially anyway – I’ve never found anything online about it, and it has no name on google maps, so I’m guessing Whitewater is just what my Uncle calls it.
The other thing about Whitewater, is I don’t think my uncle owns the land he’s on… and I don’t think anyone is supposed to live there. The only way to get to Whitewater is if my uncle tells you how – it involves turning randomly off a range road and plunging through a number of barely useable roads for almost an hour, using certain stumps and patches of bushes as guides for where to turn left or right. If it rained recently, nothing is getting through the mud. If a tree fell on the road since the last time you were there, you have to move that bastard yourself. If a moose or a bear has decided to wander down the trail while you’re trying to use it – you’ll learn quick that you’re moving at the animal’s pace, not yours. Given all this, the trip to Whitewater can take anywhere from three hours if you’re lucky, to six if you’re not.
I got somewhat lucky this time, making the trip in about four hours, with a couple stops to drag debris off the backroads of the forest. It was around one o’clock when I got there, parking my car below the front porch and stepping out into the fresh forest air to stretch my cramping legs. For how desolate I’ve made this place sound, it’s actually a great place – I have no clue how Uncle Koz actually got all this stuff out here, but I’ve learned not to ask too many questions about his life. The cabin is two stories with a large basement – stone foundation, and brick, wood, and logs making up the other two floors. Uncle Koz filters and collects his own water, has solar panels to power the place, hunts, fishes, and grows his own vegetables – all said and done, the cabin is completely off the grid, with no internet or cell service for scores of miles in any direction.
“Is that Han I heard crashing through the woods!” Came a booming voice from the woods to my right, where I turned to see Uncle Koz striding out of the pines, rifle in one hand and a dead rabbit in the other. He dropped them both on the ground and ran up to me to embrace me in a big bear hug. We both laughed as he set me back down and picked his gun and rabbit back up.
“How’s my favourite niece doing?” Uncle Koz asked over his shoulder, striding towards the front door as I trailed behind him with my bags.
“Great as always – how’s old Uncle Koz?” I smiled as I stepped inside the cabin – the smell of fresh cut wood, old pine, homemade bread, roasted meats, and old brick assailed me all at once and I took a deep breath in and let out a sigh.
“Who you callin’ old?” Koz scowled at me as he fixed the dead rabbit on one of the kitchen meat hooks.
“You!” I shouted as I made my way up the stairs to the guest bedroom – well, my bedroom for all intents and purposes, as I never knew Uncle Koz to have any other guests besides me. I smiled as I entered the familiar room and tossed my bags onto the bed – thick wool and fur blankets were piled high on the bedframe that Koz had built himself. Aside from the bed, the room was sparse, with a small desk and chair, a wardrobe that still had some of my forest-worn clothes from the last time I came up, and two small bedside tables that flanked the bed.
I unpacked quickly and changed into some clothes that fit my new surroundings better – a loose cotton tunic that I had made myself under Uncle’s direction, thick fabric hunting pants, and a sturdy pair of leather boots, all of which gave off the scent of pine, blood, and campfire smoke.
I strode back downstairs where Uncle was skinning and cleaning his rabbit in between chopping vegetables for a stew. I walked to the big brick fireplace at the centre of the great room and tossed a fresh log onto the hot, smouldering coals.
“Hungry? Stew won’t be ready until tonight, but I have half a loaf of bread and some of this year’s jam.” Koz said, gesturing with his knife to a cloth covered basket at the end of the kitchen island.
“How about a beer?” I asked from the couch.
“As long as you bring me one.” Uncle grinned.
I went to fetch the case of beer from my trunk – it was one of the few things that he couldn’t make himself, so he always had me bring a case when I came by. I lugged the case into the cabin and banged it down onto the kitchen island.
“Careful! It’s not often I get that stuff up here.” Uncle said pointing at me with his knife. I opened the case and cracked a beer for each of us. We clinked our bottles together and took a long drink. “Lovely, warm as piss – why don’t you put that case in the fridge.” He laughed.
