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6/22/2014
"SPACE" Part 1 - A Short Serial Story
There isn't much space in my closet. I navigate beneath the sloped ceiling and narrow confines through a long thin tributary of soft boxes filled with future nostalgia - old report cards, broken toys, a nude Barbie that I'd bitten off the toes and fingers from (she'd stepped on a landmine, poor dear!), rows of billowing dresses I'd never worn nor ever would I, and shards of broken wall plaster that tattoo my knees with white powdery indents. I had crawled over a carpet tack strip the last time I'd entered. The consequential tetanus boosters were highly unpleasant but I couldn't be deterred as last time I'd vowed that I'd finally open the tiny door at the closet's end.
For a moment I see movement at the edge of my flashlight beam and I start - heart in my throat! - but it's just a tiny spider building a gorgeous fractal art piece in order to earn her unsuspecting dinner.
I shift aside a final decomposing box and there it is! The attic door. The mysterious and flimsiest of barricades, separating my insatiably curious self self from adventure, intrigue, and all-knowing. The door that not only (likely) prevented the squirrels that infest our walls from domestic ingress, but a delectably forbidden space.
Earlier this morning was a regular Spring Saturday, bursting with singular purpose - the potential for the realisation of the "coulds" and "maybes". Innumerable hopes and dreams, sown by all school children who live for the dismissal bell's reverentially-anticipated chimes on every endless Friday, were yet again to be reaped. I'd therefore decided to harangue my harried mother by re-inquiring about the tiny door.
She'd been dusting whilst nursing my brother. He'd clung to her, hoisted against her body by a beige fleece sling, quite resembling a contented natal primate. She, despite his beatific and worshiping gaze through his heavy lids, wore a scowl and long tresses resplendent with cobwebs. A macabre bridal veil of sorts for a marriage with a djinn.
"Don't go in there! There's only storage, planks, and insulation. It's dangerous!! Just stay out already." Her tone was overly shrill and I'd expected as such. My mother, so quick to anger and yet twice as quick to love, has been especially exhausted as of late. A newborn drains more than your teats. They are beautiful and soft little cherubic vampires.
Though I've totally adored my brother from the time he was born (of course!), I Also know that I will Never want babies. I enjoy sleeping in, reading, & quiet far too much to sacrifice these essential restorers of sanity that abruptedly disappear the day a new mummy returns from her midwife's birthing centre. I also see my mum's perpetual sadness, like a private secret confided within, only to be betrayed by the most two-faced of eyes, & I know that she both loves us AND yearns for her carefree youth. I NEVER wish to feel that.
Her transformation from a soft and feminine security to a shrill and nervously-exhausted shell seems to have happened overnight. Her extreme fear and reluctance to assuage my simple desire for a Coraline-style adventure only further proves that her real "self" may be completely gone. Yet as angry as I feel over her blatantly misinformed fears regarding attics and tiny doors, my pity for her grows in relation to the smudge of grime on her sweating upper lip as she cleans.
"Don't ask again! Now then, would you please change Antony's diaper?", and with a practiced pass rivaled only by the choreography of a Ballerina or an NBA All-Star, she handed me my brother.
I finished Antony's changing & excused myself to read in my room, and now here I sit. I feel like I'm atoning for my planned disobedience by reflecting upon how hard it must be to work non-stop & raise children without help (I've no idea about our fathers' identities, nor even of the existence of any grandparents. Asking once and being answered in sobs has soured me on the topics).
Fortunately, despite feeling guilty for my mum's plight, I can't argue with the anticipatory chills I get just from gazing at this tiny door. The possibilities of wonderment that lay just beyond my flickering flashlight's murky light is significantly quashing any guilt-fueled trepidation.
I chide myself for worrying about the physical world when I have the potentially ethereal just a half-metre beyond me, so I give the door a push. Of course it sticks tight. Humidity and wood are rarely my obliging friends - take it from someone who lives in a very old converted duplex (apparently built, I digress, without the assistance of a single level!).
Disappointment floods through me, embalming me with a cold panic, nearly snuffing my excitement, but I'm not one who often gives up, so I feel the door's edges for a latch, a hinge, or even a knot in the wood.
Instead, I feel carved writing in the wood.
Fun With Numbers Stations
Fun With Numbers Stations
Part 1:
(*A True Event From 6/21/14...)
My (beloved best friend, boyfriend, & partner in all things creative, hilarious, absurd, cute, & spooky) Davy downloaded an Audible.com audio-book featuring, not a 'friendly neighbourhood rapper' (as is the seemingly most frequent & benevolent sort of "Featuring"), but freaking HOURS of *Number Stations* recordings.
I was intrigued, but when we both gave the recordings an initial listen (for a horror-filled 15-20 seconds), we decided they were far too disturbing to continue on with, never mind to even attempt to decipher (we {as in "Me"} were going to solve them, dammit!, despite our {...
Sigh... Ok. "My"...} utter lack of specific, single-use ciphers, as We {"I"} Had Chutzpah!).
A week after the initial 'listen-preview' of the recordings, was last night (6/21/14) - the night I'm currently writing about, albeit incredulously & in a disorienting, surrealistic mindset . Now my Brain, whilst quite often über capable of maintaining the "cease-fire truce" - specifically drafted in accordance with the planned preservation of my rapidly diminishing Dignity - WILL occasionally break said truce (cos my Brain is occasionally a Fucking. Duplicitous. Douchebag.) & so it was broken last night. My Icklie-Wicklie Brainy-Poo slipped into "Hey Everyone!! I'm a fricking 12-y.o. at a slumber party, outfitted with a bad-choice itch & a surplus of free-time", & it was under such a singularly peculiar set of circumstances that I was inspired & hence very keen to challenge my Davy to a game that I'd made up on the (silliness) fly.
