Our New Interactive Blog Story, 'The box' is now complete!
This time the experiment had changed a little, with my blogs' fabulous readers and I contributing 300 words every 3 days, taking 3 turns each.
We hope that you enjoy the wonderful madness that is 'The box':
The box
by Dansk, hedgehog, Eli Regan (and me)
The box sat between us on the kitchen table. It was larger than I’d expected. A splintery wooden thing, speckled with nails, and barred with shadows where the sunshine fell in slices through the blind.
“Well, it’s here,” she said. “Arrived at last!”
She swished from foot to foot on her side of the box and her peach-painted mouth twitched as if with a smile, but I wasn’t convinced. Her eyes remained dark and wet. She was doing too much blinking.
“I can see that,” I replied.
I’d wanted to keep the atmosphere light, casual even, but my voice came out higher and frailer than I’d intended. I sounded like a child. A little boy, with a trembling lip and a crumpling chin and two grazed knees. Barely even pretending to be brave.
I cleared my throat and for a moment, thought that I smelt something beyond the sour mop bucket and old bacon fat, something beyond the synthetic roses of her perfume.
A forest smell, a black leaf smell. Could it truly be coming from within?
I saw that she had taken the hammer out already.
As she raised it slowly in one milk-white hand, I heard her cotton skirts whisper and the creak of her bodice, or of a stiff, pink sleeve. She turned the claw-end carefully to face me.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked.
She held herself still now, waiting. From the world behind the blind came the ordinary morning sounds of birds twittering and car engines’ coughing. There was the panicked scuff and scurry of late-to-work feet. I let the clock tick once, twice, and then again before reflecting back her empty grin.
“You do the honours,” I suggested. And took a small step backwards, towards the door.
'Emily you're such a scaredy-cat'
She turned to face the table, hammer still held upright, her smile now transformed into a look of determination. Yet she hesitated.
The kitchen light faded for a moment, perhaps just a passing cloud, and in that instant the box seemed to grow, to take on mass and became this foreboding presence in the room. My hands gripped the sideboard behind me.
'Uncle Dippel would be ashamed to see you now'
'Well Uncle Dippel isn't here now' I replied. 'I didn't ask him to leave me anything'
'But he did, and you know how rich he was. Whatever it is it must be something special if he sent it to you.'
I stared at the box. Our address stamped on the side in large Germanic letters. I could barely make out the return address. Then I noticed the small marks underneath. The three small zigzag lines above the letters B and F. I looked up at my sister and shook my head once.
'For God's sake' She said, and stepped up to the table. Placing her palm on the top of the box, she positioned the hammer's claw over one of the nails. And stopped.
'Emily' She breathed. 'It's warm'.
“What do you mean?” I said. “It can’t be.”
Her eyes narrowed, but they seemed somehow even blacker. Shinier.
“Come here then,” she said. “Feel for yourself.”
I didn’t want to go to her; I didn’t even want to be in that kitchen anymore. I wanted to be outside with all the normal, box-less people, worrying about normal, box-less things. Late buses and low bank accounts and stale sandwiches for lunch. Instead, there I was, back at the table. My thin arm trembling as I reached out –
I snatched my hand away, gasping, long before I touched it.
Immediately, instinctively, I began rubbing at my fingers - although in truth, the heat emanating from that battered lid wasn’t fierce in any way. In fact, it was a strangely soft sensation. Like a handful of feathers. A wafting sigh. I shuddered.
“Alice,” I began carefully. “Do you remember the stories that Mother used to tell about Uncle Dippel? About his laboratory. His hobbies . . .”
My sister rolled her glistening eyes at me. “Oh, you and Mother and your stories,” she said. “He was just a moneyed old man with too much time on his hands. And, like you, too much imagination.”
“But it wasn’t just the experiments, Alice. He was an inventor too. Don’t you remember? Wasn’t he supposed to be building some kind of literal ‘Dream Machine’? Some contraption meant to grant your deepest wishes.”
Alice snorted. She was playing with the hammer again, licking her plump lips.
“And that’s supposed to be a problem? You’re crazy. C’mon. Let’s open it!”