Uncle Koz was a woodsman, one look at him would tell you that – long greying hair tied back behind his head, a half grey, half black beard that stretched down his chest complimented a body that was tall, thin, but lean and muscled from years of living in the woods. I was a girl who had gone soft from city living – according to Uncle, but had collected my fair share of scrapes, cuts, and scars from weekends spent at the cabin.
As Uncle Koz prepared his stew, we chatted back and forth of what had happened since we had last seen each other, which would have been in the fall before the snow had closed off the roads to Whitewater. Nothing much happened to him over the winter – he would read, and hunt, and sit by the fire, trying to keep away cabin fever. I filled him in with how the family was, and how school was going, and any major news that had happened out in the wider world. When Covid struck a few years back, Uncle Koz hadn’t even heard of it until I visited him as the vaccine was almost completely rolled out across the country.
The stew being prepared, we tossed a few more logs in the fireplace, hung and covered the kettle, and took a walk down to the lake. Whitewater is small for a lake – you could probably walk the whole thing in a few hours if the forest wasn’t in the way to stop you. It was shallow, which made it warm in the summer and good for swimming in, and the remoteness meant there were always plenty of fish to catch, or clams to dig up from the small creeks that fed the river. Whitewater lake was truly a hidden paradise in the wilderness of Canada.
Uncle Koz and I spent a few hours shooting targets, throwing out lines for fish, and swapping stories until the stew was finally ready around six o’clock. We spooned ourselves each a huge helping and sopped it up with a fresh loaf of bread until we were too full to move. After a nice post-dinner nap, we went outside and lit a huge bonfire down near the lake, which we sat next to and watched the birds soar above the face of the lake.
“Han, I got something to tell you.” Uncle Koz said after a few moments of silence.
“What’s that?” I asked concerned. Koz wasn’t one for getting sentimental, and my first immediate thought was that he was dying.
“You were right, your Uncle Koz is getting old, and you’re the only one in the family I trust completely – except for ol’ granddad, but he’s been six feet under for decades now.” Koz said, taking a sip of his beer and gazing out over the lake.
“You got cancer or something?” I asked jokingly, hoping it would cover up the concern in my voice.
“Wouldn’t know if I did. No, there’s a family heirloom that needs an heir – and I want that to be you.” Uncle said, turning to look at me.
“An heirloom?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Well, more of a recipe. Wait here.” Koz said with a wicked smile as he pushed himself to his feet and walked away. “You ever wonder what was in the old boat shed!” he yelled as he walked along the lakeshore to the old boat shed that had stood there as long as I could remember – I had never been allowed inside, always being told that it was an old building with some rusty, dangerous tools that would give me an infection if I wasn’t careful and got cut.
I didn’t respond as Koz unlocked the shed and disappeared inside, emerging a moment later with a brown glass bottle. He strode back over to me and tossed the bottle to me, where it landed on the grass with a soft thump. I looked up at him and he gestured wordlessly to the bottle. I gave him a questioning look before I opened the bottle and was almost floored by the smell alone. Uncle let out a deep laugh and slapped his leg.
“What in the fuck - is that?” I asked, rubbing my nose with one hand and holding the bottle away from me with the other, the fumes alone felt like they were burning the inside of my nose raw.
“It’s shine you got there Han, take a sip.” Uncle said with a broad grin on his face.
“No way.” I said, recorking the bottle and rolling it back towards him.
“Ah well I guess I can’t blame you for that – here, try some of the mixed and flavoured stuff. I shouldn’t have started you with the raw rotgut.” Uncle Koz said as he pulled a small flask out from his back pocket and tossed it to me. I caught it and uncapped it – unlike the bottle, this smelled sweet, like ethanol and cherries, and didn’t burn my nose.
I took a small swig of the flask, and found the drink surprisingly good – there was a distinct alcohol taste, and the liquid warmed me as it went down, but there was no immediate retching or recoiling like there was with a shot of most liquor.
“Careful with that – it’s about seventy percent alcohol, or less… or more. Lord knows I didn’t label that one. Don’t go blind.” He said as I took another sip.