The game? Nay - t'was not so much Pinochle, Patience, nor even Blind Man's Bluff, but rather... Well... I'm all like, "Hey? Da-a-vee-ee? Let's play something fun! Let's play 'How long can u stay in the dark bathroom whilst listening to that scary-arsed shit on Full volume'?". He rather graciously declined, & therefore I was quick to volunteer instead (Dearest Reader: O' Prithee, but remember this! My Brain had obviously gone 'rogue' at the onset of last night's festivities - My own Corpus Collossum, my Amygdala, & even my Primitive & mincing Brain Stem had essentially pulled off a Heist of my sensibilities, the likes of which hadn't been seen since my first viewing of the Usual Suspects. It first Declared & then boldly executed an all-out mutiny upon every last morsel of the sparsely bequeathed good sense I'd ever possessed).
The proposed 'game' (Fun With Numbers Stations?) felt a Bit like a twist on "Bloody Mary" to me in that I'd also fully intended, right then & there, to become fully over-scared - ultimately, to behave in a situationally-induced "Amber-Is-Quite-Awesomely-Hilarious-&-Therefore-Amazing-To-Davy". I'm Nothing if Not an Entertainer (En-teh-tay-nah, a là Gervais' David Brent? Yeah?). This was just one more phase in my mating ritual or something?
I entered the lavatory, shut the door behind myself, turned off the lights, & hit "play" on the iPad's Audible app. The recording began immediately, & though it wasnt super creepy - I knew what to expect this time! - I ran out giggling in 3 seconds. Most importantly, my 'audience', Davy (& OH what an excellent audience he so dependably was/is!), found it all just too funny and therefore Everything's going incredibly well!
I'd like to say, "Noooooooo" but alas, I cannot spare you, Dearest Reader, from nary a nanosecond of my queer experience. But I digress...
* * * * * * * *
Fun With Numbers Stations
*F$CK!!!!
I entered the washroom & hit play right where the recording had stopped. I was even thinking - sort of - that I maybe might want to be just a little scared - to just feel that something - that intense & titillating chill invoked over nothing truly consequential; something almost primal, nostalgic, forgotten, ethereal; something that's currently very much absent in the lives of Most Ordinary Adults - that sweet little thrill of excitement, & the Rush - the blissfully Climactic jolt - that accompanies a realised & goosebumped electric anticipation (a near-Magick present only in the daily lives of children with amazing imaginations).
But I couldn't drum up an intense emotion for shit. Not, at least, over THAT sort of nonsensical 'tomfoolery' (Yea! I'm a grumpy oldfart teacher with that word!!). I stayed about a 55-60 seconds in the washroom, making faces in the mirror in the iPad's dim glow.
Suddenly, I felt quite nauseous. I was not remotely feeling anything akin to fear (the Numbers Station recordings had gone from macabre-to-monotone very quickly), nor had I even been thinking that my nausea had anything at all to do with my audio of choice. I felt, ultimately, that I needed to end the silly game I'd begun so that I could guzzle ginger ale & bismuth. I concluded then that I'd DASH from the bathroom, giggling & screeching in "fear" for the amusement of my Davy, & then I'd beeline to the Pepto Bismal.
I went to open the visable & completely-NOT-locked door (I could plainly see this cos of the luminescent iPad, despite the "dark bathroom" ideal of that sort of spooky game), & I grasped the knob & began to turn it.
The knob turned slightly in my grasp - and then stopped. Like when someone is playing a prank & holding the knob on the opposite side of the doort?
I was like, "Davy? Ok... Very funny, Davy, now let go cos I want out & I have a tummy ache" (I was still completely calm - just nauseous). Davy insisted he wasn't doing anything, & blah-blah-blah, & then I panicked, & was stuck in there for 30 crazily-long seconds, the door knob moving, door not opening, then the knob not moving, still visibly not locked.
I pressed stop on the iPad with my right hand, still working the knob frantically with my left, & the minute that the recording stopped its recitation? That's when the door just opened as easily as it ever had prior to last night. I emerged, frantic, energised, genuinely terrified, & I made David swear on the lives of those he loved that he hadn't done anything (he wouldn't have, anyhow, as he's NEVER been a prankster to me cos of the whole PTSD thingy, and he's definitely not known for lying to anyone.).
I calmed down a bit after 10 minutes of ranting, pacing, testing & re-testing the lavatory doorknob (which has never stuck before or since), but I had to pee, & so I calmed down, steeled my nerves, & headed on back into the now well-lit washroom. As I began to enter the washroom - the door 80% ajar - the door itself slammed 'at' me halfway in & I deflected it with my arms.
True. Wtf?
*For the uninformed, Numbers Stations are bizarrely creepy ham (spelled correctly?) radio transmissions - with an approximately 110 year history! - that have no explanation. They emanate from100% unjammable signals, featuring someone reading strings of numbers (someone is often either a computerised or 'real' child's or woman's voice with a flat affect) followed by a snippet of sound or music (ie. discordant ice cream truck { servicing only those specifically doomed to walk eternally along Styx without a boat?}). Some think they're a spy thing? Russia is frequently blamed, lol...).
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