Chapter 31
The Cabin in the Woods
ATTENTION, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: KYLIE Kahl is not pregnant.
#praisefuckingbe
Her period arrived an hour ago while she was doing her scissor kicks, and never in her life has she been so grateful to stain her underwear.
She was worried Thing One was getting suspicious, especially when he brought over a new box of maxi pads and noticed there were more in the old box than there should have been.
Luckily, he didn’t press it when she explained that she simply hadn’t needed as many pads the last couple of times.
He has no interest in talking about her periods.
And since Sydney has been here, he’s been less interested in Kylie altogether. The brunt of his attention is now focused on his shiny new toy, the woman who—even Kylie has to admit—very much looks like a younger version of herself.
Just like Ingrid did.
#thefuckerhasatype
Sydney is asleep on their shared mattress. Kylie watches her from the table, where she’s working on a puzzle she’s put together and then taken apart at least two dozen times over the past six years. The rickety table is in the center of the cabin, which is as far as her chain allows her to go.
Sydney has had a terrible first week, and with every day that passes, the light in her eyes grows dimmer.
Sleep is the only way for her to get any peace, but it only works sometimes.
The last two nights, she’s woken up sobbing, only to realize her reality is worse than her nightmares.
Kylie then strokes her hair until she falls back asleep.
She used do to the same thing with Kaycie back home in Wisconsin; whenever her little sister had a bad dream, it was always her big sister she called out for, never their mother.
Reflexively Kylie touches the middle finger of her right hand where her ring used to be, a birthday present from Kaycie.
They both knew not to tell their parents about the gift.
Kirk and Karoline Kahl didn’t believe in jewelry or makeup—referred to as “adornments”—and so Kylie never wore it when they were around.
The last day Ingrid was here, Kylie had told her about the ring, and how much it had meant to her that her little sister had squirreled away every bit of money she’d earned from babysitting to buy it.
She told Ingrid how it was the only piece of jewelry she was wearing when she was kidnapped because she never traveled with her nine-carat diamond engagement ring.
She’d offered to let Ingrid try it on. And then Thing One had come in unexpectedly, wanting Ingrid, who’d resisted.
When he dragged her away, she was still wearing it.
Kylie pops the last piece of the puzzle into place and stares at the completed image. It’s a collage of cameras—vintage cameras, digital cameras, Polaroids, those rectangular 110 mm Canons that her grandparents used to use—and it’s clear Thing One has a special interest in photography.
Sydney moans in her sleep, and Kylie looks over, in case she’s needed.
When the younger woman goes quiet again, Kylie disassembles the puzzle she just built and puts it back on the shelf.
She then opens the box of Polaroids beside it.
She’s probably looked through it a thousand times by now, and knows there are exactly 342 photos in it, all unmarked: no names, no dates, no notes, just people.
The photos are mundane, but that’s actually what makes them fascinating—the subjects didn’t seem to know that their pictures were being taken.
#creeper
He’d actually caught her looking at the Polaroids once when he dropped by for an unexpected visit in the evening, which is thankfully a rare occurrence. He hadn’t minded her looking. Nor did he seem to care whether she read the old leather journals also stacked on the shelf along the side wall.
She always thought this was a bit strange. Journals are meant to be private, aren’t they? A normal person would be weirded out at the thought of anyone reading his diary.
Then again, he isn’t normal.
“These people in the pictures, are they friends of yours?” she’d asked him, staring at the Iron Man mask he was wearing that night.
“I don’t really have friends,” he’d answered. “But people are their most authentic selves when they think nobody’s watching.” He fingered the edge of the cardboard strapped to his face. “Otherwise we’re all masking.”
Kylie lays the Polaroids out on the table in a neat grid.
There’s no purpose to this other than it’s something to do, a way to entertain herself and keep her mind engaged.
About six months in, she did ask him for a TV, but the cabin has no cable.
Instead, he brought her used books with creased spines and dog-eared pages in a variety of genres—romance, thrillers, mysteries starring old ladies with cats, science fiction (her least favorite), and a bunch of literary classics she’d found boring in high school. They all help pass the time.
But the photos are interesting. Sometimes she likes sorting them by people, because there are a few faces that appear in several pictures.
Sometimes, like today, she sorts by location.
A good chunk of the photos were taken inside or outside Seaside High, which is where her friend and castmate Cole Lennox once went to school.
Cole was always weirdly private about her past, both on the show and in real life.
But sometimes, if she’d had too much to drink, she’d reveal a tidbit or two, which is what happened that time they were together in Vegas after RealityCon.
Cole had talked about something that had happened when she was a teenager.
While Kylie would never have thought to bring up anyone’s teenage trauma on Trophy Wives—god knows she had her own, and she’d fucking hate it if someone did that to her—Cole had mentioned the name of a serial killer.
Specifically, she said people called him the Carnival Killer.