I lifted my pale palms to her, trying to explain. “But you don’t understand. You have no idea. There are things that I dream of -”
I froze then, suddenly wordless. Interrupted by a gentle creak.
"I'm sure Uncle Dippel had far stranger dreams than you could ever have" said Alice.
"There was that whole episode with the servant boy. And one Christmas, when Aunt Frieda was drunk she told me he'd worked for the Nazis during the war."
"Don't be stupid. Aunt Frieda's always drunk anyway."
Alice shrugged, and forced the claw end of the hammer between two pieces of wood.
"Wait!" I called out, but her mind was made up.
She yanked the hammer hard and went stumbling backwards as a shower of dust and splinters flew into the air. But she had barely even made a mark. Cursing, she tried again but still made little progress. Her face hardened as she wiped the dust from her face with the back of her sleeve.
"Bastard thing" she exclaimed. "You have a go."
My hand was shaking as the hammer was passed to me. I gulped audibly and moved towards the table.
There was a noise coming from the box, a kind of scratching and rustling. I could barely even bring myself to look at it, let alone go at it with a hammer.
But I didn’t have to. All of a sudden, the lid of the box popped up slightly - as though an internal catch had been undone. Then, in a few clattering movements, it was pushed aside and fell down onto the tabletop.
As I tentatively gazed into the darkness, the first thing I saw was a tiny pink hand reaching up towards me.
"No.... It can't be...." I said.
But so it was - there, lying on a glittering bed of styrofoam packing was a plump baby, no more than a few months old and surprisingly healthy-looking considering it's predicament.
"Hello Alice, Emily." Said the baby. "I expect you thought I was dead."
“Uncle Dippel?”
I had never heard Alice speak so quietly before. Her tone was lighter than the waft of her petticoats. But while she was the one shrinking back now and shaking, her pink shoulders quivering, her head swinging slowly back and forth - I leant closer. I was no longer afraid.
Apart from a rather baggy and sallow-looking nappy, the infant was naked. His flesh was smooth and rosy and gently folded; his little globe-like tummy almost glowed. He kicked his fat, little legs at me as if delighted. I noticed a light sprinkling of sawdust clinging to his perfect, pea-sized toes.
“For God’s sake, don’t touch him!” Alice hissed.
While there was an undeniable familiarity about those delicate features (something about the gumminess of that smile perhaps, or the frosty glint of those blue eyes?) the baby’s face was in no way an old man’s face. And he certainly didn’t smell like an old man, or a dead man, either. He smelt exactly as a baby should, as sweet and fresh as stretching bread dough. Intoxicating. When I reached out to lift him, I made sure to breathe him in.
And he was so warm against me; he fitted perfectly. My very own baby. Sure enough, it was the moment I’d been dreaming of for years.
Of course, Alice didn’t see it that way.
“Are you insane?” she sobbed. “What are you doing? Can’t you see what you’re doing?”
Then she was grasping for the metal rod beside the window - she twisted it so violently that the blind didn’t simply spring fully open, but fell crashing and rattling to the tiled floor. For several seconds, the kitchen was flooded with a light so glacier-bright that I could hardly see what I was cradling in my arms.
But I wasn't worried. I was content with my baby held warmly in my arms.
My sister however, did not feel the same way. She stood across the kitchen from me, her face as pale as her fancy Vionnet dress, glaring accusingly at me. Why didn't she understand? She never understood.
'What are you thinking?' she cried 'Its an abomination, put it back, get rid of it!'
Instinctively I held the baby tighter and backed away from her. 'No, I can't. I won't. Look how helpless he is.' I looked down into his deep blue eyes and felt nothing but love. Motherly love. This what I'd always dreamed of. 'I'm going to take care of him.'
'You're crazy.' my sister spat, her hand reaching out. She grabbed a kitchen knife from the sink raising it up in the air with its tip pointing down, dripping tepid sink water onto the floor.
'It's wrong. You must see that. Put it down Emily. Put it down now!'