“Jesus that is smooth!” I said throwing the flask back to him.
“Damn right it is, best moonshine in the north – and made by Kozlowskis for three generations.” He smiled. “And I want you to be the fourth.”
“Me?” I said, somewhat shocked.
“As if your old dad or any of your useless cousins are gonna keep the family business going, you’re the one to take up the… brand.” Koz sat back down next to me and took a swig from the flask. “Tomorrow, you’re gonna learn how to make it yourself.”
“Alright, let’s fucking do it!” I said with a beaming smile. I had considered what was being proposed for a moment, but the idea was too cool for me to pass up, being a twenty-two-year-old, the ability to make barrels of alcohol myself would surely rack me up some social credit on campus.
“That’s the spirit!” Uncle said, and we passed another hour on the lakeshore before turning in to bed.
I was woken up the next morning but the sound of banging on my bedroom door. “Wake up and get dressed Han! We got a long day ahead of us!” Came the voice from the other side. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and groaned as I swung my legs off the bed. I dressed quickly and hurried downstairs, where a hot cup of coffee and two pieces of buttered toast, flanked by scrambled eggs and bacon were waiting for me. Uncle was nowhere to be seen, so I wolfed down the food and chased it with the coffee before I strode out into the back yard.
Uncle Koz was leaned against the door to the boat shed smoking a cigarette when he spied me. “The revenuers won’t give you this much time, gotta be up early to be a shiner!” he smiled, and I waved him off with my right hand as I stifled a yawn with my left. I was taken aback by the boatshed. What I had always imagined held an old, broken motorboat and some oars turned out to be a massive still – pipes twisting here and there between barrels and metal drums, with stacks of firewood and burn marks on the floor. Shelves lined the whole shed, covered top to bottom with bottles. To the back of the shed, the floor fell away into a cavern that had a small winch at the top for the raising and lowering of barrels. A few wooden barrels and some burlap sacks were piled near the winch, and the shed smelt of coal, fire, and liquor.
Uncle Koz shoved a notebook and pencil in my hand and without warning, launched into a lecture on the making of moonshine. I’m used to university lectures, but I’ve never had an eight hour lecture before – we went over what kinds of mash to use, the best way and the best materials with which to build a still, the exact mixture of ingredients, how to bottle, how to store, and how to mix the shine so that it was easier to drink.
We stopped briefly for lunch and after twenty minutes were right back at it. By the end of the day, my hand was cramped from writing and notetaking, diagram drawing and asking questions. I had never received such a comprehensive education on… well… anything in my entire life, and I had never seen Uncle Koz so animated or serious as when he was explaining to me down to the smallest measurement what the Kozlowski family recipe was for moonshine.
The sun had begun to make it’s way to the western horizon when Koz finally let out a big sigh and ceased talking. “Any questions?” He asked.
“Plenty.” I replied.
“Well, save ‘em for tomorrow. Let’s have you actually see what the end product should taste like.” Koz smiled. “Pick any bottle off that shelf there, should have labels with the flavour.”
I grabbed a bottle off the shelf I had been pointed towards that said “Peaches n’ Cream” on a white sticker on the bottle’s body. I held it out to Uncle Koz and he took it from me, tossing it back and forth between his hands. “Good choice.” He smiled, and walked out of the shed.
We stirred the ashes of last nights bonfire to uncover a few smouldering coals, which we heaped with leaves and twigs until a small blaze was alive again. Piling logs on afterwards, we had a fire roaring not even fifteen minutes later. Uncle and I dropped ourselves on the grass by the warmth of the flame, and let the grass soak up the weariness of a full day’s work. I uncorked the moonshine bottle and took a swig off the bottle – it tasted delicious, almost nothing like booze, and I instantly felt the labours of the day wearing away.
“See Han, if you’re going to make moonshine, you gotta’ know what it’s like to drink it too.” Uncle Koz said, as he took his own swig off the bottle.
“Sounds like the easy part.” I said with a smile as I reached out for the bottle.
