The Shoebox

In the back room of Helen Redleif’s nineteen fifties craftsman bungalow was a narrow linen closet. Thirty-four years’ worth of neatly folded beach towels, bath towels and wash clothes were stacked floor to ceiling, like a terry cloth filing cabinet.  On the top self, inconspicuously buried beneath an old pink towel was a shoe box sealed tight with aging yellow masking tape. Helen thought she had destroyed the little orange box years ago, after all, who needs evidence like that laying around? But nonetheless the box was there, on the self, undisturbed and forgotten. 

Helen’s daughter, Heather, drove sixteen hours over two days and through a severe thunderstorm to help her mother transition to a care facility where a woman her age would be more comfortable with others in her age group.  At least that’s how Heather explained it.  The reality was Heather saw her mother as slight and weak.  Where some might characterize Helen as eccentric and free-spirited, Heather thought her mother was silly, with a head full of nonsensical ideologies.  Heather wished her mother was more like her, level-headed and unwilling to take shit from the world. Her childhood was shaped by watching her mother fail over and over.  Helen amassed four failed marriages and dozens of broken noses and black eyes before Heather was out of grade school and still her mother kept falling for the same old paper-heart promises.  She knew by the time she entered high school her mother had a ‘type’ and she would have none of it.  

Heather loved her mother, she loved her more than anything.  Heather decided early on she could not watch her mother continue to fall in love and fail.  Her goal was to get as far away as possible.  It was her only chance to save her own sanity.  Heather worked tirelessly through high school.  She didn’t make time for silly teenage pomp and circumstance.  She was determined to break the cycle her mother started.  She wanted to get into a top ranked university and get far away from her mother’s madness, and that is exactly what she did. 

Helen was a victim in Heathers eyes.  She fell head first into every bad situation.  Her mother’s first husband, Heather’s father or sperm donor as Heather referred to him, was Helen’s first and truest love. However, unfortunately for Helen, she was not his truest or only love, if he ever really loved her at all.  They had met and things happened quickly.  Soon Helen found herself very pregnant and barely out of high school.  Plans began to circulate about a wedding and a house with pretty white shutters and a matching picket fence.  Helen’s head was so caught up in the fairytale she couldn’t believe her eyes when she walked in on her beloved with her best friend’s legs wrapped around his head.  Her world crumbled.  As quickly as it started she was left alone, penniless, and about to deliver.

For Heather, those first few years, home was a little portion of her grandparent’s basement.  Heather and Helen lived virtually out of sight. Despite it being the late seventies, a young, unwed mother was source of sinful shame for a hardworking, God-fearing couple of Midwesterners like Helens parents. They were rarely seen in public with their daughter and grandchild, except for Sunday’s.  Helen was expected to attend church services and baptize her child if she was to live in their house. They ate together and prayed together, but seldom did they speak beyond what was necessary. The subject of her father was never discussed under that roof and certainly never in front of her grandfather.  Heather saw the man who helped create her once when she was twelve.  By chance she and her mother were traveling though Pittsburgh and they happened to be in the same diner at the same time.  He sat with another woman and three young boys.  He stared across the room at them.  Heather remembered seeing her mother wave slightly at the man. She turned to see whom it was her mother was waving to so far from home.  Heather remembered locking eyes with him and knew instantly who he was.  Her mother said nothing to her until they were on the road again.  Heather watched the scenery pass out the passenger side of the old Oldsmobile station wagon. “The man, back there,” her mother paused, “was your father.” She finished matter-of-factly.  Heather stayed staring at the world passing by.  “I figured.” She replied and neither spoke of it again. 

The White Crayon

Little plastic barrettes pinned her sandy brown ringlets back from her face.  Molded bows, one violet and one pink, clipped just above her ears, was enough to keep the hair from falling.  She carried a small collection of coloring books and box of crayons out the front door and laid them gently on the concrete.  It was morning and the soft smoky grey walkway was still cool.  She could smell the moisture in the soil of the flowerbed edged along the walk from the front door landing to the driveway.  The pinkness of her cheeks was radiant in the morning sun.  She smiled to herself as knelt innocently, arranging her collection of books in front of her. 

