Wilder
The Making of a Hermit
Cici was browsing; browsing through the real estate sites online incessantly, obsessed to find a large homestead and acreage. Owen, her husband was dead, a massive heart attack had taken him to a swift death. He died beside her, clutching his chest in bed that night. It should have been her to go first.
She had to play the cards she was dealt. Now, as the aging matriarch of the family, she had one job. She was left with plenty of money and the means to look after the children and grandchildren.
There were signs all around her and she didn’t like what she was witnessing. The quiet little town that she had worked and lived in for over thirty years was changing for the worse. Cici’s reality was morphing. The once quiet little town was inundated with apocalyptic signs and symptoms. She drove by a burning car today as she had gone to get groceries just five minutes from her house. Crime was up, shootings once unheard of in good neighbourhoods. Meth labs everywhere.
She stopped reading the news and lived in her own little bubble but it all kept seeping into her quiet enclave.
Cici started going to the gym every day. The beast inside her, something alien, wanted more. She was pushing iron, using all the machines, going to yoga classes to stretch out her joints. She couldn’t stop. Something was possessing her to push herself to her limits. She felt no pain, just wanted more and more.
Her children did not heed her warnings. They were too busy working and raising their children to notice the signs. To her grandchildren, she was the perfect Nana. She looked after them often, sang them lullabies, rocked them to sleep, baked them cookies. She needed to protect them from this crazy world.
Cici was going to buy an acreage in a remote location up North, near her birthplace, stock it up with supplies that would allow them to live off the grid, if necessary. The beastly angel inside her pushed her relentlessly, although her own kids were beginning to question her sanity. She didn’t care. Someday, they would gratefully join her or she would die a hermit in the woods.
It didn’t matter what they thought now. Either the world was completely mad or she was mad. She was going to throw all her finances and all her energies at this obsession. Cici was going on the run, trusting her gut for one last roll of the dice. The only place that she could feel safe was within the wilderness and she had the money she needed to do just that. It all felt right and the very thing she had wanted to do all her life.