Why did she not understand? Always telling me what to do. Bossing me around. No more, I thought. I had my baby and nothing, no one is going to take that away from me. I glanced around and saw the hammer resting on the table, out of reach. Then, my thinking became clearer, and I knew what I had to do. I looked down into the baby's eyes and saw understanding. I gently placed the him on the table and turned to face my sister.
'Put the knife down Alice. Please.'
'It's wrong.' she repeated. 'I have to get rid of it'.
Alice lunged forward towards the helpless baby, the knife catching the morning sunlight. I grabbed her wrists forcing the blade up above us, but she managed to get her other hand to the baby's leg, and yanked him off the table. My heart stopped as I saw baby Dippel flailing as he shot across the kitchen bashing into the cupboard door and down onto the floor. I was incensed. That poor baby. I grabbed both of her wrists and started pushing back and kept pushing. Her eyes showed no understanding, no understanding at all. They were wide open with bitterness and hatred. I kept pushing and then the hatred drained from her eyes. Letting go, I watched my sister drop to the floor and with the knife pushed into deep into her own belly. She looked up at me in surprise and tried to speak but no sound came out. What have I done? I dropped to my knees and cried
'Alice. Sister. I'm sorry... ' But it was too late. Her head drooped down, lifeless.
'Why didn't she understand?' I cried.
'You did what you had to. She would have never understood what we have.'
I looked round and saw baby Dippel on the kitchen floor, struggling helplessly to support himself as my sisters blood pooled around him.
'I just wanted us to be a family.'
'We still can. It was good that you only cut her body. We can still save her. We can still be the family that you always dreamed of.'
The horror of my sisters death flowed away, replaced by the warm feeling of understanding.
'Now quickly, go find a saw. We have to remove her head.'
The End
With enormous thanks to each of the wonderful, talented and generous writers who took part –
C-Ray
Kerrie
sweetseadog
matt writer
Leatherdykeuk
Patience Mnbongwo
Dansk
Jamieson Wolf
Eli Regan
hedgehog
Anonymous
and Anonymous (?)
And with extra thanks to
Caroline
Nik
and DJ
For all their additional, kind blogging support
Megan Taylor Blog Stories
200 words every 2 days for 2 weeks, creating a story together
On 1st June 2008, I posted the opening to a brand new experimental short story on my blog and then asked the blog's readers to provide the next 200 words. After 2 days, I chose one response to carry on from and wrote the next short piece.
Every 2 days for 2 weeks, we took 200 word turns at creating a blog story. It was intense, and crazy, and fun. And at the end, we had 'The Cabin'.
The Cabin
By chris, angela h, leatherdykeuk, hedgehog, michael thricksos, eli regan (and me)
When I woke, I couldn’t open my eyes. They were stuck together and I had to pick at them with my broken fingernails. Pick, pick, pick, slow and patient, until they came unglued.
While I picked, I listened. I could hear the wind whining from outside the hill cabin, and the creak of snow and burdened wood. There was a heaving in my chest too, but I couldn’t hear the others’ breathing anymore and I didn’t like that. I didn’t trust it.
And the smell was still everywhere, a sharp, cold odour, like zips, like money. A whole mouthful of grubby coins. I didn’t want to swallow, but I couldn’t help it. My throat was rough and dry; my lips were cracked. I scrubbed at my face more vigorously, wiped my knuckles over my mouth, but the air went on clinging to me. A second skin of dirt and ice.
Then there was a new sound. I thought that it came from somewhere behind me, but I couldn’t be certain. A soft popping, no louder than the crack of a pulled knuckle.
All at once, my eyes were open.
For a moment, I saw nothing but pale blue light.
It hurt. Screaming pain at the brightness. Open and close the lids, screw up my eyes. Wait until the pupils shrink to pin points to accommodate the glare. Barely move the muscles, my body so stiff, so cold, beyond cold. I turned my head slightly. Saw the humped bodies of Jed and Theresa, huddled into their sleeping bags. I couldn’t tell if they were breathing, still alive. It was all too quiet.