She opened one of the books and turned each page, carefully examining each image.  The thick black line work of each image begged to her for color and life.   She turned the page, stopped, and stared at a colorless happy sun.  Beneath the sun was the outline of a bird standing on a tree branch with its head cocked upward.  Music notes dance from the bird’s beak.  This, she thought, would be fun to color.

Her little fingers pried open the box of crayons, spilling them on the concrete. She hadn’t noticed the white crayon rolling away, coming to rest in the expansion joint.  Its greyish white paper camouflaged the crayon in the shallow groove.  She picked up the blue crayon and began to trace inside of the little bird.  She sang softly to herself as she worked.  Her hushed tune was barely a whisper, only heard by the little bird and the smiling sun.  She was only four but had an artful eye for detail.  Steady and slow she traced each image in the color of her choosing.  Then, meticulously, she would fill the space with smooth, even color.  She was careful not to allow the crayon to pass over the thick black outlines.

Everything about that morning was perfect.  But that morning was a long time ago.  That morning in the sun light, coloring and singing to herself, was the last best memory she had of her childhood.  She sat at the foot of the bed with her feet dangling.  She traced little invisible circles with her toe.  It’s funny, she thought, the way memory works, like ripples returning over still water.   

Apartment 228

We hadn’t noticed the dark red stain in the middle of the living room carpet when we moved in.  We didn’t notice it, because it wasn’t there.  A lot of the strange events that happened in that apartment went unseen or unnoticed, at least at first.  Life was good back then, Amber and I were two young lovers and the world was ours.  We enjoyed having someone to come home to after long days at work.  We were still getting used to each other when the little oddities began to happen.  Occasionally a kitchen cabinet or the refrigerator would be left open.  Full gallons of milk could sometimes be found warm and spoiling, left open in the pantry.  At first I believed it was Amber being absent minded, or forgetful, or even lazy.  Amber had a condition.  The side effects of her medication often left her confused and sometimes incoherent.  It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination by any means to believe she would confuse a pantry for a refrigerator, especially when she was on her meds.   There were other times when I must have gotten a little too drunk or she must have gotten a little too stoned.  We would usually laugh it off.   These odd occurrences always seemed odd but not necessarily unexplainable.  In hindsight, the open fridge and cabinet doors were not laughable misguided or misplaced happenstance, but rather, warnings.  It wasn’t until the apparition of the cat that we finally began to take the warnings for what they truly were. 

The dimming light of the evening was filtered through the partially open vertical blinds hung over the arcadia door to the balcony.  The dinette was set for a quiet dinner of spaghetti noodles and pasta sauce.  We worked opposite schedules but we made an attempt to have dinner together a few times each week.  We had just began to eat when we heard a soft mew coming from the bathroom.  We looked at each other with our forks loaded with noodles.  I watched her eyes shift from me to the hallway behind me.  Her eyes widened and the color drained from her face.  The fork in her hand, suspended mid-bite, began to tremble uncontrollably.    My heart leapt into a rhythm I had never felt before.  I slowly turned my head toward the hallway.  She and I watched as cat peaked its head out from inside the bathroom.  It looked at us.  Its skull was exposed on the right half of its head.  It was bloody and what fur remained was matted and wet looking.   It let out another soft mew before arching its back, rubbing its body along the doorjamb and slinking into full view.  We watched as it strolled across the hall and into our bedroom out of sight.  The cat’s movements were unmistakable.  We didn’t own a pet and a cat had no business in our apartment, let alone a one with a bloody skull.  I turned to Amber.  Her face was white and her eye were wide and dilated.  I asked if she had seen what I had seen.  She slowly and silently nodded yes.  I stood up and hurried to the room.     

