Alarm

I am Gifted a Free House

I had grown tired of the city after about six months of working there.

After graduating from college as a mediocre, semi-talented software engineer, I had gone on to accept a job one of my professors had recommended me up for. My grades hadn't been amazing, and I hadn't made many contacts over the past four years due to my antisocial lifestyle, so I had to take what I could get. The work was a typical company job, nine to five, five days a week, on call once every other week. I designed code for a variety of purposes, which the company sold to major businesses. Not the most exciting thing, but I guess it was intellectually stimulating as far as salaryman work goes

The apartment that I lived in was one bedroom, one bathroom, with a sitting area and a small kitchen. I lived alone, and didn't have a lot, so the tiny space wasn't a problem. My problem stemmed from where I lived. I despised it. The city, I mean. So loud, so polluted, so crowded. I felt I couldn't breathe, like I was choking, pushed up against so many people, gagging on exhaust fumes... And the noise never stopped. I fell asleep at night to the beeping of trucks coming off the interstate, and woke up to the same sound. It was hard to sleep, and inevitably my dreams would turn to traffic because that's all I could hear.

I grew tired, and became sick easily. My body seemed to be especially sensitive to the noise, the lights, the crowds and the fumes. After six months of this, I became exhausted of it all, and went to a doctor, who wrote me a medical note asking my company to allow me to work remotely. My company accepted this note surprisingly easily, and, suddenly, I was whisked off to the mountainous countryside at the urging of my doctor and his entourage of concerned assistants.

My aunt had a cottage that she had left my father in her will, but he had no use for it- he hated the outdoors. Scrounging together the money I made from selling the apartment, as well as some of my savings from those six months, I offered it to him as payment for the cabin, but, much to my delight, he told me I could have it for free. It was of no cost to him should I choose to live out the rest of my life there, he had said. He never used it, and it was in such a remote place that nobody would want to live there anyway. Except for, seemingly, me.

I took two weeks leave off work to set up my new life in this cabin in the middle of nowhere. It was up in the mountains on the North East coast, where it rained half the year and snowed the rest of the time. It was green, so impossibly green, with these thick fir trees that stretched up into the mist. The cabin had a driveway near a kilometer long, with the mailbox by the main road so I never had to even see the mailman's truck. Beyond that, down the road another half a kilometer, was a school, and even further, the main town and a few residences. The town's population was easily less than a hundred people, and I immediately felt comfortable in my new surroundings.

The cabin itself was made of wood with a thatched, triangular roof ending in a sharp point. The walls inside were made of thin sliding paper, and the windows had very, very thin glass with shutters. It was ancient, but seemed to be liveable, what with having electricity and running water and all of those nice, modern amenities.

It had been sealed up for a good amount of time. So well, in fact, that I could find no rodent damage, water damage, or insect infestations. The inside of the house, all covered in a thin layer of dust, was entirely intact. So much so that it was almost eerie, like something trapped in another time. After I had thrown open the windows and deep cleaned most of the first floor, however, it became less off-putting. Even if it hadn't, there was no way I was making a fuss about it. I had gotten the cabin for free, when most people my age had to work for decades to pay off a house like this. I had gotten unbelievably lucky, and for that I was grateful.