Boxes
The following was first published in Aberrations 38, 1996, and reprinted in Nasty Snippets in 1999. Maybe more of a meditation than a story, it serves today to maintain the old site tradition of putting up something appropriate for the upcoming holiday. Hope you dig it…
In the first box, by the door, she keeps her public face. Every day she scrubs it clean, smooths its wrinkles, adds a touch of color where the sun has bleached the skin. Eyes and lips are in clear plastic tubes next to the face, a shade for every occasion. They float in a special fluid which keeps the flesh moist and nourished.
The second box has her wigs, her shape, the clothes she wears, and pretty nails. Clothes are lined along the side.
The third box holds her voice, the words she knows, the thoughts she has to give to the world around her. There are some songs, a string of curses, screams of pain and of delight, and other sounds a woman is expected to make.
The fourth box is not kept by the door, as are the first three. It is not made from cardboard and replaced every few months, nor is the top casually tossed back on after being opened and its contents used. Built from strong oak, with runes from a secret tongue and animal faces carved into its side, the box is sealed with a heavy iron lock which has only one key. Tears have corroded the lock with rust, and the key is lost.
In the box rests her name,her heart, and most of the feelings it contains. Her soul is kept in there as well, nourished by the warmth of emotions smouldering in the darkness. A long time has passed since the box was opened.
In the attic is a glass box, sealed on every edge and corner with gold and silver. The glass is clean and clear, cared for at least once a week. Lace covers the table on which the box rests. The soft, warm light of a lamp glows beside the table day and night. The windows are shuttered, latches nailed in place, and the walls and roof are lined with lead. The door to the attic is hidden, and the stairwell is so small only she can fit through the passage.
The box holds her dreams. They are bright and full of colors, and hard like jewels, with facets and faces hidden from view. They do not breathe, and they never dance. The have the stillness of death.
Below, in the basement, at the core of a maze cast in eternal night, a box has been carved from the stone on which the house rests. The lid is a boulder moved only once, when glaciers last shaped the earth. Vipers, spiders, beetles and rats, fangs dripping poison, slither and scuttle in the dark. In this crypt rests her desires. The flesh of her appetite is dry, and hangs loosely on the withered meat of her hunger.
Finally, in the garden, where vegetables grow and flowers bloom, and the scent from an herb patch hangs in the air during the evening, there are five stones marking the graves of her past. The bodies in the five buried boxes have no names, but they bear traces of her kisses. Hidden behind a bush in a far corner is a sixth box, already set into the ground and awaiting only the caretaker to fill the hole with the dirt piled beside it. On moonless nights, when the stars are veiled by clouds and the world pauses in its journey towards death, she comes out and lowers herself into the hole. She lies down in the open box and closes her eyes. Sometimes she draws the lid shut and holds her breath.
That is when the few feelings left to run free in the house all come to her at once, like birds alighting on a favorite perch. That is when rage makes her tremble, and sorrow burns the empty places inside of her. And fear makes her feel the cold of the endless night beyond the walls of her box.
end
