The Creature
Boxes pile high all around her; still there remains much to be packed. She sorts, chooses, discards. Too many things. Half a lifetime’s collection of books, papers, knickknacks, kitchenware, tools, photo albums. Some things she hasn’t seen in years. Memories of another time.
The room is quiet. Only she is there, glancing through old letters, diaries recording events she has since tried to forget. A rustling somewhere between the boxes breaks the silence and makes her start. She peers through a gap between the stacks. Surely, surely that’s something black scuttling around? A mouse, a cat run in through the open sliding-glass door while she wasn’t looking? She hopes not, doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t even want to think about what else it might be.
The afternoon wears on; the last rays of the sun slanting in through the door throw long shadows among the piles. Box stacked on box multiplied in oblongs stretching across the floor.
This time she hears nothing, but she’s sure she sees a little face peeping out between the gap, like a chipmunk in a woodpile. But this isn’t a woodpile out of doors, this is no sweet chipmunk. It’s something here. In her house. A rat? Oh, God, please, no. She couldn’t handle that. When she looks closer, nothing is there; she’s relieved.
There it is again. That rustling. She feels an odd clutching at her heart, a nagging, like something nibbling away at her insides. It scares her. A drink, she thinks, would be welcome now.
She pours herself a double measure of Scotch and sits, glass in hand, while the shadows grow even longer and the room becomes dim. She tries to relax, but memories have been stirred up through the afternoon’s findings and with the memories, an uncanny feeling grows inside. Ugly memories. Words she recalls that shouldn’t have been spoken, looks that wounded, impatience and irritations, deceits and disappointments. Disillusions, distress. Dark moments in her life. Pits of despair. Memory grows black as the night outside grows black, too.
There. A flicker, a gleam about halfway up the stack. Something is there.
A shadowy paw, like that monster of memory, stretches out towards her, comes closer, grows bigger as it comes. The creature appears, jeers at her with a silent, toothless grin, towers above her now, commanding eyes draw her in, devour her. Memory overwhelms her.
When she wakes, it is late morning. Sunshine floods the room, lights up the extent of devastation. Boxes ripped open, contents spilled across the floor. She focuses on a torn photograph here, letters once bundled scattered over the carpet. They mean nothing to her. All memories are gone.
