CottageEscape.zyx: Satan Takes Over (opening)

Those of you who have read TurboJetslams: Proof #29 of the Non-Existence of God might think that Vic lived happily ever after.

You’d be right about the happily.

You’d be wrong about the ever after.

1

What happened was the pandemic. At first, Vic thought that was a good thing. After all, everyone was told to ‘Stay put’ and ‘Don’t go out except for essentials’. But apparently, like the many men who thought ‘No’ meant ‘Yes’, a lot of people thought ‘Stay put’ meant ‘Go somewhere’. Either that or a lot of people’s definition of ‘essentials’ had an uncanny similarity to the definition of ‘wants’.

So as soon as the pandemic hit, people from the city rushed to their cottages in the north to spread the virus. Like rats leaving a plague ship. In a caravan of SUVs.

People generously offered their weekends-and-summer-holidays cottage to all their relatives and friends, and their relatives’ friends and their friends’ relatives, and soon every cottage had continuous, and crowded, occupancy.

Those who lived in the rural north were concerned about the added strain on their already struggling services. Grocery stores, pharmacies, hospitals … (The beer stores and the liquor stores didn’t seem to experience any interruptions in supply or reduction in services. See above regarding ‘essentials’.) Yes, the incomers promised to wear masks. And no, they wouldn’t stop on the way, they’d bring what they needed with them, they wouldn’t even have to go to the local grocery store.

Well, the last part was true. Because the local grocery store started offering order-and-deliver service: people from the city could call ahead, place their apocalypse order, and then cashiers would do their shopping for them while the rest of us waited at the check-outs, six feet apart, and then the baggers would deliver van loads of meat, eggs, milk, cheese, vegetables, fruit, hamburger buns, hot dog buns, ketchup, mustard, relish, steak sauce, salad dressing, marshmallows, cookies, chips, chocolate bars, frozen pizza, ice cream, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, and toilet paper—lots of toilet paper—to their cottages. While the rest of us waited at the check-outs. Six feet apart. Of course, the local grocery store charged a hefty fee for the service, but people who had two homes either had a hefty income or a hefty debt such that an extra couple hundred here and there wouldn’t make much difference. In fact, the sooner they could declare bankruptcy, the sooner the rest of us would, one way or another, pay their debts for them.

And then, when there seemed to be no end in sight—because when the geneticists got to the omega variant, they could just go back and use all the letters of the alphabet they missed—the rentals appeared.

Vic had thought that what with people losing their jobs or getting fewer shifts, the non-stop construction and renovation—with its ever-present noise of chain saws, excavation machinery, circular saws, nail guns, power drills … would stop. Or at least diminish.

She was wrong. Very wrong.

Opportunistic wannabe-entrepreneurs stepped forward in droves (well, raced to the bank in droves) (the opportunistic banks) to provide five-star accommodations for the rats. Within a year, there were 5 brand new houses on Paradise Lake, all built specifically to be rental properties. That means the houses had a living room with leather couches, a huge flat-screen tv, and a small bar, an entertainment center with its own huge flat-screen tv and a playroom corner, a kitchen with marble counters and stainless steel appliances, two full bathrooms, three bedrooms, and a couple bunkies, so they could say ‘sleeps twelve’ and charge $7,000 a week for a multi-family rental. Such rental properties also had a beach with a firepit, a yard with a swing set, and two docks—one for the kayaks and canoes (provided), one for the jetslams and motorboats (bring your own).

And there were more to come. In fact, there was such a frenzy of development (think ‘goldrush’), it was hard to find a contractor, so one guy started the excavation himself on his newly-bought waterfront property. Which was, essentially, a slice of cliff. The inspector took one look at the excavator half in the lake and stamped “FAIL” on his report.

Picturesque (ugly) cottage signs sprouted up along the roadside almost overnight. Our Summer Home, TGIF, The Family Cottage … (Alongside signs for a quarry, a logging company, the hardware store, a construction company, and the beer store. There were no signs for a fabric and yarn store, or a bakery, or dance lessons at the rec center. The Township stank of male armpit.)

Vic hated the signs. They were like pus-filled boils on the otherwise beautiful forest that edged both sides of the roads. Some signs had the name of the rental property faux-carved onto a faux-paddle. (No doubt for the properties featuring a fleet of jetslams.) Others showed smiling beaver and bear, reminiscent of Disney fairy tales. Still others were— Well, they were all advertising. No one who actually livedon Paradise Lake posted a sign indicating that they lived there. Why would they? Because there were road signs (Spruce Lane, Sunset Lane, and Paradise Lake Lane) and house numbers. If you wanted to tell someone where you lived, you just gave your address: 13 Sunset Lane (or whatever). (And if people couldn’t read the road signs, well, how were they going to read the cottage signs?) There was simply no need for the signs. At every intersection.

