Cabin Keep

The cabin appeared dry and colorless on the root-strewn forest floor among
the well established redwoods towering mightily into the Rocky Mountain sky.
It was as if gray was encapsulated by time, as if color was something to be shunned,
as if dust assumed the rudiment of shape and hired antiquity to removed all life.
Yet despite all this, the cabin served to welcome our cast.

There were four in all, different as geometric shapes, yet thrown together
by a cataclysm which moved mountains--a seismic unsettling with adamant lava flows.
One side of the mountain pushed life to the other--insistent was the energetic Earth.
And so it was with Possum Fanny, Muck-Muck, Gray Face, and Digger,
four wayward yet tenacious survivors in search of continued existence,
happy indeed to let this cabin in the woods provide them refuge.

They entered through a splintering door that squealed
as if the strain of non-life remained concentrated in each iron hinge.
Possum Fanny, the most open-mouthed of the beleaguered lot,
voiced a modicum of appreciation for their new-found forest fortress,
yet also managed to weigh in negatively on the sparseness of its contents.
Muck-Muck flopped down in an old rocking chair and sighed.
Digger and Gray Face hunkered down in their own respective corners.
“At least we’re still alive,” voiced Possum Fanny, “unlike those
on the other side of the mountain who were not so fortunate.”
The two corner dwellers were now blank, like a diary without words.
Muck-Muck rocked nervously as the uneven floor boards uttered from under.

Shallow and shortened was the intake of breath from four within the cabin.
Muck-Muck tossed an apathetic glance at Possum Fanny,
then grunted an acknowledgement at Fanny’s half-a-glass optimism.
The cabin had been haven from the world of eruption and molten machination,
but now was a target as well, as the western side of the volcano exploded.
Fury was the pelting of mountain mayhem, exploded bits of an Earth
bursting in bedlam, and there, inside, among the echoing
rattling din of the rock-storm, they feared.

Still, Gray Face remained staid to cabin reverberations from the outside assault.
Digger, however, stirred, and then somewhat like an automaton, advanced.
In doing so he discovered bedding materials in a trunk, and after he wrapped himself
with one scratchy wool army blanket, slumped like toilet paper in his corner.

Possum Fanny found a silver dagger on the ledge of the cabin’s lone window.
“It rains fire and rock, and I have fire in my soul!” Possum cried with dagger in hand.
Muck-Muck, looking boneless in the rocking chair, closed his eyes.
Great rumbles gained in amplitude as fire-rain shattered brittle wood.
From his army blanket wrap, Digger offered simply, “This is murder.”
And then the cabin vanished under the expanse of lava and weighted precipitation.

40 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
10-13-15

________

Requirements:
--cabin
--diary
--toilet paper
--murder