Koz snatched the bottle away before I could reach it. “That’s where you’re wrong, Han. This stuff here – it’ll be the death of you if you’re not careful. The first Kozlowski to make it died from drinking to much, and the second one – your great grandfather, he died cause men got jealous of his empire. You be careful, won’t you Han?”
“You know I’m always careful.” I said, and Uncle Koz finally handed me the bottle back.
“I know you are… That’s why I picked you. You’re the only one I trust to carry on the family name, you understand?” Koz asked, staring me in the eyes. I nodded. “Good. Han… I’m proud of you, I hope you know that.”
Me and Uncle Koz heaped the fire higher and worked our way through nearly half the bottle over the next few hours. Koz brought a few slabs of meat out from the kitchen and we roasted them on spits over the fire witsome vegetables basted in wild honey. We ate, we drank, and we laughed until the night had thrown it’s starry blanket over our heads – a million stars twinkling above and a thousand more dancing inside my moonshine-rattled brain.
The woods were dead silent around us and the lake was still as glass – the stars were above and the cool grass below. Moonshine was within and my family legacy was all around. It must have been near midnight, as the moon was about high enough for it, when nature called and I excused myself to retreat to the cabin. I lurched unsteadily up to the back porch, giggling to myself over how drunk I was, and imagining vivid adventures of my forebears smuggling moonshine across the country – knowing that someday that would be me.
I was in the bathroom, washing my hands and dreaming away, when something caught my attention. At first, I assumed it was drunken imaginings, but slowly began to realize that something was happening outside. I turned and flicked off the bathroom lights so that I could catch a decent glimpse outside – luckily for me the bathroom window faced towards the lake where our fire was. I peered out into the darkness and my heart leapt into my throat.
Three shapes – three men – had emerged from the woods and formed themselves up in a line on the far side of the fire, and their features I could only barely make out from the distance and through the darkness. Uncle Koz had lurched to his feet and was standing at the ready, with the knife he always wore on his belt tucked in his hand behind his back. While I couldn’t make out what they were saying, I could hear that they were arguing – yelling. Koz was pointing with his free hand back towards the woods, and the three men were slowly beginning to encircle uncle as he began to back away from the fire.
I screamed at that moment, but nobody seemed to hear me. I knew that Uncle kept his guns in his room, and I bounded up the stairs as fast as my drunk legs could carry me, smashing the door of my uncle’s room open with my shoulder. I threw my eyes around the room frantically before I spotted my uncle’s hunting rifle leaning against his bedpost. I snatched it up and quickly checked that it was loaded, before dashing to the window and trying to find a way to open it. There was no latch, no screen, no nothing. I stared out the window and saw that the three men confronting my uncle had become six – three new ones creeping in from behind, and to my horror, it seemed as though my uncle hadn’t noticed them.
Having no other recourse left, panicking, my head swimming with moonshine, I pulled back the rifle and smashed the glass of the window out with the butt of uncle’s rifle. The shattering of the glass seemed to throw everyone off balance for a second, and I quickly shoved the rifle out of the shattered window and fired off a shot with a deafening CRACK. I could barely see what I was shooting at, I was drunk, scared, and trembling, but I racked another shot and let it off at one of the shapes I hoped wasn’t my uncle with another CRACK. More shouts echoed from the lakeshore as the repeating rifle clicked another bullet into position and roared to life in the still night. CRACK, click, CRACK, click, CRACK, click.
My ears were ringing and my hands were sweating profusely when the rifle fell silent and began to speak only in a muted click, click, click. I was out of bullets. Two dark shapes were sprawled on the ground by the roaring fire, but all the others had vanished. ‘fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck’ I whispered to myself as I scrambled wildly around the room for another cartridge of ammunition, but found nothing. I heard a shout and a splintering crack as the back door of the cabin was thrown open, and the sounds of many boots on wooden floors echoed hauntingly throughout the house.
I threw my eyes about wildly, the wildfire of anxiety raging in my breast and the pulsing fury of adrenaline coursing through my veins. ‘I have to hide’ I thought to myself desperately. The bed – too expectable. Out the window – too noisy, too much glass. Fight them – no way in hell. My mind was racing when my eyes fell on the wardrobe. ‘fuck it’ I thought to myself, and yanked the door open, throwing myself into the tangle of hanging clothes.