Apart from the popping, the clicking. What on earth was it? The sound was so familiar and yet in the emptiness of my mind I couldn’t make the association, couldn’t forge the pathway into the past, spark the connection. Plop. Plop. Ah! Slowly, agonisingly, a word or two swims up. A tap? No. There were no taps. Painfully I moved my head again, forcing my skull across the fabric, which pulled the tangles in my hair and dragged at my scalp.
I could just bring the window into my line of vision. From where I lay on the floor I saw only whiteness, the unchanging, unshadowed glare of snow. But an infinitesimal glimmer of movement. Then another, and another. A drip. It was a drip. Thaw.
Before I knew what was happening, I was on my feet, breathing out small ghosts, and wheeling and stumbling, narrowly missing the roof beams overhead. Suddenly the pain was someone else’s, even the grind of my calf muscles, the weight on my neck. Far away, the floorboards groaned, but I took no notice, as I paid no attention to the stiff, dark mound of the others. I didn’t pause to check on them, but kept shuffling towards the door. It was easy.
We had been there for so long.
My fingers trembled against the freezing latch. Thaw – briefly, I let myself imagine it, with my cheek resting against the fur of tiny splinters in the wood. Then I pushed, and pushed again. The door opened, slowly, dismissively, as if the cabin had simply shrugged.
And I was nothing before the world outside.
Nothing before the vast, soft emptiness and the scent of winter like blood and stones. Yet everywhere was glistening; water was falling from the roof and trees, a beautiful ticking like so many quiet, uneven heartbeats. I lifted my arms -
And a voice came scratching from the must and shadows piled behind me.
“Wait,” Jed said. “Come back.”
The pull of the thaw was compelling me to step forwards, out, away. I wanted to breathe the fresh wet air, to be shrouded by sky. To leave behind staleness, cold, fear and most of all, hunger.
I forced myself to turn. Jed’s eyes were hollowed in his bearded face. His nose scaled and raw. The bruise on his head was still a lurid purple. Now he was trying to sit up. His breath rasped out of his throat.
“Wait” he said, “please wait.”
He was shaking the sleeping bag next to him. I heard Theresa moan and the cry of her hungry baby. I knew I should feel pleased she had made it through the night, but now there were four of us. I could make it alone, but with injured Jed and exhausted Theresa, with her new baby son? But if I left them, I knew they’d be dead by the time I returned.
I was half out into the cool wetness. Everything glistened. Clean. Fresh.
I was facing a new fear – the fear of living with myself if I left them now.
“I’ll be back” I said, without looking at them.
And I walked out.
And I kept walking, though the snow was packed tight, dragging at me, and the pain was back. Yet everywhere, the world went on melting, dazzling. The wind slid softly through the trees and the sound of falling water became a pattering, as of tiny, hidden feet. I watched a bird rise from the branches and draw a russet line across the sky. The day shouldn’t have been so beautiful . . .
I was determined I wouldn’t turn back. I wouldn’t even glance over my shoulder, not once. I tasted rotting wood beneath the sweet, hard tang of ice.
When the trees stepped closer and the snow began to thin a little, and to darken beneath my boots, I made my strides longer, faster. I broke into a clumsy jog, and then a run.
I let the branches whip at me, I welcomed the brief turn of my ankle against a frozen log - but it was no good. The thought of them kept pace with me. All that had happened was right there, in my tangled breath and jolting steps. There was no out-running it. The memories pressed in on me, bright and close.
Jed’s laughter in the tent as he pulled another royal flush against the pair of sevens in my hand, his whisky-breath harsh as he insisted on helping me take my t-shirt off. His eyes narrow and cunning as he stared at my breasts swelling beneath a tight sports bra.
Theresa just looked uncomfortable, her body still swollen from the birth of her son. Who drags their wife on a camping trip a week after she’s given birth? Jed, that’s who. I’d come to help my sister out, maybe protect her and little Ben from Jed’s drunken rages.
Maybe if I’d been stronger he wouldn’t have pawed at me. I wish I hadn’t pushed him so hard. Drunk, he’d knocked over the heater and the old tent had gone up in a blaze of glory. Hellfire in the frozen north.
