Something Precious

Once they gripped, twisted, and pried it open from the flaky golden door handle, the cool air rushed over them with a century of forgotten memories. They had been well sealed, well abandoned, and desperate to find their way into someone else’s heart.

The brown fuzzy carpeting on the other side of the door covered the downward staircase, and the Dijon mustard carpeting lined the walls with the cold, stale, dampness of a time long passed. It formed a narrow corridor that loomed ominously over a blackened pit the bottom of which could not be seen, and so, neither the bottom of the stairs…

…but still, peering into it, with cold air expelling towards them, the basement seemed to be breathing.

“Do not confuse darkness with death, my boy,” she once said, “And do not presume light always finds what is most alive... Life can find any nook and every corner, and so anything can be brought to life.”

“Watch your step,” he mumbled. “She was a hoarder.”

They walked cautiously down the creaking stairs with shallow inhales of their own; with the smell of black mold, mildew, and asbestos, filling their lungs, and knew themselves to be dying.

“Life needs to be given, for life to be had,” she once said.

And so they carried on.

The silver-haired man with glasses grumbled to himself as he went, not so low as to hope he might not be heard, but more so to make his displeasures known in case his face was no longer seen by the quickly dimming light of the doorway. He stepped cautiously lower one step at a time, one arm outstretched, and one hand holding firm against the yellow carpet wall, slowly disappearing below. A younger bearded man with a hawkish nose and brown hair continued to quietly follow him in a more assured, but similar manner.

The steps came to an end and they felt the texture beneath their tennis shoes change. The older man reached blindingly into the dark before him

“C’monnn, where is the darn thing,” he growled. “Orrin, see if you can’t find the hanging chain for the light. I know it’s around here somewhere.” He said dragging his feet and straying further into the darkness.

Orrin took one step forward and bumped face first into it. He tugged once sharply, and orange-yellow light filled the room from a powerful single bulb.

The first thing they noticed was the sheer vastness of it. The shelves, and cupboards, and desks and tables some as tall as ten feet, or as small as a foot without an inch of space being wasted atop or below. It seemed to span the entire underside of the house and fashioned a single path for them to walk down.

The second thing they noticed, was the floor, blanketed by generations of rat feces.

The older man wrinkled his nose in disgust. “I told her a million times. I told her this was going to be a pain in the ass when she passed. Everything is covered in rat shit and now we have to throw it all out...”

“I’m sure she didn’t anticipate the rats, Dad.”

“No, Orrin, but had your grandmother not been so stubborn, we could have taken care of this a long time ago.”

Orrin’s father lifted his blue collared shirt over his nose and walked the only path between tables cupboards and file cabinets, and Orrin used his grey t-shirt as a mask and followed.

They zigzagged through sewing stations, walked over chewed up posters, passed over office nooks with dried glitter and glue, scooted beyond soiled mattresses, under lockers, and reached dusty bookshelves, where Orrin decided to linger for a bit as his father went on ahead.

Orrin looked up and gazed at the selection of books. Hand-bound and strung together with some in French, some in Arabic, and some in Armenian. He picked a French one with a blue cover and continued his walk over to his father who had finally reached the end of the maze.

When he reached him, Orrin saw his father standing over a desk, with an open paper box in his left hand. His right hand reached under his glasses to wipe away the tears, and his body shook with the grief of a man who had recently lost his mother.

Inside the box was a stained paper with a crudely done drawing of two stick figures holding hands

Jacob – age 6

Orrin placed his hands on his father’s slouched shoulders and walked him the long arduous walk, back towards the stairs.

“My dear boy,” she once said, “Amongst all the ugliness, amongst all the terrible, horrible things you may see… Amongst all the vile discarded filth-covered throwaways…

…Can you still find what makes something precious?”