Escaping Toward Freedom: Journey out of trauma back to love and safety

She dressed hurriedly. Then, she packed and toted her luggage, her handgun and book bag downstairs into the living room. Luggage in the living room, she entered the kitchen where she scrambled and ate three eggs for breakfast, took her vitamins and drank a glass of cranberry juice. After she washed the dishes, she went into the first floor guest bathroom and peed.
A moment later, she hurried into the living room and placed her Glock handgun in its case. After she put the gun case in her book bag, she glanced over her shoulder, checking to see if she'd forgotten anything. Certain that she hadn't, she headed outside, locked her townhouse and walked toward her burgundy Toyota Camry, silently praying to God for writing inspiration.
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            Yellow daffodils, pink, red and purple tulips and blue irises sprang up on the sides of the narrow, two lane highway that Clarissa drove down for miles. Flowers, nature, color -- they were what Clarissa loved about the hills of North Georgia, especially the area surrounding the Mozark Cabins. She hadn't seen nature explode with so much color since she'd visited the cabins a year ago. The hills rolled with green grass, plants and trees that birds and squirrel played in, their chirps and squeaks going up like an exuberant chorus.
            The Camry's dashboard recorded an outside temperature of ninety-four degrees. Yet, Clarissa punched the window remote and rolled her driver side window down, letting cold air escape. Less than a quarter mile ahead, on the right side of the road, was a creek. Thanks to the previous night's pouring rain, Clarissa was confident that the creek running behind the Mozark Cabins was full, allowing her to hear the creek gurgle, even if only faintly.
            Swinging around a curve in the highway, she turned the car radio off and listened. Although sound of the creek flowing escaped her, she smiled when she heard birds playing in the trees, reminding her of how nature remained untouched by commercialism out here.
            Nature’s tranquility continued to relax her as she drove around another curve, then looked up and saw a familiar red, brick building. A wooden sign with “Mozark Cabins Travel Services” printed in thick black letters across its front was placed in the building’s front window.
            Clarissa pulled inside the travel services’ driveway. She left her luggage inside her car and headed for the building’s entrance.
            “I was waiting for you,” a red-haired woman with a tall, slender build stood and smiled. She walked toward Clarissa with her hand extended. “My name is Sandy. You’re Clarissa, right?”
            “Yes,” Clarissa nodded. “Stopping by to get the key to the cabin that I’m renting.”
            “Certainly,” Sandy responded.
            “Can I have the same cabin that I rented last year?” Clarissa asked. “I feel inspired to create while I’m there. I didn’t write a new novel at the cabin last year. Instead, I wrote several short stories that I published in a few magazines.” She smiled. “But, short stories don’t yield enough money to live on.” Glancing over Sandy’s head, she added, “This time, I have to write a full-length novel.” She sighed. “Right now, I need all the help that I can get to sit down and knock out a good story.”
            “You’re in luck,” Sandy said. “The cabin that you want is our last vacancy this month. That’s how I knew it was you when you walked through the door. We received your payment yesterday, and you’ve already completed and signed all of the paperwork online.”
            Clarissa waited while Sandy walked behind her desk and searched through a metal filing cabinet.
“We’re leaving for several weeks tomorrow,” Sandy revealed. “You rented right on time.”
            “Going anywhere special?” Clarissa asked. “And how long will your office be closed?”
            “We’re a small, family-owned travel company. It’s just me and my sister. We’re headed for Hawaii for two weeks. After that, we’re going to Miami for a week.”
            “Those are great vacation spots,” Clarissa said. “Your sister said she loved tropical climate. She’s real nice.”
            “Thank you,” Sandy smiled. “If you need anything urgent while we’re away, call the authorities. Someone can help you. Plus, the cabin that you like so much is next to a cabin a wonderful couple owns.”
            “They are wonderful,” Clarissa said, recalling the husband and wife couple from the two previous times when she’d rented the cabin. “And, don’t worry about me,” she waved as she took the key from Sandy. “I was in the military. I know how to take care of myself. On top of that, this is a very safe area. I’ve lived in some tough places. I know how to handle myself in nearly any situation,” she nodded. “Compared to other places I’ve been to, this place is like heaven. I really do love it out here.”
