“The Doom Statues” — Chapter 17

Jason McGathey
8 min readMay 5, 2024
Cluttered room at artists’ retreat

Sorting out who will sleep where is a matter decided with surprisingly little animosity. Though the artists mostly prefer solitude to begin with, this notion of separate living quarters, with or without toilets — the newly constructed cabins all have one, but the surviving older pair don’t — are something basically every human craves, and these prove the most popular. Still, the help working in the main building a partial to or at least don’t mind the convenience of rooming there, even if it means sharing one second floor bathroom or else traipsing down to the other on the first. With one spare room remaining there, the photographer, Lydia, says the thought of living alone in one of those cabins spooks her, and she can’t fathom rooming with anyone else, either, therefore plants her flag in that final bedroom down the hall.

There are sixteen cabins on site, in that L shape along the perimeter, fourteen of them newly constructed. These are slightly smaller, but have their own toilets. As the only couple apart from the Druckers, Jeremy and Emily accept the roomier second cabin, while Dr. Blodgett says he would prefer notdrifting to the main building to use the commode every time, or else the school, and occupies the third cabin, the closest newly constructed one. Elsewhere, Kay rooming with Denise further down the line is somewhat predictable, though the remainder are split neatly right down…

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