The covers on the books are all strange and esoteric. Such titles as “The essence of the Rain” and “A treatise on the ergonomics of feathered fountain pens against modern ball point pens.” One is simply titled “First”, which, oddly enough, is the last book on the shelves.

You pick one at random: its title reads “Odd happenings of collective hallucinations: reported appearances of the gongachu.” It initially goes over what the gongachu is; some kind of folk lore creature, incredibly dangerous and hostile. Following the initial description, it compiles a list of reported sightings, before correlating the sightings to occasions of mass hallucinations caused by local volcanic springs. The author does not believe in the existence of the gongachu, that much is clear from the tone. Still, the number of sightings is massive. If there is a gongachu, surely one would have been killed or captured by now, no? In one case, a third party entered a town that was living in terror of the gongachu lurking its streets at night, but the traveler spent the night in the middle of town and was still there in the morning. The author concludes the report by firmly stating his disbelief in the gongachu, chalking it up to mass hysteria and cultural delusions.

A few hours have passed by the time you’ve finished reading. Dusk settles outside, the orange light of the dying sun bleeding in through the windows and casting the room in long shadows. There’s still plenty of books on the shelf, but it’s getting late, and for some reason you get the feeling something is watching you.

Unfortunately, you don’t find a fridge in the room. You’re not sure where you got the idea from, as there never has been and most likely never will be a fridge in the room with you. Still, the image of a fridge against the wall haunts you like a particular bad sense of de ja vu; was there a fridge there before? Yes, you’re quite sure there was, and yet there wasn’t. You start to question your sanity; your psychiatrist would probably ask if you’ve taken your pills yet. Have you? They would have been in the fridge…

The books are all well maintained and free of dust. Whoever owns these books takes great care of them, as not even the shelves they’re sitting on are dirty. Despite that, they show no signs of wear and tear, as though they were bought from the store, placed directly on the shelf, and never read. Weirdly, none of the sides of the books have titles written on them; as you take the first one down to have a look through it, it catches on something. A little force, and the book tilts forward; an audible kachunk rings through the room, muffled by the walls.

The book falls free after the noise, revealing a strange mechanism behind it, built into the wall behind the shelf and fed through a hole in the back of said shelf; a lever of some kind? In any case, the book itself isn’t all that interesting. It goes into incredible detail about the aerodynamics of butterfly wings and various experiments and extrapolations regarding their ability to cause hurricanes. Roll perception.

Whether out of fear or perplexity, none can say for sure; the moment you find yourself here, you cab out all over the place. Your body morphs and expands, your bones turn into metal beams and your skin gains a clear coat and yellow paint; moments later, you’re a fully developed cab in the middle of a cabin.

Much of the room is destroyed in your antics; the table is smashed and broken, the windowsill has fallen off the wall, all the pots are shattered into pieces… Even sol, in this form, you feel powerful. You feel fast. One might even say, you are speed. What is this little cabin wall to your steel bumpers and gas engine?

In short, you cabbed out in a cabin and you’re a car now. Let’s hope there’s no dragons nearby.

You grasp at what you thought was a key at first, until you realize there isn’t a key there. Someone drew a key onto the floor with black chalk. In hindsight you realize you should have noticed that sooner, like before you even reached down towards it, especially since it’s not a particularly well drawn key; you could say it’s rather shit, and you can’t believe you fell for it.

Ah, you just woke up from a midday nap. For a moment there you were a little confused about where you were; it must’ve been a really good nap. You curl back up on the bench by the broad window out of frame, where the sun was warming your cozy blankets. Just outside, the trees sway gently in the wind, and a herd of deer munch on the grass. Your eyelids grow heavier, and you settle for going back to sleep. There’s nothing going on today, so why not? You deserve it. Soon enough, you fall back into the world of dreams,

GAME OVER

You just woke up. Why are you going back to sleep? You have to get up eventually. So what are you going to do then? That’s the question.

The larder contains the salted pork and bread, but you keep the eggs in the refrigerator to its left. Once gathered on the table, you head outside the door and check your firewood shack; it’s filled bottom to top with quarter cut firewood, of whatever varieties you could gather. You take a moment to thank your past self for gathering all this wood. The chill in the air shakes your bones, and you’ll need all the heat you can get to survive the coming winter.

Wood, check, breakfast ingredients, check. You get to work on cooking up a quick meal, frying the pork and eggs on your stove; soon enough, the aroma of smoke and fresh food engulfs the entire cabin. You pat your belly; it was a filling meal, but soon after you start to wonder if you could sustain that sort of habit. Winter is coming. With winter, there’s less prey, and less meat. Maybe you should start rationing more?

In any case, you push the thought of food out of mind for now, head towards the forge in the back of the cabin, and fire it up. This much should be fine, your wood stores are plentiful. There’s only one problem; your trusty anvil seems to have disappeared. You’re quite sure you left it sitting on the floor, right where the anvil shaped indent on the ground is, but it seems to have totally disappeared. Your plans for the billet are held back by the fact you have nothing to hammer on, which is odd because your hammer is still here. Where in the hells did your anvil go, and why just the anvil?

You have disturbed a mimic disguised as a jewelry box. It snaps and almost separates you from the fingers on your right hand.

You’re alone, just as you wanted, just as you like, and you’ll stay alone as you please. The absence of human presence surrounds you, almost crushing you as you stand there, waiting for nothing. The only sound is the sound of your own beating heart and the ever so slight creaks of the wood as you shift on it. You’re alone. The thought resonates with the pressure of the emptiness around you. It bears down on you, crushing and squeezing you in a hug that tells you it’ll never let you go. You’re alone. It gnaws on you in a comfortable sort of way, the silence and loneliness. The room is as empty as your life and with a smile you embrace it all, feed yourself to the it that gnaws and comforts and crushes and hugs. You’ll stay alone, and the moment the thought drifts past your head a wave passes over you, a sensation in every joint and limb. It’s as though your body emptied itself, as though for the first time you’re feeling the warmth of yourself, because you know you’ll never feel the warmth of anything else ever again.

You’re alone. Just as you wanted. Always.