The logs were mossy and had grayed with age and weather into a color that blended in with the rest of the forest, and the rocks used to make the chimney were equally mossy and aged. The windows, such as they were, were so old and dirty that they didn’t reflect sunlight. Meaning, unless you knew you were looking at a cabin, you’d likely miss it. The chimney was positioned directly beneath the thickest layers of coniferous branches, so even when a fire was burning in the fireplace, the smoke would dissipate before it left the tree cover.
There was an outhouse about thirty feet from the house, and once a year I hauled up lime to maintain it. There was no indoor plumbing, although there was a well pump inside the house, and another near the outhouse. No electricity.
Definitely not for the faint of heart, and it took “roughing it” to a new level.
But it was paradise, for me.
I came up here to recharge, to get in touch out my wild creative bents—as a tattoo artist, I tended to fall into predictable patterns and subjects and styles, and rarely had time to pursue styles and mediums. Coming up here was a chance to flex those other muscles.
I kept all sorts of art supplies up here, and every time I came I would bring up new stuff: oil paints, pastels, charcoal, a manual camera and hundreds of rolls of film—I could block off the already dirty windows and use the cabin as a darkroom. Years back, I’d gone to the effort of hauling up a full darkroom kit, including an enlarger. I had an easel, rolls of canvas that I stretched and framed myself.
I would spend days on end just geeking out in whatever medium caught my fancy. I had bins full of photos, both framed and not, old rolls of film kept in airtight storage. Stacks and stacks and stacks of paintings—pastels and charcoals—some framed, some just the canvas.
When I got up here I did have a tendency to go full artist and just zone into my project, forgetting to eat or sleep for forty-eight or seventy-two hours at a time.
But this time?
This was different.
The entire first four days I was here, I’d stared at my phone and wondered why I’d brought it. It didn’t work out here; I had no charger and no way to charge it when it did die. Why had I felt such an odd pull to bring my phone with me?
It had baffled me the whole way up here.
I had no one to call—Juneau knew I was up here, and she knew the only way to get me in case of an emergency was to just come out here. She was the only person—outside of my immediate family who, never came here—who even knew where the cabin was, or how to get here.
My client list had been postponed indefinitely. My voicemail and website had been updated to indicate my leave of absence. I had plenty of money saved for supplies, and could live off the land indefinitely anyway.
Cassie was back in Ketchikan, and I was just operating under the assumption that either I’d get tired of being up here and go back home eventually, and would figure it out with her then, or she’d come find me.
So…why did I bring my damn phone?
Finally, a week in, I picked it up, turned it on, and…
What?
I had no photos, couldn’t access the Internet.
I tapped the photos icon. I’d brought it to a family get-together last year, so I had a few photos of baby cousins and my parents and shit, but that was it.
But wait.
The “Photos” tab at the bottom just showed the family reunion shots and an album file. Then under albums, I scrolled down. Down, down. To the bottom.
And there, at the very bottom, was a little line— “hidden.”
That was not there last time I looked, and I hadn’t put it there.
So, I tapped it.
Fuck me running.
When did Cassie do this?
Dozens of photos. A hundred, maybe.
All of her.
Ho-ly. Shit.
An array of thumbnails. Cassie clothed was the first one. I tapped on it to enlarge, and just stared. This made me miss her even more.
Only a week had gone by, but I missed the shit out of her.
And here she was…in my bathroom, in my house. So. She’d taken photos of herself, hidden them in a secret album, and not told me.
Hoping, probably, that I’d find them when I least expected to, as a fun, sort of kinky little surprise.
You little minx, you.
God, I loved her.
Whoops. That was unexpected.
But true.
I swiped right: the next one was of her clothed, again, but a different angle. Ripped tight light wash blue jeans, the ones she’d been wearing the last night I saw her.
I swiped through, slowly, savoring.
The next one was of her in jeans and a black bra. Oof—the hard-on seeing that was instant and painful. And it only got worse when I got to the topless shots. Shit, she was perfect. I wanted her, so badly. God, I wanted her.
Those delicate, dainty, pink little breasts, darker pink areolae, brownish nipples. Perfectly round breasts, tight and high, the tips pointing just slightly toward the sky. Plump, pert.
Fuck.
I kept scrolling. Topless again, but without the jeans. Just those lovely little tits and her in a pair of light gray briefs, the kind where the leg holes are cut way up high past her hipbones. God.
Then, ohhhh lordy.
In the last few she was totally nude. In the first, she was tastefully turned to one side, showing me the outside of her thigh, the phone, her breasts, eyes on the camera, platinum hair loose and draped around her shoulders.
The next was less tasteful and more scandalous. Hot. God, so hot. Facing the mirror, hiding nothing. A small smile on her lips. Looking in the mirror and at the camera—at me—as if begging me to come through the photo and make her feel good.
God, if only I could.
In another shot she showed me her ass, high and round and taut. Toned, muscular, with just enough delicacy and softness to make me nuts.
I knew why she’d done this.
It was for me.
Because she wanted me to embrace my sexuality.
Giving me clear and undeniable permission to use her as fodder for my imagination. For my needs.
It wasn’t as good as the real thing, in my hands, but god did I need release. I’d spent the last week in agony, waking up thinking of her. Dreaming of her. Remembering her. Wishing she was here, yet still refusing to let myself think of her like that.
Even though she’d told me to, that I could, that I should, old habits die hard; ingrained resistance is difficult to overcome.
The visual stimuli helped.
A lot. A lot, a lot.
Instead of giving in and letting myself use her as release, I turned to art for expression.
There was only one medium for this—my oil paints. I stretched half a dozen canvasses, chose my palette of paint colors, and went to work.
In the first one I reproduced a photo as directly as I could, going for photorealistic—I started simple, her in those faded ripped jeans, pale skin showing in tantalizing glimpses, shirtless, wearing just the black bra, a full coverage functional piece, showing just enough cleavage to make me hard, make me imagine what lay beneath.
I set that one aside and kept going. Another photorealistic transcription of a photo; in this one, I allowed myself to represent her topless, in just those high-cut briefs.
I spent hours and hours painting, each one taking several hours, and even that was blasting through at a reckless pace, sacrificing technical precision for the passion of just gettin' the paint on the canvas, getting the images out of my head.