A sudden urge to kill a foolishly dressed alleged comedian fills you to the brim. Unfortunately, there is none in the room with you. You’d have to find him before you can kill him, but you have your objective in mind. The first question is how you’re going to get out of here. The front door is locked, and the only hint of a key is the shitty drawing on the floor. Ha ha. Very funny, whoever put that there. What’s worse is that there’s no weapons here. To kill someone, you’d need something to kill them with. Well, you could do with your bare hands, but it’s much easier with a tool of some sorts, and the cabin is strangely absent of tools suitable for the act of murder.

You whisper the ultimate cat call. It echoes over the empty cabin; nothing happens, and a profound sense of loss washes over you. You walk over to the shelf by the window and run your hand over it, staring at the one particularly worn spot on it for a moment. You walk over and check the litter box, but of course it’s clean. It always is nowadays. Old habits die hard after all. You cook yourself some breakfast and take a seat at the table, and try the call again. Nothing happens, as expected, not even when you open a can of tuna. Old habits die hard, but they die eventually. You spread the tuna on your bread and eat your meal, alone in the silence.

When you go to examine the bookshelf, you realize it’s not actually a bookshelf, but a painting on the wall designed to look exactly like a set of bookshelves from precisely the perspective you were formally at. Oddly enough, all of the titles are books you have read before, but none are ones you’re currently reading.

The squirrels. They’ve been your sworn enemy ever since you moved here, always raiding your pantry and gardens, but this latest ploy is befuddling. What use would a band of squirrels have for an anvil? And when did they learn to write? And how did they even move the anvil? It’s a deeply perplexing puzzle, quite a pickle you found yourself in. To be safe, you figure you ought to double check everything you own; maybe the anvil wasn’t the only thing they had taken…

Food: ooooooxxxx

Water: oooooooooo

Firewood: oooooooox

Ore & minerals: ooooxxxxxx

Anvils: 0/10

Hammer: 10/10

You whip up a large breakfast, fit for a hobbit’s first breakfast: eggs, bacon, toast, fruit mix, cereal and yogurt and milk, orange juice and a small brownie for desert. Before long the scent washes over the entire cabin and your belly grumbles in anticipation. You sit down to feast and enjoy the fatty, savory meats and the crisp and buttered toast, the fluffy eggs and the sugary cereal and milk.

All incredibly filling, you pat your nearly bloated stomach, satisfied with the meal. You emerge onto the porch for a quick smoke of the herb, letting the floating sensation wash over you as you watch the trees sway in the wind and the dew twinkle on the grass. By now it’s practically afternoon, just about time for second breakfast. Then again, you do have to tend to your farms and gardens; all this food comes from somewhere, no?

Breakfast had: 1/?

Pipes smoked: 1/30

Food stores: oooooxxxxx

You try the door, but find it locked. There doesn’t seem to be any locking mechanism on the inside, only a keyhole. Whoever designed this door obviously intended it to keep things inside instead of out. From the window, you try to shift your viewpoint in hopes the name will reveal itself from a different angle, but no dice. Even the windows themselves seem to be locked. You’re stuck, unable to escape from this cabin. You could even say that you’re cabin stuck.

With great effort you rip your mind away from the anvil and focus on less important matters: valuable loot. Your antics left the cabin in ruins, its contents scattered all over the floor. Picking through the aftermath of your disastrous rage, you find some bits and bobs of seeming value; you could probably sell it all for a handful of silver pieces, provided the local market economy is strong. More importantly, you find something much more valuable that made the dastardly destruction much more worthwhile: a single radish. Now this is good loot. Just one of these rotund magenta delicacies could set you up for a few years, provided a decent market economy of course. But this is just one. You have a much greater goal than that. Yes, this one alone is a fantastic haul, but you need more.

Radishes found: 1/15

When you try the door, you find that it’s locked tight. Looking outside through the window, you do in fact spot some suitable nodes to hit, if only you could get to them. Your forge does require ore and minerals; your stocks are getting low. Unfortunately with no way outside and no rocks to hit inside, you’re left stranded.

You take a peek out of the windows. Just outside, there’s a home garden with plenty of radishes and… more radishes? Whoever planted those loved radishes apparently. Further beyond it, there’s a mailbox, with the little flappy thing up. The flappy thing that says you got mail when it’s up, whatever that thing is called. The red flappy bit. You’ve got mail! You think. Is that your mailbox? Is this even your cabin?

The first place you would check is the fridge; the problem is, there doesn’t seem to be a fridge here. There’s a spot that seems like it would clearly house a fridge, but it’s not there. You could have sworn you saw it out of the corner of your eye before you turned towards it, but there’s no real point thinking about it now. Unless you count books or strange flowers as edible calories, your search turns up empty. Whoever was here before left no food.

The only place you hadn’t checked is the attic, but as you stare at the ladders ascending upwards, you get a most ominous sensation; chills creeping up your spine…

You search the forge top to bottom, inside and outside, searching for any clues as to where it may have gone. The most obvious clue you find is a note stapled to the outside of the forge door; you’re not sure how you missed it the first time around. In poor handwriting and poorer grammar, the note says “Ur avil were repossessed. mist paymont. -avil mortgage coppany.”