I wish he’d died. I wish he hadn’t got drunk. I wish he’d let Theresa stay at home.
More than anything, I wish I’d never pushed him.
I stopped running and stood bent at the waist with my hands on my knees. The pain from my ankle tore into my stamina, but if I rested now I’d never get back up.
But the exhaustion held me, dimming the glow of the ground and sketching cobwebs across my hands, before my face. I felt as if I’d been running for days, for weeks. I thought of that first escape, how the trees had seemed to dance before us, the clunk of the torch batteries, and the scent of ashes as we flew.
At first, the empty hunting shack had seemed like salvation. Even as the snow kept falling, a static that would go on and on, that would eventually seem to creep inside us too, as maddening and relentless as the baby’s thinning cries.
I rocked heavily on my heels, reliving that morning in the cabin when Theresa had reached for me, sitting up abruptly in her sleeping bag to catch hold of my ankle as I crept across the boards.
With a startling clarity, I could still feel the knowing press of her fingernails. I remembered the tug of her gaze, and how despite everything, we were suddenly kids again. Children with secrets. Briefly, her grip had tightened.
She understood as well as I did that Jed wasn’t the only one to blame.
I wasn’t fooling anybody – she must have noticed the way I looked at him sometimes. The way I’d always outstay my welcome.
The way I wanted, desperately, to feel just a fraction of the things she felt. The disgusting, drunken passion of course - but also the accusations and recriminations and, maybe, even the fear.
Because wasn’t it better to row and fight and love and hate somebody than to feel nothing at all?
Nothing real.
Yet when he finally touched me that evening I had recoiled – repulsed by my own desire and what it might undo inside me.
Again, I began to run. Away from them, away from the cabin.
Then, all of a sudden, I was flying. For a moment no part of me touched the ground – an empty, weightless feeling cut short by thudding pain as my body connected with the earth once more and I plummeted down the steep wooded bank.
I’m not sure how long I was unconscious. It felt like less than an instant - but the blood had caked slightly by the time I lifted my face from the tarmac.
I must have sat up too fast. The world went reeling. I gripped my head, trying to hold everything together.
The road was bare and straight, a slick, black line that seemed to run on forever in both directions. The forest rose dizzyingly on either side, monochrome walls of trees and snow, unravelling gradually to grey. My chin was sticky, and the money taste was back, lining my mouth, but I was numb. Hardly daring to hope.
I touched the tarmac again, my fingers shaking. The road was cold and real. I felt the engine before I heard it. A small, quivering life beneath my palm.
Somehow, I managed to stand as the car approached. The trees rippled and whispered. The white sky pressed closer. I staggered forwards, waving my arms. I was keenly aware of every brittle movement and yet everything was happening at a distance, as if to someone else.
The car, small and blue and battered, slowed and then pulled over. The tarmac twinkled between us, laden with stars. Stumbling across them, I caught the ruddy health of the driver’s bearded features. And then I saw the woman with a baby in the back.
I put my weight against the warm car bonnet and tried to clear the stars from my eyes. The woman in the back leant forward to speak, pushing waves of patterns past my vision in her wake.
“Sis are you ok? We lost you back at the gas station. Jed honey give her a hand.”
The click of the car door quivers through warm metal to my hands. I stare at the woman through the weaving patterns and catch her profile in the light. Familiar but not my sister.
“Theresa are you ok?” Said the man. I look to the woman and then back to him, he is staring at me.
The patterns clear and I see my face reflected in the rear window. But the window is down. I lower myself to look in the wing mirror, touching Theresa's lines, I see her soul in my eyes. A sonic wave of nausea moves through me, balance lost as Jed places me in the back of the car.
“We best get moving if we're going to make the cabin before it snows”. The man starts the engine.
The woman takes my arm and whispers, “This is what you wanted isn't it? Or did you expect to keep yourself too?”
The worn leather squeaked as if welcoming me home. The car smelt the same, of petrol and apple cores and liquorice cigarette papers, but it was my hands that frightened me the most. Such familiar hands, with their carefully shaped nails. That thin gold wedding band.