A bizarre clicking sound entered my ears from close by as the sound of wild men and wild footsteps rang throughout the house. Suddenly, I felt the wall giving away behind me, and before I knew it, I was falling helplessly into darkness, watching a thin beam of light above me being swallowed into the black. They say that the way they treat head injuries in movies, TV shows, and video games is bullshit – if you’re passed out for minutes at a time after a head injury, you’re fucked.
It must have been only thirty seconds that I was unconscious for – if I was even unconscious at all, as it was hard to tell in the pitch dark that surrounded me. I pushed myself to my feet and my head was swimming, I assumed my vision would have been blurry too if I could have seen anything. I groped around in the darkness and felt a set of cold iron bars set into damp stone just in front of me. To my right was what felt to like dirt, but to my left… to my left everything opened up into open space.
I groped blindly along the walls until I felt a light switch, that I threw into the on position, and was instantly blinded by bright lights. I was in some sort of… control room? Bunker? A desk full of computer monitors hummed to life in front of me, displaying a shot and a choppy audio feed of what appeared to be every room inside the cabin, including the boat house. On the walls of this strange room were cans of food and racks of guns, along with bottles of water and what looked to be first aid kits filled with common prescription drugs.
I turned around behind me to see a set of metal bars leading up into a dark, dirt shaft – ‘he has a security bunker inside his wardrobe, that bastard.’ I thought to myself, as I threw down the empty hunting rifle I was holding and touched the back of my head to feel for blood. I wasn’t bleeding luckily, but I was still drunk as could be and my wits certainly weren’t all about me.
I plopped myself down into the office chair that stood guard before the desk of monitors and gazed into the screens. There were six strange men standing in the great room, and one laying bloody on the couch – Uncle Koz. One of the men was leaning heavily on his left leg, the right one soaked with blood from a wound in his calf. Another was holding his shirt against his arm, and a third was bleeding freely from a number of shallow cuts about his torso and face.
“Hit two of them at least.” I thought to myself as I strained to hear through the poor quality microphones.
“Checked every room for the bitch, found nothin’.” The man holding a shirt to his arm said.
“LOOK AGAIN! Her car is out front, where you think she’s gone!” Roared the largest of the man. He must have been halfway to seven feet tall, massively muscled, with a ragged black beard covering his face. “Go cut her tires and turn the house upside down!”
Drunk, tired, and scared out of my wits though I was, I couldn’t help but focus intently on the screens as the men spread up around the house. Only two carried guns, the rest had a mixture of knives, axes, or hammers. They were all dressed in ripped and ragged clothing, as though they had been living in the woods for years on end. All save the two smallest – and apparently youngest, had thick, unkempt beards that reminded one of ragged bandits from some ancient story.
I heard the sacking of the house both through the monitors and through the roof of my bunker – as far as I could tell, wherever I had ended up was below even the basement of the house. I watched as the six men ripped the cabin apart top to bottom, throwing things everywhere, unaware of the memories of mine they were destroying. Sadness and rage ripped at my heart as I watched them obliterate what my uncle had loved so dearly – and all the while, Uncle Koz lay bleeding and moaning on the great room couch.
“We found the shine, where’s the money you fucking bastard!” yelled the giant man as he held Uncle Koz by the collar of his shirt. Koz did nothing but moan in reply, even after the giant had slapped him across the face and dumped a bottle of moonshine across his face, which dripped lazily to the floor, eliciting no more than a feeble moan from uncle.
“He ain’t gonna’ talk, we need to find that bitch of his.” One of the wild men said to the giant.
“SO FIND HER!” He roared, and hurled the empty moonshine bottle at the man, who ducked as it sailed over his head to shatter against the fridge.
Try as they might, the six men ripped through the house for a good hour, finding nothing. One had even pitched uncle’s wardrobe to the floor, but the secret passage to my bunker had failed to open to him. ‘I must have stumbled onto a secret switch’ I thought to myself. After the house had been ransacked, the gang of men had returned to the great room to gather sheepishly around the giant.