This letter is obviously fake. For one, the premise is stupid. It’s inconceivable that an anvil mortgage company would just reposses your anvil off a single missed payment; they’d send an agent or letter reminding you first. For two, you’ve already paid your anvil-tgage this month, at least you’re pretty sure of it. Whoever left this note was making a clear attempt at delaying your search for the true culprit. You’ve got a sneaking suspicion who, or what, might have left this letter. After all, they’ve raided your supplies before. The real question is, why would they have taken the anvil of all things?

You search the cabin top to bottom, searching for keys, real or otherwise, and anything that could hint to the mystery only you are aware of. The only other out of place thing you find is the anvil in the corner, mysteriously out of place, atop which is… another shitty drawing of a key. God dammit, who’s making these? You start to feel an insoluble sense of rage at this mysterious key perpetrator, but there’s no finding them unless you can leave the cabin. No one else is in here but you, that much you’re aware of.

Quit? What do you mean, quit? You’re not sure where the thought came from, or even what game you’re talking about. Confused, you wander outside, whereupon you find a tree stump with a harpoon stuck inside of it.

You revisit your earlier thoughts. Perhaps you do know what you meant by quit. Really, you always knew. After all, you said it yourself; you don’t like this game of life. You’re free of the cabin, yet you feel more trapped than ever. There is only one conclusion; your loneliness is your true prison.

There’s only one thing left to do, isn’t there?

GAME OVER

There doesn’t seem to be a fireplace anywhere in view, nor a source of water. You could burn the books in the middle of the floor, but you have a sneaking suspicion that’ll cause the whole cabin to catch fire. Even then, where would you get water from? To that end, what about tea leaves?

A sense of sadness flows through you. You really wanted some tea.

The book is nothing more than what it is; a book about butterflies. You’re quite sure there’s no hidden code or secret key inside, not even one you’re not able to detect. You mean, who would even go through the effort of making such a detailed report just to hide something, right?

In any case, you turn around and find the front door open. It’s strange, you think. Seeing the outdoors, the trees and the grass. You were sure you’d never be getting out of here, and yet there is is, the open door.

Though the lower ladder is initially intended for the bookshelf, it’s perfectly serviceable for climbing to the top of the shelf, and from there climbing up the other ladder up to the attic. Deeper into the attic, a pair of eyes reflect in the light, before the something scurries off into the darkness. It’s dusty and moldy up here, littered with cobwebs between the rafters and trusses. In the furthest back, though, sits a single locked chest. You kinda forgot you put that up here actually.

Just then, you hear a knock on the door. You flinch and slam your head on the roof. Rubbing your head in pain, you wonder who would be calling on you at this hour.

You feel an inexplicable urge to cry. The tears leak from your eyes before you even realize it. The sobs escape you despite yourself, and within moments you’re on your knees, sobbing and crying into your hands, unable to stop the tears.

Just as suddenly as the urge came, it disappears. The tears dry, and you rise to your feet. Alright, what now?

You don the flappy body bindings and the pointy cranium cover you looted from the evil wizard you killed a while back. They’re still as comfortable as the day you wiped the blood off them, and they imbue you with a sense of power and a strange urge to rudely prank people and commit mass slaughter.

You split a wicked grin as you pick up a hammer and go to town. Everything breaks under your unlimited rage and glee; the bookshelf falls apart and the books go flying, the table cracks and splits in two, the pots all shatter, the pumpkin explodes and sheds pumpkin goo everywhere. Nothing is safe from you. Nothing, except the anvil in the corner. No matter how hard you strike it, your hammer does nothing to it but ring out and send painful vibrations up your arm. It’s frustrating, infuriating that something could survive and withstand your rampage. The anvil sits there, unbroken and mocking, until it’s all you can think about.

The covers on the books are all strange and esoteric. Such titles as “The essence of the Rain” and “A treatise on the ergonomics of feathered fountain pens against modern ball point pens.” One is simply titled “First”, which, oddly enough, is the last book on the shelves.

You pick one at random: its title reads “Odd happenings of collective hallucinations: reported appearances of the gongachu.” It initially goes over what the gongachu is; some kind of folk lore creature, incredibly dangerous and hostile. Following the initial description, it compiles a list of reported sightings, before correlating the sightings to occasions of mass hallucinations caused by local volcanic springs. The author does not believe in the existence of the gongachu, that much is clear from the tone. Still, the number of sightings is massive. If there is a gongachu, surely one would have been killed or captured by now, no? In one case, a third party entered a town that was living in terror of the gongachu lurking its streets at night, but the traveler spent the night in the middle of town and was still there in the morning. The author concludes the report by firmly stating his disbelief in the gongachu, chalking it up to mass hysteria and cultural delusions.

A few hours have passed by the time you’ve finished reading. Dusk settles outside, the orange light of the dying sun bleeding in through the windows and casting the room in long shadows. There’s still plenty of books on the shelf, but it’s getting late, and for some reason you get the feeling something is watching you.