The Enigma

Looking around us you can see this is not the environment one would wish for themselves.  I can remember a great many things but as a matter of time and significance I shall focus only that which matters most to my life and this story.  I am stuck between two parallel worlds.  One world is the world I wish to be in.  The other, is the world I want to get away from.  I am in a constant state of flux.  Right now my life is in a delicate balance.  Too much or too little in any direction will make the whole thing topple, crushing me beneath it.  I take accountability for the things I have done, and I have done plenty.  I am not so vein to not recognize my failures, and I have failed plenty.  I am only a person, simple and ordinary.  I am a human capable of only that which is humanly.  I can tell you my story as best I can, but only in the manner of which you will know it to be. 

These shackles are meant to bind me.  I am sedated to keep me in a state of blissful solace.  Though little do they know I am here of my own volition and I will leave anytime I wish.  I am only a person, simple and ordinary, though you may think otherwise.  I cannot be contained.  Neither brick, nor mortar, nor steel can hold me.  I am a danger they said to both God and country.  I am an enigma they said and I cannot be allowed to be free.   I have chosen you to hear my story because someone should bare witness when I leave and give them this testimonial.  I have chosen you because you won’t try to stop me.

I am only a person, simple and ordinary, but I am not like you.  I am a human capable of only that which is humanly as long as you understand that the human capacity reaches far beyond what you know it to be.  I can shape your reality and I can twist your mind.  If I wish it, it will be done.  I am not alone in my abilities, though I no longer play by the rules.  That is why I am here chained and bound and constantly watched.   They watch me as I have watched you.  That is how you have come to find yourself in that chair.  I told them to bring you. They had no choice but to comply, because I made them comply.  Similarly, you had no choice but to come, because I had already made the choice for you.  Your thoughts are not wholly your own.  I can influence a great many things.  One simple thought and I can turn the wheels of fate in your favor or I can open a sequence of events that can ruin you.  Allow me to demonstrate for you, do you see the two lieutenants in the in the observation room behind me? Good.  In ten seconds time, a sergeant will open the door and all three men will leave in a hurry, leaving only the monitors to record our session.  There, you see, just as I described.  I am not a psychic, I do not need to be.  Free will is a philosophy that humans can express personal choice, free of divine influence.  This, however, is not entirely accurate.  I can influence and change anything I choose.  Allow me to demonstrate again.  Please watch you pen, as I make the ink flow freely from the ball-point tip and float before you in an anti-gravitational state.  What you see now is my ability to bend physics and the physical world to my will.  You can recognize the work you see before you floating in perfect script is the Magna Carte, in its entirety.  It is there because I wish it to be there, you have witnessed this because I have allowed you to witness this.  No, I am sorry, this is not a trick.  This is only but a tiny sample of my ability.  No, it is not a miracle either, there is nothing miraculous about me, for I am only a person, simple and ordinary.   I was born into this world with this ability and it will die with me as well.  But just as others before me, too, had my abilities others, too, will come after.

Others like me have always shared this world.  History has called us Fates, prophets, shamans, gurus, wizards, soothsayers, and more.  We are not gods, nor do we claim to be. We are born into this world with a knowledge deeply engrained in us.  Those like me have lives that span eons.  Time is but a unit of measure, concocted by men, and we manipulate it as easily as I had manipulated the ink from your pen.  We are not immortal. Our lives are not without end, though for us, death is a choice.  We have shaped this world in millions of subtle ways.  It is not uncommon for those like me who grow tired of this life to gift mankind with an advancing knowledge.  But because of so many like you, those gifts are bastardized and abused.  And it is up to us to fix your mistakes.  There are not many left like me.  Too many like me have grown tired of those like you.  As we expire, the deep knowledge we possess expires with us.  We are the balance keepers.  We can no longer keep pace with the reckless abandon of mankind.  When we are gone, you will destroy yourselves.  I tell you this as my gift to you.  I, too, am growing tired of this world.  My testament is a warning.  I am only a human, simple and ordinary.  I have taken to showing you the extraordinary in an effort to spare you the tragedy of what will come.  

Mankind has lost sight of the fact that it exists because of this world, not in spite of it.  Your race is drawn to power and destruction.  The power to destroy is meaningless without the influence to rebuild.  Mankind is not inherently good, it is inherently evil.  It is we who guild you to build with the ashes of that which came before.