“Nothing.” A hawkish looking man said, evidently braver than his companions.
“Well, you lot are good for FUCKING NOTHING it seems.” The giant screamed, at which the band of men shook.
“She can’t have gone far; she’ll die in the woods more like than anything.” The hawkish man replied.
“Fine. Glasseye and Levi stay here until the bitch comes back, find out where the money is and kill her. The rest of us will take as much shine as we can carry back home.” Said the giant.
“Levi? The idiot will bleed out before we ever find her.” the hawkish man said – who I guessed was Glasseye.
“Then find her FASTER.” The giant roared back.
“How do we know that shine is even any good? Let us have a barrel ourselves why don’t you – the girl ain’t going anywhere in a night.” Said one of the scrawny beardless men, with a vicious smile that was short a few teeth. The other men aside from the giant seemed to murmur their general agreement, and the giant threw himself down into a chair and waved his hand dismissively.
“Whatever, do it.” The giant said.
The six men rolled a barrel from the boat shed into the great room and cracked it open with a raucous roar. They dipped cups into it and drank deeply, and before long even the giant had joined in. Singing, dancing, and roaring with laughter, the six men who had invaded our cabin drunk themselves into a blind fury that night. Two of the men, who’s names I gathered were Madison and Concord beat each other senseless in a drunken fistfight while the other four looked on, cheering and shouting loudly.
Another two, who’s names I learned were Levi and Whiskey, were scrapping over who’d “get me” first. It came to knives being drawn before the giant – who’s name was Jack o’ Spades, threw both of them down on the floor and roared that I wasn’t to be touched until I had revealed where Uncle Koz’s money was. As for Uncle – he grew paler as the night wore on, whimpering and gushing blood from a knife wound in his side, unresponsive to the chaos around him.
Near to midnight, when the gang of men were all well and truly drunk on shine, Jack o’ Spades stood from his chair, tottering with an entire flagon jug in his hand. “GENTLEMAN!” He roared. “Let’s give our gracious host a toast befitting someone of his stature and ability.” Jack o’ Spades grinned viciously as he filled the entire jug with moonshine from the barrel.
I was screaming inside myself, and tried to pull my eyes away from the screen… but I couldn’t… I COULDN’T, I SWEAR. Jack o’ Spades grabbed an old, ratted towel from the kitchen, and threw it over the face of Uncle Koz, who still lay on the couch, moaning the last of his life away. Jack dumped the jug of moonshine onto Koz’s face, and uncle spasmed under the sudden onslaught of firewater in his nostrils. I see no need to describe the whole event – but Jack o’ Spades poured four full jugs of moonshine onto Uncle Koz’s be-ragged face before the man stopped moving with a final jerk of the legs and laid still.
The men laughed.
They laughed.
They laughed as ugly, red hot tears streamed down my face, bursting on the floor – I didn’t care if they heard me anymore, they had killed Koz, the man I had cared about most in my life. The sadness however, was quickly replaced with a burning, restless, unquenchable rage – along with a blanket of tiredness. I was furious, but had never felt so tired in my entire life.
I prayed that night, I prayed for God – for something – for anything – to kill me and all those evil men who had killed Uncle Koz, I prayed for something to destroy the world, to destroy the stupid cabin at Whitewater, to burn the whole fucking place to the ground… When I woke the next morning, my prayers weren’t answered.
I awake slumped over the console of the monitors, and watched the disgusting men who had killed my uncle wake up from their moonshine-induced slumber. Jack o’ spades was the first one up, and began barking orders the second he was on his feet.
“Levi! Whiskey! You stay and find the girl, we’ll take the shine away. Follow us when you have her.” Jack o’ Spades bellowed, and the harried woodsmen nodded assent, dipping coffee cups into the dregs of the moonshine barrel to chase off their hangovers. Jack o’ Spades strode from the cabin with the three of his gang he had chosen to take in tow, and vanished out of sight from the cabin cameras.