Dude. Come on. How could she not google it? Especially when the show was on the verge of being canceled and she needed to pitch the producers something?
The googling had led to the digging, and the digging was what brought Kylie to Seaside. And while she can’t be certain that she’s still in Seaside—Thing One won’t tell her anything about this cabin’s location—it’s probably reasonable to assume that she’s at least somewhere close.
Had Kylie never flown out to Seattle and rented a car to drive down to Seaside to dig up dirt on her friend Cole for the purposes of creating a storyline in an attempt to stay on a reality show that was likely going to get canceled anyway, none of this would have happened.
Kylie would not be in this cabin. So maybe this is what karma looks like.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Across the cabin, Sydney cries out in her sleep again.
The young woman has barely eaten since she’s been here, even though he cooks for them every morning.
She only sits listlessly, pushing her eggs and bacon around with a plastic fork.
They don’t have access to the knives, and when he cooks breakfast for them, he precuts their food.
In any case, the plastic cutlery isn’t strong enough to stab him with.
Kylie tried that once, and the fork ended up snapping on his collarbone.
He’d punched her for that.
“Eat it,” he said to Sydney this morning.
Sydney took a bite of the eggs and gagged.
He looked over at Kylie. “Make her eat.”
When he left the cabin a few minutes later, Kylie moved her chair closer to Sydney.
“You have to eat,” she said to her cabinmate. “There are snacks, but this is the only meal we get for the day. You won’t make it if you don’t eat.”
“Make it?” Sydney said, her voice so low Kylie had to strain to hear her. “Why would I ever want to live like this? How can you live like this?”
Kylie had no answer. All she knows is she doesn’t want to die.
Feeling hungry, she removes a Jell-O chocolate pudding cup from its cardboard package and peels the top off.
If she closes her eyes, she can almost pretend it’s a chocolate budino from Piano Piano, her favorite Italian spot back in Toronto.
Freddie took her to so many great restaurants.
Black + Blue when he wanted a good steak, Sushi Masaki Saito when he felt like showing off, Mott 32 when he was craving Peking duck.
But Freddie wasn’t fancy. He just liked people thinking he was.
He liked Dim Sum King in Chinatown, and rotisserie chicken from Swiss Chalet, and really hot buffalo wings from Duff’s, the kind where the server asks if you’re sure before ringing the “fire alarm” to let everyone know you’re eating wings that might burn a hole in the lining of your stomach.
Kylie’s comfort foods are all from back home. Butter burgers with melted cheddar, deep-fried cheese curds, frozen custard from Culver’s. Shut up, she’d told Freddie when he asked if she’d owned her own cow.
#imisswisconsin
On the mattress, Sydney is crying in her sleep. Kylie understands why the younger woman won’t eat, because these first few weeks are when you cycle through all the stages of grief.
The first stage is when your mind and your body are fighting each other, unable to agree on whether or not this is actually happening.
Your ears can hear the click of the lock when he enters.
Your eyes can see him approaching. Your nose can smell his breath under the mask as he pants over you, always minty fresh.
The body experiences it all. But your mind cannot accept it.
You simply cannot grasp that you’re really trapped in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, chained to a post by a man whose face you’ve never seen, his blue eyes peering out at you through the cut-out holes.
#denial
In the second stage, you plead with him to let you go.
You offer him money; you tell him your husband is rich and will pay any amount to have you back.
You tell him about your family, your friends, the people who miss you, the people he’s hurting by keeping you here.
It makes no difference. He doesn’t care.
Caring would mean he has feelings, and he has none.
#bargaining
Then you reach the third stage, which feels the best because it’s energizing, but it doesn’t last long.
You are outraged that he would dare to snatch you out of your life as if he owns you.
You remind him you’re famous and that there are people who will never stop looking for you, and that he’s fucking stupid for keeping you here.
You fight and thrash and kick and bite and do everything else you can think of to make the experience awful for him, too.
But all it does is make him hurt you more, and you can hear him laughing behind his mask while he’s doing it.
It’s the only time he will ever find anything amusing.
#anger, otherwise known as the stage when Ingrid died.
In the fourth stage, you shut down. You sleep for fourteen or eighteen or twenty hours a day, because all there is now is time. So much time. There is so much more of this, of him, of the cabin, of the pain.
#depression
And then, finally, maybe two or three years later—Kylie can’t remember the exact moment—your mind and your body stop fighting.
Your body goes numb when he touches you, while your mind takes you someplace else where you don’t have to feel or think or process or internalize.
Surprisingly, there is relief at this stage.
Because you’re getting used to it. It becomes your new normal.
#acceptance
You accept that this is where you’re going to die.
Kylie has been in this cabin for six years, four months, and eighteen days.
And as she listens to Sydney crying softly in her sleep, she knows she’d be fucking deluded to think that he’ll ever let them out of here alive.