Rhythm by Marie Lipscomb

Chapter One

Beth

Her bones rattle as she’s thrown around by the uneven road and slammed against the jeep’s door. Actually, road is too generous—it’s more like a track blasted out of the side of the mountain and leveled using a crazy straw. The knuckles on her right hand are bloodless as she clings to the door handle.

Beside her, her friend Sadie frowns in the driver’s seat. She shifts gear and struggles along the potholed track. Her warm, tawny brown complexion pales at a particularly expensive sounding thunk.

“Are you sure this is right? I have a terrible feeling about it.” Sadie shoves her long, silky, straight black hair back from her face, not daring to take her eyes from the path ahead. “And I don’t like the look of those clouds over there. Looks like rain.”

“I can handle rain.”

“This whole situation is sketchy.”

With her free hand, Beth scrolls through the listing on her phone, reading the “how to find us” section of the booking. “I’m positive it’s this road. They do say it’s pretty bumpy.”

“Bumpy is an understatement.”

“I’m sorry…”

“For the record, I still think this is a ridiculous idea.”

“Ridiculous ideas are my forte.”

Sadie taps her manicured matte-black nails on the steering wheel as the ground evens out to something resembling a driveway, and gravel crunches beneath the jeep’s tires. “Do you still have signal?”

“Yep. And there’s Wi-Fi in the cabin too. If I need you, I’ll call or message you.”

“And what if an axe murderer cuts the power?”

“Sadie…”

“Beth?”

Beth shakes her head, the thick brown waves of her hair spilling over her shoulders as she sighs and turns toward the window. Trees pass by slowly as they creep along the track, and she catches sight of her pale white face in the window’s reflection. Dark shadows hang beneath her eyes. How long has it been since she slept longer than four hours? The exhibition’s deadline is fast approaching, and every day she’s more and more convinced her inner critic is right; she’s a fraud.

Sure, she can draw and paint, but she’s no artist.

Picking at a thread on the cuff of her jacket, she tries to push aside her negative thoughts. She needs this break. She needs to get away from the city, from the noise and stress.

A long weekend retreat in a remote cabin, all by herself in the mountains. Nothing to distract her, no one around for miles, no car, so she can’t bail when things get too difficult. Just her, the beautiful country, and her art. And it is art.

If she can concentrate, if she can produce something meaningful, then maybe it’ll be deemed worthy of the gallery.

Sadie huffs at her side. “I just don’t feel good about leaving you up here all by yourself.”

She has always fretted over Beth, ever since they met fifteen years ago in school. Almost immediately she had fallen into the role of the older, sometimes-annoying, always-lovely sister Beth always wished she had.

“Alright Beth, I’m serious. Call me every morning and every evening, okay? If I don’t get a call, I’m heading up here with the cops… and the army.”

Beth chuckles. “There’s no one else up here. What could possibly happen?”

“Bears.” She glances at Beth, her eyes wide and eyebrows nearly up to her hairline. “Snakes. Bears wielding snakes as weapons. Snakes commanding an army of bears.”

Folding her arms over her chest, Beth plasters an over-exaggerated scowl on her face. “You think I can’t defend myself against a snake-wielding bear?”

“I know you think you can defend yourself against a snake-wielding bear. That’s what worries me. Please, please, please don’t do anything stupid up here. ‘Kay?”

“Yes mom.”

Sadie rolls her eyes. “Elizabeth Barlow, if I was your mother, I’d put you over my knee.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Sadie shakes her head and laughs as the road curves and the cabin comes into view. Beth’s heart lifts at the sight of it. Sliding glass doors on the top story, lead to a small wooden balcony looking out over a majestic view of the mountains. The cabin itself is every bit as picturesque and lovely as the images online, but with one pretty major pitfall. The big, beat-up black van parked outside somewhat spoils the scenery.

Sadie sighs. “Oh, joy. Now that’s a murder van if ever I saw one.”

“Wait…” Beth furrows her brow as she scrolls through the booking again. Her stomach churns. “Someone’s already here?”

“Maybe it’s the owners?” Sadie parks the jeep beside the van and cranes her neck to look at the phone.

