Foxglove
Casket
Orphan
Topaz
& Hermit
I guess I'll name it Pandora's Envelope because Greek mythology just kinda happened. Enjoy.
It’s a bright day.
Not exactly what you’d expect from a funeral.
Disney sure has some misleading little fuckers.
Spring, as I have always seen it, is a time for weddings,
little girls in Easter dresses, and grilling parties with the neighbors we
not-so-secretly hate. Today was supposed to be like that. Well, I guess it
still is, and everyone else is going about their day as if nothing really
happened because none of them really knew him. The Hermit, I mean.
And neither did I, for that matter.
He squatted in a run-down house on the outskirts of town.
I wondered why nobody ever threw him out. Now I think I
know why.
Yesterday I went to visit “his” house. I expected there
to be piles of trash and other miscellaneous paraphernalia. I brought gloves
just in case. The door was, miraculously, intact and swung open with little
persuasion from my hand. Where I had expected spiders, there was a well-tended
fire place. Where I had expected broken glass, there were carefully folded
newspapers. Where I expected shattered windows, I found foxgloves in the
windowsill.
It wasn’t at all what it looked like from the outside.
Still far from luxurious, but charming in its own way. This wasn’t just a
squatting hole. This was a home.
I walked over to the windowsill to smell the light
perfume of the orange and pink flowers. Sunlight danced through the dew that
was still left over from the night. Outside, the woods that extended past the neighborhood’s
back yards threw patterned splotches of the same sunlight down on the damp
earth beneath the trees. I understood
why the hermit had picked this place.
There was no dust to be found anywhere, no dirt. Only
small mementos of a life that had been lived sometimes in haste and sometimes at leisure in irregular
intervals. Upon rifling through the newspapers, I found that many of them were
from before my mother was born. There were more than just
newspapers in the stack. There were two business cards, a photograph of a woman
on a rock overhanging a large gorge, three small pamphlets with foreign
languages written on them, and one letter.
The letter immediately caught my attention. The envelope
was old, hand folded, and a deep topaz blue.
Curiosity has always been my weak point. I can’t help it.
The letter was unopened. Why was it unopened? Why keep a letter he had never even seen?
It was that fucking box all over again.
I know that I shouldn’t look into unopened things. I
thought I had learned that lesson. I was sure that the whole of my existence
was based on that one simple, stupid rule. I wasn’t supposed to open the box. “Do
not open the box.” That was the one rule. The only rule. My only rule. I could
do whatever the hell else I wanted.
But no.
I wanted what was inside of the box.
That. Damn. Box.
As I said. Curiosity. Big, big, weak point. Let it
suffice to say that after releasing all of the monsters and terrors and other
horrible things back into the world, I didn’t think a letter would do much
harm. I opened the letter and nothing happened.
That I was aware of, or am aware of, anyway.
I pulled a thick piece of yellowed paper from the
envelope.
The note was, to say the least, disturbing.
At the bottom of the page it was signed,
“From
your favorite,
The Orphan”
I am sitting in my favorite chair made by an old Indian
woman that my great, great god-mother bought from an acquaintance. Don’t ask why I
have a great, great god-mother. It’s a very complicated and lengthy story to
tell, and I’m lazy. I am also sleepy. I am drinking tea of the chamomile kind
as well. My chair is comfy, my tea warm, and my body tired, but I can’t sleep.
I couldn’t sleep at all last night. It was agony. All I kept
thinking about were the contents of the letter.
The sender, specifically.
I have a good idea of who it was, but why?
Then again, she considers me lower than a hermit
(even though she obviously had dealings with one), and I think I’m pretty good
for someone who has literally brought the very worst upon mankind. Heh. When
you say it like that… I guess I probably am lower than any hermit that has ever
walked the Earth. I can’t even blame Dionysus anymore. That part of the myths
is completely overlooked.
You see, all of those things that have been discussed in
stories since before we knew personal hygiene was a thing are actually happening
now. Like today, actually. Or two years ago. That was when I was given the box.
The stories get scrambled after a while though, being sped through time-space
as they happen, both in the past and future. Of course little things are going
to be mixed up.
But not me.
Not the greatest failure.
My story has no falsities whatsoever, they made sure of
that.
Dionysus is a different story altogether, which is exactly
why he’s so easily blamed. I have absolutely no shame in admitting that he has
taken the fall for at least 103 other mishaps caused by me. He kinda deserves
it.
I finish my tea and don a solemn black dress. It’s almost
time.
I stand and walk the short distance across town to the cemetery.
There is virtually no one there except for a few old ladies who come of their
own kindness and the preacher who knows virtually nothing about the old man in the
casket.
The Hermit.
The Hermit.
Cronus.
As they ready the casket for its decent into the Earth, I
place the letter on top.
I’ll seal this mystery up before I can bring one more
grief to mankind.
