Today’s flash fiction prompt: Write about misremembering.
The Magic Cabin
“Mom, how much further?”
My daughter, eight, stumbles over a tree root and scowls. Her twin brother taps at his smart watch, as if the lack of signal is a hardware malfunction and not the result of the trees overhead.
“Just a little further up,” I say.
“You said that last time.”
I laugh, energized by the cadence of our hike. Brother taps, sister whines, and all of us walk. Up, up, and up. Towards the Magic Cabin that was the centerpiece of my childhood. “You’re going to love this place. There’s a huge seesaw and a tire swing strung by the grandfather willow out front. The cabin is big and airy, and there’s a mud kitchen out back. There’s even a creek a short walk from the back steps. I used to catch fish there every summer.”
“If this place is so great, why haven’t you taken us here before?” My daughter’s question is a valid one.
“Grandma and Grandpa weren’t on great terms. And after she remarried, things got worse between them. I hadn’t seen Dad, or this place, since I was your age. Since he left it to me in his will, I thought it would be special to bring you here at the age I left it. See if the magic still holds.”
“Magic?” My son’s eyebrows arch in interest.
“Oh yeah. This place is full of it. I used to be sick all the time as a kid. But Dad’s Magic Cabin always made me feel better.”
The dirt path fades into a grassy clearing and we slow to a stop. My son adjusts his glasses and points. “Is that it?”
I squint, not believing my eyes. A cabin, half rotted, rests behind a sad looking tree that couldn’t possibly be the grandfather willow I spent half a dozen summers in.
We continue forward, taking it in. My daughter runs her finger across a now rusty seesaw, curling her nose as the chipped paint peels back, exposing a nest of crawling critters underneath. My son smacks the tire swing, sending up a cloud of dust and agitating a hornet’s nest in the process.
We all scatter, running away from the willow and towards the cabin. My son scurries around back while my daughter and I run up the front steps. I hesitate when I reach the door. From my view through the window, the roof is sagging above the front room. The back half of the house is missing, with crumbling walls on either side.
My daughter smirks and shrugs. “Well, you did say it was airy.”
“Mom?”
I turn towards my son, who runs towards us in a panic, his entire body covered in brown goop.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I ran to the back, towards the mud kitchen. But I fell.”
My daughter sniffs, then takes several steps away from him. “Buddy, I don’t think that’s mud.”
The phone call with my mother later that night begins with me recounting our afternoon excursion.
“I can’t believe you took them to that rundown cabin.” My mother laughs. “They should have torn that place down decades ago.”
“No way,” I protest. “I loved it there. You and Joe had to pry my fingers from the tire swing the last time I was there.” I shake my head, mourning the loss. “I can’t believe Dad let the place get like that.”
“You really don’t remember? It was always like that.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was magic, and I had so much fun. I’d spend the day exploring and trying out plants in the woods and fishing in the creek.”
“You mean the dirty runoff water from the power plant up the way? That place was awful, and every summer you’d come home sick with some sort of rash or infection. It would take half the year to get over whatever you caught. The last time we picked you up, you were covered in bear droppings. You swore it was mud, just because your father said so. He thought it was funny, but that was the last straw.”
“Dad wouldn’t do that.”
“Half the time he’d leave you by yourself, sometimes for days at a time, so he could go drinking or fishing with his buddies.”
“I don’t remember any of that. I just thought that Joe hated him.”
My mother’s sigh echoes through the phone, rattling through my head for an eternity. “You threw a fit when we told you you couldn’t come back anymore. But it was for your own good. And if your father had a problem with it, he could have come to see you at any time.”
“But we moved away.”
“Your father left town long before that. You really didn’t know?”
I didn’t. But I guess I should have.
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