Beth’s scrolling becomes frantic. With every passing moment, her dream of solitude is slipping away. She finds the email from the cabin’s owner, and reads it again.

“No, it says here they left the key in a lockbox on the side of the building. I have the code for it. It’s definitely not the owners.” She exhales sharply and rubs her eyebrows with her thumb and forefinger. “Fuck. Maybe they’ve double booked it.”

“You’re positive this is the right cabin?”

Beth squints at the sign hanging from a Narnia-looking signpost out front. “Foxglove… yeah.” She quadruple-checks the booking. “It says here “Foxglove-upper.”

“Upper?” Sadie arches her eyebrows.

Beth frowns. “There were no other turns. This has to be it.”

If this whole thing was a waste of money and an hour-long drive up a mountain side, she’s going to… well probably just moan about it to her friends and politely ask for a refund, but still… grr. This was her chance for peace.

“I’ll call the owners,” Beth grumbles. “See what’s going on.”

Finn

Paradise. The shower cascades over him like a scalding monsoon, melting the tension and ache in his shoulder muscles. He’ll be sore tomorrow. Just how he likes it.

With a contented sigh he rubs pine tar soap across his broad, hairy chest and under his armpits. He keeps his eyes screwed tight against the rivers of suds sliding down from his hair.

This was a good idea. No, a great idea.

In the five days since he arrived at the cabin, he’s made good progress. He could spend the remaining nine days in the shower, hot water blasting his aching body. But he can’t. There’s always work to do, and he’s come a long way for solitude.

His hands slide over his soap-slick skin, his body hair helping to work the suds into a thick lather. It’s pretty handy like that. His own personal loofah.

He rubs both hands over the soft, hairy mound of his stomach, as he rinses his hair and beard, holding his breath beneath the torrent of water.

It’s Friday. No one would blame him for taking a day off. He could explore a bit, go out and see the mountains and the ancient pines growing a short hike away from the cabin. Every year he tells himself he’ll explore the area, and every year he locks himself away and works. He’s sure there must be eagles or some other cool animal he can find.

No. He has to make the most of this. When will he ever have this much time completely alone? No neighbors around to complain, no noise curfews.

Pushing his face out of the stream of water, he takes another gulp of air and goes back under. The water pelts the back of his neck like a thousand tiny stones. It’s almost painful, but he’s a big man; he can take it. Inspiration always comes when he’s in the water.

Pressing his palms against the slate tiles of the shower wall, he drums out a rhythm with his fingertips, nodding his head in time with the song thundering through his mind. It’s good. Feral. But he needs to get out and test it, check whether it sounds as good once he’s plucked it from the symphony hall in his brain.

Most things sound better in his head, both music and words.

Turning off the shower, he grabs a thick, dark blue towel and wraps it around his waist. He uses another to dry his hair and torso, and takes time to moisturize the black, scrolling tattoos on his arms. It seems pretty pointless now. He’s all clean and pine scented, but within moments he’s going to be hot and sweaty. At least by the time he’s through playing, the water tank should have had time to refill.

He pulls on a pair of boxers and a fresh pair of faded blue jeans. With the rhythm still pounding through his head, he grabs the first clean shirt he finds. Like so many of the other shirts he gets for Christmas and birthdays, it has Animal from The Muppets screaming wide-mouthed from his chest. The words “Me like drums” are emblazoned across his belly. His mom bought him that particular shirt. It’s a size too small, but the sentimental value makes up for it. She was trying. He's pretty sure he could put together an entire outfit of nothing but Animal merchandise well-meaning people have gifted him if he searched through his closet.

“Right.” His hands are already twitching, desperate to get started. He sighs contentedly as he walks back to the living room, to where his pride and joy is set up, taking up a quarter of the space.

Over the years he’s tweaked and personalized her; a custom paint job, new pedals, new skins, extra drums and cymbals. Now she’s twice the kit she was. She’s a thing of beauty, and as he stretches his arms, holding them one at a time over his chest and relishing the strain of his muscles, he can’t wait to hear her sing.