Except as advertising. And what they were advertising was a lie: it was ‘cottage kitsch’ meets ‘myth of the north’. The signs fostered the delusion that people were entering the remote wilderness ‘up north’ (so empty, the roads had no names), where, because it was so uninhabited (evidence to the contrary right next door) (not to mention all the other cottage signs), they could do whatever they wanted.

If they thought instead that they were just leaving their own neighbourhood and renting a house in the middle of someone else’s neighbourhood (and would have to act accordingly), the whole endeavour would lose its charm. And the $7,000/week price tag.

One time, some strangers stopped Vic on the lane, on her way to her mailbox, and asked her why she was so rude. Apparently they’d waved at her when she’d kayaked past the cottage they were renting and she hadn’t waved back. WTF? She was supposed to wave at people she didn’t know? And she’d been paddling at the time! She was supposed to stop, and put her paddle down, just to return their wave? She could have nodded, she supposed, but really, she just wasn’t into that. (She’d bought her cabin-on-a-lake-in-the-forest for the solitude and the beauty. Sigh.) And she suspected they weren’t either. When they walked through their neighbourhood, back home, should they ever do that, did they wave, nod, and/or smile at everyone they saw, strangers included? No, it was part of the whole ‘We’re at the cottage having a fun time with all these nice people’ thing. A sort of tourist delusion. Vic wanted to shout at them—and she might, next time—that she wasn’t part of their ‘cottage experience’. This wasn’t The Truman Show. She was a real person. She did not come into existence when they arrived and disappear when they left. She lived there, 24/7, in a house that was just up the road from the house they were renting.

The cottagers who had not yet offered their cottage to family and friends when they weren’t using it soon started doing so, suggesting a modest financial contribution to the increasing property taxes triggered by the increasing property prices triggered by the increasing number of rental properties (and the bidding wars instigated by greedy real estate agents).

There was no change in what could be called unofficial and therefore unregulated trailer parks—lots upon which a trailer was parked, understood to be the prelude to the construction of at least a cottage (within two years, according to Township law) (though ‘two’ seemed to mean ‘eventually’) (or ‘never’—because taxes for a trailer were a mere $200 compared to well over ten times that for a cottage). No change except that where previously, it was not unusual for there to be 3 trailers, 2 of which were in various states of collapse (it was cheaper to just leave them there than have them towed to a scrap yard), now it was not unusual to see 7 trailers, 3 of which were in various states of collapse. Because like the cottagers, the trailer park owners were inviting their family and friends …

So. Do the math.

No wait, I’ll do it for you.

In the beginning, when Vic first bought her cabin on Paradise Lake, three hours north of Toronto, a good half hour off the main highway, there were 10 houses on the lake: 5 were occupied by permanent residents and 5 were summer cottages. Slowly, over the course of twenty years, both doubled—surprising Vic because she’d thought that all that forest was Crown land—making 20 houses: 10 permanent residences and 10 summer cottages. That meant 20 people at the lake year-round (say 2 people per permanent residence, times 10) and another 30 (2 people per cottage, times 10, plus kids) on the weekends and during their two weeks of summer holiday, but since those 30 would never be up at the same time, let’s say year-round occupancy was 20, summer occupancy was another 20, so 40, max.

Now, there were 30 houses (that’s 3 times as many): in addition to the initial 5 new houses, another 5 were built on what had been Crown land—Vic was dismayed to discover that the Ministry could, and apparently did, sell Crown land for cottage lots when the relevant municipality claimed said sales would contribute to its “economic development objectives”. (Since the additional tax revenue would surely be offset by the additional road expense, the enthusiasm with which the municipality filed such claims with the Ministry gave one the impression that the council members thought the additional tax money would go directly into their own pockets.)

Due to various sales (in one case, the owners wanted to be closer to kids, grandkids, and hospitals; in all of the other cases, the owners fled in disappointment, despair, and disgust) and subsequent transformations, only 7 of the now 30 were permanent residences, only 6 were traditional summer cottages (arguably: 2 were trophy houses, cottages purchased then renovated, merely for inviting colleagues for the weekends and showing off), 2 were multi-family conglomerate summer cottages, and 15 were rental properties. And there were now 4 trailer parks.

That meant there were 14 people living at the lake year-round (the 7 permanent residences, times 2 per), but during the summer (and spring and fall and sometimes winter, because the rentals would try to maximize their occupancy/income), there were an additional 24 (the traditional 6 cottages, times, let’s say, 4 per—only a few had kids, but they all had family and friends who would come up when they weren’t there), plus 16 (the 2 multi-family conglomerates, times, let’s say, 8 per—two families at a time seemed to be the norm), plus 150 (the 15 rentals, times, let’s say, 10 per), plus 64 (the 4 trailer parks, times 4 can-be-occupied trailers, times 4 occupants per). For a total of 268. Compared to the pre-pandemic summer occupancy of 40. That’s—I said I’d do the math for you—ALMOST SEVEN TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE. At the lake. Pretty much on any given day from May to October.