When she passed me the baby, I marvelled at the ease in which those fingers claimed him. As if they were more a part of him than me. Ben was sunk into his blanket, his small lips sucking even as he dreamed. I drew him close, but his dense, curled heat couldn’t touch me. Nothing could.
Without glancing up, I felt the woman's eyes on me, but it was Jed who spoke.
“Of course,” he said, “we won’t go to the cabin right away. There’s the campsite to find first. There’s so much to come.”
A full bottle of whisky was wedged into the back seat between us, amidst a scattering of playing cards. A pair of sevens lay face up.
I leant my forehead on the clammy window as we started to drive. Stripped of their snow, the trees looked raw and vulnerable and very black.
I felt like the trees; confined and lost in time. Nothing made sense. Why were we driving back? Jed had said they’d lost me at the gas station. Although my fall could have affected my memory, I was convinced I’d been running to save them. Jed with his drunken rages. Theresa with her sense of retribution. And Ben, helpless and sleepy, unaware of being caught in their stupid mess.
I needed to open a window. I needed to get out of this sweaty, whisky reeking car. Theresa’s hand suddenly crept over my own, as if she’d read my thoughts.
‘Please don’t go’ she whispered. Something in the fragility of her tone made me trust her.
I glanced at my hand again. I was trying frantically to remember who had placed that wedding ring on me.
The humming birds were gathered in evening song, and despite my body aching, I wanted desperately to be outside with them; to be free from this sense of anguish.
I suddenly looked over at Theresa’s hands. They were both free from adornment. I caught those sneering eyes in the wing mirror, and instantly knew it was Jed who had placed that band on my finger.
A sharp, involuntary smile hooked my mouth. It was the same smile that twitched across my sister’s face, quick and cold, like the flash of a knife. Everything was confused. Theresa or me, and Jed’s intentions - I had no idea how we had come to this. Or how it all might end.
In my arms, Ben stirred and began to grizzle. He burrowed closer and I felt a new warmth flowering through my clothes. I thought of the cabin, and of the clearing. That spread of snow as clean as milk. Or a bright, new page, just waiting.
I shifted awkwardly, lifting the baby. “Take him,” I said.
My sister’s grin deepened. She shook her head, but eventually opened her arms and reluctantly reclaimed him. Eyes rolling.
In the driver’s seat, Jed chuckled. “Hey girl,” he said. “You’ve lost the plot.”
But I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t do this anymore. My fist was already on the handle. The door flew open.
The road swept by, thick and glittering like the rush and flood of melt-water. I didn’t wait for them to stop me. Within seconds, I was out.
I couldn’t open my eyes. I could feel soft earth beneath my head, the cold sheet of snow beneath my outstretched hand. I pulled it toward me and felt my face. My eyes were covered with something. Pick, pick, pick with my broken fingernails.
While I picked, I listened. I could hear the wind outside and the creak of snow and burdened wood. There was a heaviness in my chest and I could hear the others breathing.
And the smell was everywhere. Sharp and cold like money. I couldn’t swallow. My mouth was dry, my lips cracked. I peeled thin strips of mucus from my eyes and opened one of them to harsh blue light.
There was a new sound. An old sound, half-remembered. A soft popping like snow melting under sunlight, uncovering bodies preserved in amber ice. Still the hurgh, hurgh of breathing.
All at once, my eyes were focused.
Soft earth became a hospital bed. Hurgh, hurgh and a breathing tube stopped my swallows. Melting snow was the soft beep of a heart monitor and my eyes – the one I had left – covered with burn dressings.
And the clink of handcuffs linked my wrist to the metal bed.
__________________________________________
With enormous gratitude to ALL the wonderful and generous writers who took part in our blog story.
Chris (on Myspace)
Long Discarded Photo
eli regan
C-Ray
courtney
wildrose5002
andy_21
englishstrawbie
matt_writer
windblownglass
sunshine_shaman
leatherdykeuk
chris (on blogspot)
michael thricksos
lady x
michael
literaryminded
ngo
sam
redsetter
angela h
dan c
bonnie
hedgehog
anonymous
