A Soul's Strings

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. To be more precise, it only appeared to be burning. It was a reflection of a burning candle, although the real candle was nowhere to be found. This is actually the middle of the story, since I always prefer to start midway between the Right and the Left; I mean the beginning and the end. Every nation should aspire to have a centrist government. Did I digress already? I tend to do that, so please, bare with me some of your patience. It tends to offer a dividend, usually at the end. "Come on, M!" I am sorry for the author's intrusion, but I am the narrator, and I can tell you from the get-go that I digress a lot. It may break the rhythm, but I think that a good beat has to be severed to add more tension. This is a song, after all, with several strings as far as I can see.

String days have fooled us, and through their string hours, we dangle alone, bodies tangled, memories knotted, as we sway from the day to a string night of bone. "Come on, M! I will take over if you continue this way." Patience, Patrick! Those were lyrics from the song. It is misplaced, I know, but I felt like singing. My soul asked for it. "A narrator with a soul? Who are you trying to kid? Most readers will begin to dislike you." They will love me by the end of this soulful story. A stringer of strings I am, a stringer of strings. "I am starting to doubt it." Did I ever disappoint you? "It is true that you have not." So, please stay away and let me tell this frightful story; I mean horrifying! "O M! Try to frighten them at least once!" I will do my best. Take care, Patrick! That was a digression I did not plan or expect. A soul's strings have to rattle for the song to start.

This story commences in both Heaven and Hell; I mean Earth. It really depends on the location and often the locale to be considered one or the other. This cabin in the woods happened to be in Alberta; a large province in Western Canada known for its fossil fuel affluence, both oil and gas, and a few other fun facts. It was located more than a few kilometres (short miles) from Banff. It was built by a Native man from the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation around the turn of the previous century, but then bartered a few years later for a case of whisky just before the prohibition that was law in Alberta from 1916 to 1923. Albert Greene made a good deal with very little art; the type that usually lands one on a boat when all that one sought was a canoe or a kayak. Achachak (spirit) Aawohkitopi (rode the enemy's horse) assumed that twelve whisky bottles were sounder than his cabin.

Greene's good-luck bargain did not last too long, since most of his body was discovered only a few months later tied to a tree not too far from his cabin. His tongue and his hands were missing, having been cleanly lopped off, clearly indicating that he must have been dead or seriously unconscious when it occurred. It seems that Greene's soul must have ridden away, perhaps on a horse or at least an ass. No clues were found or discovered, and thus the case was quietly closed and the horrific story forgotten, like most people throughout the years. No one entered the cabin again for several decades. It was as if it had never existed, losing its spruce lustre, but only on the outside. Inside, someone, or something, survived, necessitating very little sunlight, but reflecting a candle at night to eclipse the Moon and summate the years that had elapsed since the song was last sung.

The story could end here and perhaps appear peculiarly poetic, but Patrick would disapprove, as you may have plucked by now, your present. You have to be frightened, at least once, and up to now, your present, you may have been partially perturbed. The story must go on, then, and now, your present, again. Within the cabin, a soul was stranded, unable to leave, although I could never accept or comprehend where it would be heading to, but that is an aside for another story. Not much was offered or available for a soul alone in a cabin. The front door was shut and so was the window on every side that had one. There were three; a triangle of potential light. But they were too dirty to let much light in, except for the front double window which allowed some light to penetrate through one of its four partitions at the top. There was another door shut at the top, which could only serve as a window.

What could a lonely soul perform in such a predicament? There was no one to encourage or admonish, calm down or scare off (or in), and it was not a ghost, so to speak (write). All it could manage is mutter and then sing, silently, of course. It had strings, like a violin, or perhaps a guitar, but they were invisible like the rest of it. "I am a lonely soul stranded in a cabin. Whoever lets me out will feel me like satin." These lyrics and those that followed hovered in the musty air, with nowhere to veer off or in. "When will someone solid let me out to my lot? The body I was in has long been scarred and fraught." All these vocals which no one could hear or listen to occupied the cabin in every corner. "What is eternity if not loneliness followed by death. I wish I could witness one more body's last breath." What are words if not daggers, but luckily most of them tend to be dull.

Lucky seven? I think, lucky five and twelve. Why? you may ask. I may reply in another story. "Come on, M!" Yes, Patrick! Thus, these lyrics and a string of others kept playing out of the lonely soul until one late evening in 1982 when a couple of hikers, or campers, stumbled upon the abandoned cabin after noticing a candle burning through the front window. They knocked on the door and then forced it open when no soul replied. "It stinks in here," Al said. "This cabin hasn't been lived in for decades," Beth added, holding her breath. They quickly looked around, more than stupefied to find out that there was no candle burning at the window but a reflection of one. Al tried to open the window, but it was stuck like a dictator who had lost his mind (there are no female despots). The two other windows did not yield as well. It was almost night, so they decided, reluctantly, to remain inside.

"I can't feel my hands," Al suddenly said, his speech stuttering, since he was also losing the feeling of his tongue. "Oh my God! I am also losing the feeling of my hands," Beth replied, her speech stammering as well. Less than a minute later, they were both lying unconscious on the floor, and a few minutes later, their tongues and their hands were nowhere to be heard or held. What kind of world this is where butchery of any brand is sought, for the sake of excitement and being scared? Why is gore requested and proposed? Do we need to reenact the horrors of World War Two, and One too, to feel alive? Are dictators and other serial killers so interesting to portray? Why do we care about the lives of heartless gangsters? Being good or simply decent must be boring. Why do we want to see blood and broken bones? We have espoused rare steaks and barking-mad dogs for our lives.

Who killed Greene, and then Al and Beth, and then went further and severed their tongues and hands? We all did. Is it not a scary thing to comprehend and then admit? I am the one who wrote about it, but we are all collaborators in various ways. Various people and other animals are murdered every day, yet we change very little to counter it. Myriad, magnificent, almost immortal trees have been cut down since we left our caves, and they cannot fight or run, and it continues relentlessly. Is it not the most frightening thing to realise and then acknowledge? I do not think that I scared anyone, except perhaps Patrick and a number of conscientious readers. We refuse to put value on human life, yet we know that it is not worth very much on the open market where power and hypocrisy are synonyms, and gestures of goodwill are cheap to stage and even execute.

This is the last paragraph, in case you are wondering and or had enough, but it will also span twelve lines. That so-called soul committed both the murders and the lopping offs, singing while it did its deeds, even if no one was listening. It was waiting for all those years for more bodies to murder and sever. Many, if not most humans, perceive the soul as superior to the body, and thus any murder or death can never be considered as bad as it really is, since the soul continues to exist. It may be an interesting sort of defense mechanism, if at all, or simply a power's ruse, or even the truth. Bodies die but souls "live on" like immortal deities. Yet, everything must die. Even stars explode to give birth to the elements needed for life. The Universe will also cease to exist at some unfathomable point. It is a strange affair, life, but death is surely not, although it scares us perhaps too much, that is until we die.