And compared to the people-who-actually-live-there occupancy? There were, let’s see, 268 vs. 14—ALMOST TWENTY TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE. At the lake. Pretty much on any given day from May to October. People who could talk, and walk, and, more to the point, who could drive jetslams and ATVs and—

You can see why Vic bought a gun.

Ha-ha. Just kidding.

She didn’t have to.

2

Shiggles was no more and her new little sweetheart, Shoogles, was far more vocal. Vic had only some success teaching her to ‘just watch’ when she raced to the gate or to the dock to shout something at passersby. Which, honestly, was just fine. Given Vic’s desire to also shout something at passersby …

But it occurred to her, a little more vulnerable now due to age, that she should do the same. Just watch.

So she started keeping her small camera beside her when she sat down at the water. (And bought a second one to keep in her kayak.) It had a powerful zoom lens. After all, she had, whether she wanted it or not, a front row seat: a new vintage lounge chair with repaired webbing and a comfy cushion, sitting so very nicely on her new extra-wide dock. The old vintage lounge chair had, one day, decided quite suddenly and without warning to stop being a chair: all the UV-weakened webbing tore at once, and she found herself ass-hard on the dock in the middle of a jigsaw puzzle of aluminum frame pieces. The old dock, on the other hand, had, one day, let out a big sigh then just slowly leaned, a little, then a little more, eventually settling ever so gently on the bottom of the lake at a perfect 45 degree angle. (She had appreciated the warning. And the slowness with which she was lowered into the cold water.) So. A front row seat. At her own entertainment center.

She quickly discovered the power of the camera. Perhaps people thought she was actually taking pictures and videos. (She was.) Perhaps people feared she would post them online. (She did.) With appropriate captions. (Of course.) “Moron renter pretends he’s not trespassing” (some guy standing on the shoreline next to someone’s dock, fishing). “Family of four can’t tell a private beach from a public beach” (said family of four having a picnic on the Campbell’s picnic table and using the float toys they kept in a bin beside their kayak).

3

One day some kid drove his jetslam straight into a ten-by-ten raft that had been floating freely in the middle of the lake. Those who lived at Paradise Lake knew it was out there, somewhere. It had been making the rounds for a good two weeks, often getting stuck (safely, though unaesthetically) in a patch of shoreline muck, then when the wind changed and rose to strength (or when someone gave it a few hard jabs with a kayak paddle), it would become free and resume floating, to somewhere else (out of sight).

The raft had ‘PROPERTY OF THE ROBSONS’ in huge red letters on its side. So you’d think the kid—it was the Robson’s grandkid (one of the many grandkids) (of the many Robsons, the ones who had the Robson cottage for the first week of July every year)—would’ve veered away at the last moment to avoid hitting it. But maybe he couldn’t read. Or didn’t know his last name. After all, he was only six years old.

4

But, as Shoogles would attest, the whole ‘just watch’ thing was only so much fun.

So Vic bought a megaphone. It had three voice distortion settings: Darth Vader, Jack Nicholson, and Alvin the Chipmunk. For good measure, she planned to aim it across the cove when she used it, figuring that the natural echo chamber that had nearly driven her insane (before she started wearing earplugs as a matter of routine) would confuse people as to the source. Or they’d assume it was the Taylors—whose shit was still sitting there on the peninsula across the cove, in her face all day long. (Or would be if she hadn’t hung strips of gorgeous Dupioni silk across the middle of every lakeside window in her cabin: fiery orange in one, shimmering fuchsia in another, and iridescent gold in the third.) (As for when she was down at the water, she’d attached branches to her dock, vertically, every two feet, from the middle of the front along all of the right side, and then strung some equally gorgeous Ashland maple leaf garlands from branch to branch, at just the right height. Sitting in her chair, positioned just so, the entire shoreline was hidden. She saw only water and then trees and sky. Not one dock, not one cottage, not one light at night … and, best of all, none of the Taylor’s shit. It was amazing, the power of ‘out of sight out of mind’ … )

She had occasion to use her brand new shiny megaphone the very next day. Shortly after she settled down at the water, a fishing boat puttered into the cove and parked a mere ten feet from her dock. (Good thing their over-priced on-board fish-finding tech didn’t indicate that the fish they were trying to catch was under her dock.)

And then one of the guys stood and began to urinate over the side of the boat. She reached for her megaphone, set it to Darth Vader, and called out “Hey, stop that! The lake is not a toilet!”

In his rush to zip up and turn to look (because of course he hadn’t seen her sitting there, just ten feet away), or maybe lacking the coordination to do both at the same time, perhaps especially since he was probably pissing pure beer, he fell overboard.

His buddies didn’t notice.

The guy drowned.

Oh well.

(free download of complete novella at jassrichards.com)