Boxes

She popped her finger through the hole in the DVD and spun it round a few times. It took two. It’s right there in the title, Charlie had told Imogen. The game’s called ‘It Takes Two’. That’s because it takes two people. So, you see, you have to play it with me.

But she never had. Charlie had never played It Takes Two with Imogen, or with anyone, in spite of how much she’d ached for it. She could’ve sought out people to play games with, perhaps. But that wasn’t how she worked. Charlie liked to share things with the people she loved. But that wasn’t how Imogen worked.

“Ma’am, are you decent?” A man’s voice at the door broke her trance, and a couple of knocks turned her head. “I’ve got your lunch.”

She stayed silent, as she always did. The man eventually entered, as he always did. She’d chosen to forget his name—each day, she chose a few recent facts to forget, hoping that by clearing a little space, an older memory might find its way forward. She’d quite like that as well. To remember a few of those a bit more clearly.

“My parents played that game,” the man said as he set a plated sandwich on the table nearest her chair. “I haven’t thought about it in years.”

She spun the disc on her finger again, her eyes fixed on the sky through the window. It was embarrassing, she thought, to have been caught like this.

“Okay, ma’am.” The man’s voice quivered a bit. He seemed embarrassed as well. A western meadowlark landed on the ledge outside the window, which gave Imogen a bit of a start. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“You know it, then,” she whispered. The meadowlark seemed to stare in at them. It had stolen her gaze from the sky, and now she couldn’t see past it.

“Yes ma’am. I watched my parents play as a kid. Can’t say I ever played myself, though.”

The meadowlark tilted its head in a curious way, its beak open. Perhaps it was singing, Imogen wondered, though she would have no way to hear—the glass was several inches thick. She felt the corner of her mouth curl into a smile. If she strained, she could almost hear its song in her head. A key that unlocked a memory of a time when the window actually opened. A time when the glass wasn’t several inches thick.

“Would you care to play,” Imogen whispered, “if you can spare the time?”

“Ma’am, I’m not sure.” His voice wavered again. “I’m meant to be on duty.”

“Alright.” Her shoulders dropped, her eyes fell closed. The disc slid off her finger and rattled onto the floor.

“I’m very sorry.” The floor creaked as he stepped backwards out of the room and into the hallway.

She didn’t bother to look. At the edge of her vision lay the sandwich, lavish and uninviting. She was almost positive she hated sandwiches, though she couldn’t say for sure. It wasn’t worth the risk. It could stay there, on the plate, until someone came to remove it. Her eyes went back to the window. The western meadowlark, with its gorgeous yellow breast and sweet song, was gone.

Another rejection. This room was unbearable for her now. Recently she’d found a new room—the room she’d been scavenging for games, for music, for these interesting things.

It might be easier, she thought that night as she lay on the floor, to simply move into the room with the boxes.

When she was in amongst the boxes, the rest of the house felt even more foreign. The kitchen, the library, the living room. These rooms were intricate and elegant, the decor well planned, all perfectly appointed. None of it was for Imogen. Not really. It was staged, a real estate listing, the kind Charlie would show her on Redfin or Zillow, the kind they’d share a laugh over. The prices were so ridiculous, therefore the staging had to match. It was a race to the top. If the house cost two million dollars, must it have sixteen thousand dollars worth of cooking utensils on display? They posited it must, and spent an evening on a formula to determine how much one needed to spend on staged furnishings given the asking price of your home.

It was those evenings that Charlie and Imogen shared a love of, and only those. The work brought them joy individually, but rarely together. Not the arguments, though they did not shy away from an argument. And never the games.

But this man, the man who lingered each evening, enjoyed them. And he enjoyed this room, the one that they’d left alone, the one they hadn’t staged. The one they’d stored her collections in. Cardboard boxes packed full of decayed history, disintegrated plastic, warped vinyl, and a few chairs. It had occurred to Imogen one evening that she had never been in this room. The room at the end of the hallway, past her bedroom and past the bathroom. The room that she had never bothered to explore, because she never bothered to explore at all. How long had these things been trapped in here? How long had she? A decade, perhaps? More? She didn’t think it would be less.

And so Imogen moved into the room with the boxes. Where they’d once tended to find her in the kitchen for her breakfast, and the den for her lunch, and the dining room for her dinner, they’d now find her in this room for all three. In between she’d keep the door shut so as to not be disturbed. And then she’d look in a box. Stacks and stacks of boxes, none of which were labelled, all of which were hers. But it wasn’t hers to know why they’d kept this room from her, why they’d kept these things from her. It took time for her to remember these things were hers at all.

Sometimes a box would overwhelm her. The reason didn’t always make sense. One might contain old letters, old notes, old greeting cards. These were curious, even interesting. But these were fragments of an ordinary life. It was the other boxes that surprised her. A box with some record albums, or a box with some cassette tapes. Was it the indirectness of it all? Emotion exploded out of her as if forced by a coiled spring. The feelings formed a connective tissue between herself and her past in a way the memories could not.

“It frustrates them that you’re in here so much,” said the lingering man to another, some unseen man, someone still in the hallway.

“Well, I’m here by myself at night. So I don’t actually believe they know I’m in here.”

“Maybe I tell them.”

“Do you?”

Imogen grinned as the man flew around the screen. Today’s box appeared at first to contain an old Sega Genesis. She noted after inspection that it was a modern replica, made to look old. But it was just as fun, and it meant the pads worked well. Better than the original, she believed. An original would be long dead at this point.

“Would it bother you if I did?”

“Nothing bothers me. So long as they change the lining in my cage.”

“I’m taking off. Stay frosty.”

“Night.”

The door shut, leaving the two of them alone in the room. The man played the Genesis in silence for hours.

Imogen awoke the next morning as the sun rose, alone in her overstuffed chair. Today would bring another box, and perhaps some new feelings. There weren’t many left. She looked at the stack and noticed something amiss. A new box, smaller and of a different design. sat atop the others. The flaps had been folded shut rather than sealed with tape. She pulled them open with a slight amount of force, desperate to not make a sound.

Most of the box was empty, though what it did contain fascinated her. A printed book, a small leaflet, and a note. The book appeared to be a memoir, and Imogen set it to one side. The leaflet was of poor quality, printed on paper so thin she could scarcely read it if the sun struck the back. She pressed it against the white wall, and the header across the top became clear: The Analog Gazette.

Her hands trembled as she unfolded the paper. A small number of words, curiously handwritten.

I know who you are.