            “Well, we hope that you keep coming back.”
            “Thank you,” Clarissa nodded. “Enjoy your vacation.”
            “We will,” Sandy smiled. She walked Clarissa to the office door. “Oh, and, if there’s anything in the cabin basement, just leave it,” she said. “Like you, the previous occupants are regulars, except they stay at the cabin three to four months a year. We told them that they could store non-valuables in the basement, they stay at that particular cabin so often. And, like I said,” she added. “We’re a small, family-owned company. We love taking care of our clients.”
            “That’s what I love about working with you,” Clarissa told her. She pushed the office door open and headed outside. “You take such good care of the people who do business with you.”
After she slid across the driver seat, she looked up and waved to Sandy. Then, she put her car in reverse and backed out of the driveway.   
            Five miles later, passing rows of red maple, pine, oak and sycamore trees, she had only seen seven cabins. She glanced through the windshield, fixing her gaze on the winding highway, as countryside stretched out before her like miles of green carpet. Half a mile ahead was a truck stop and a small sit-down restaurant that served the best greasy food any hungry trucker would want to eat. At the truck stop were also six gasoline pumps and a convenience store that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in months. The far end of the convenience store housed four showers and two overnight sleeping rooms.
            Clarissa barely looked at the large truck stop, a dozen cars and twice as many class eight cargo trucks filling the gravel parking lot. Across the highway from the truck stop was the Chattahoochee River. To Clarissa, the truck stop, although necessary, was an eyesore, distracting from the beauty in the area. Before she knew it, she'd pressed her foot on the accelerator, sending the Camry speeding down the highway more than fifteen miles over the posted speed limit of sixty miles an hour.
            "There it is," Clarissa smiled, lowering her head and looking out of the passenger window. At the peak of a grassy hill was a four-story, cherry wood log cabin, a green gabled metal roof crowning three raked windows on the house's top floor.
            Clarissa slowed the Camry to a crawl. Even before she pulled into the driveway, images of the cabin's finished attic, a queen sized bed with soft goose feather down pillows, a writing desk and two metal file cabinets, flashed across her mind. Then, there was the writing room across the hall from the primary bedroom, a massive room with a three-seat sofa, two ebony wood dressers, a six-foot floor mirror trimmed in gold, a walk-in closet and an en suite with a garden bathtub.
            Yet, as much as Clarissa loved the writing room across the hall from the primary bedroom and the writing desk in the attic, it was the living room writing desk that attracted her most. That writing desk, a hand carved roll-top desk, overlooked a set of custom picture windows, inviting in enough sun rays to keep Clarissa's spirit and energy up. It was through the windows that Clarissa could easily detect the smell of purple and pink azaleas and rhododendrons. All she had to do was to push the windows open and the flowers would fill the living room with the sweetest, soft scents.
            The first thing that Clarissa did when she pulled up to the side of the cabin was to pop open the Camry's trunk and grab her suitcase, book bag and laptop. Then, she headed up the side walkway.
            The cabin's interior was as it had been when she'd stayed in it a year ago. "Well," she mused, eyeballing the living room, dining room and kitchen. "It’s time to start working on a great, new novel." 
            She spent that first day indoors, except for the half hour that she'd swept leaves off the front and back porches and stopped by a small grocery store seven miles north of her cabin. She refused to let herself consider that she'd spent two thousand dollars to rent the cabin, and this at a time when she only had eight thousand dollars left in her bank account and no source of income outside of her writing and dwindling book sales.
            Despite her best intentions, Clarissa didn't even open the living room's roll-top writing desk. Instead, she popped a large bowl of popcorn, layered the popcorn with melted margarine and, plopping down on the living room sofa, watched three movies on Fenzi and one movie on Tuvi. The movies didn't inspire her to write. Yet, she'd found them entertaining, especially Crimson Tide, the Navy flick starring Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman. The movies also didn't shake the gnawing depression that was starting to jab at her. She was yet to connect the rhododendrons outside the cabin window with the flowers in her nightmares.

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