A knock at the door

A knock at the door, possibly. Not really a frank, unambiguous knock per se, more like a rap or even a scratching sound. Almost as if one of the bare, spindly tree branches you can see through the window had slowly clawed the plastic screen door. A strange sound really, come to think of it, and you are not expecting anyone. You rarely are, to be honest. To the point where switching into social mode, the give and take of greetings, half smiles and other required acting feels rustier and rustier.

It’ll be one of those kids again, you think to yourself. The new ones in the neighbourhood, those refugee types…where were they from again? Yemen? Iraq? Or was it Albania? Hard to know nowadays, what with the constant flow of them, both on TV and, it seems, in what used to be a peaceful, quiet neighbourhood.

You get up from the reclining chair, slowly, limb by limb, grunting in pain and discomfort as the crunching from your back echoes the popping of your knees and god knows what else—the symphony of decrepitude. So much for the Omega 3s and other supplements, and of course the doctors nowadays just brush you off when you speak of pain, fearing they will ‘enable’ another opiate addict or whatever other politically correct crap they are fed in their so-called education.

Sweeping these thoughts away—your constant, noisy companions—you head over to the front door, a pronounced limp to your left hip, and that tightness in the shoulders and chest. Hard to know if that is ‘just’ physical or a reflection of mental tension; the doctor did advise yoga and the like last time you saw him, come to think. Namby-pamby nanny state nincompoops! What next? They couldn’t be trusted, look at how they’d bungled that whole vaccine malarkey 20 years back, and the slow trickle of quarantines, lockdowns and other infringements on our freedoms that had followed. No, better to ignore all that noise and take your own chances, that was your point of view, and you were happy to share it. Not that many people were asking for a piece of your mind, come to think of it…

-‘I’m coming, I’m coming’ , you moan out petulantly, as you undo the deadbolt and the second lock on the door, opening to the white plastic screen door. No one there. Bloody typical, isn’t it? The scallywags went and scampered after pulling you from your reverie. You scan your front lawn (in dire need of a mowing), the old, gnarly rose bushes (as old as the house!), the chain-link fence and the gate. Beyond that, the usual suburban street, calm, deserted even at this time of day, people having better to do than bear witness to your physical and mental ramblings. Then your eyes alight upon it, lying at your feet.

A box, wrapped in brown paper, deposited on your doorstep by god knows who, and god knows why. You shake your head slightly, frowning, clenching your teeth, bending over (with difficulty, gingerly) to pick it up, whilst eyeing the horizon, tensed against some potential assault or the other, shadowy worries that people the minds of the chronically lonely.

The package isn’t heavy, and nor is it inordinately light. It seems well-balanced, although there is a bit of movement, something shifting in there, when you gently tilt side to side. It feels like it could be metal, or stone, something hard and dense at any rate. This is when it hits you: the terror rises, and you jump back, dropping the box on the concrete patio that sits between the door and the lawn. What if it was one of those terrorist things? A bomb, or one of those bio weapon things? After all, the pandemic started with something made in a lab (you are pretty sure that was confirmed, at least, you do vaguely remember seeing a documentary about it, on one of the reputable TV channels, a few years back) and now, a couple of decades on, you have heard that is possible to make these things in one’s garage, as it were. Something about downloadable DNA and 3D printers, or some such thing that evades you. It’s hard to make sense of the masses and masses of data out there. Not that you’re even bothered to anymore, it is fair to say you’ve given up on that aspect of society, just like society seems to have given up on its duties, such as at least pretending to be truthful, not to mention taking care of its citizens. All that seems to have gone down in a whirlwind of mergers and acquisitions of news outlets by billionaires, in parallel with decades of ‘austerity’ (for the less well-off, that is, not the wealthy, who did quite well, thank you very much!). Anyway, all this to say that what’s in this box could be dangerous. And, looping back to your earlier thoughts, you remember the increasing streams, the hordes even, of immigrants over the past years, and it becomes clear that the two must be connected! Do those people, after all, not profess to hate our values and freedoms? Are there not frequent stories of them blowing themselves up or running tens of people over on the street? So, what should you do about this suspicious parcel? There you are, pondering on your doorstep, starting to feel the winter chill as you didn’t think of donning a coat just to pop out briefly, and…

-‘Roger!’…’I say, Roger!’

You are interrupted in your frigid reverie by the sing-songy, wheedling voice. Stewart, of course. That old hippie was all you needed.

-‘What’s up Roger? Finally thinking about mowing that lawn are you? What’s that parcel you received? Stocking up on ye olde vino, are we? Needed on these cold days, right?’

Seems like there won’t be getting away from the self-satisfied old prat without a modicum of engagement. You turn towards the silvery-haired, bespectacled figure, leaning over his chain-link garden fence, shears in hand.

-‘Oh hello Stewie (that always riles him, you smile inwardly), how are you? Not sure what this is actually, there was a knock on the door and I saw this, haven’t seen any of the little rascals around, have you?’

Stewart frowns at the term. Here we go you think to yourself, probably another lecture about how these kids are not bad at all, nothing different from when they were young men themselves, and also how about stepping outside of one’s bubble and trying to at least make peace, if not welcome, the changes in the neighbourhood? You already feel the weight of this upcoming talk, and, meanwhile, that strange parcel is still there on the lawn, where you dropped it. Its very blankness, its innocent, mute, non-descript appearance almost feels like a taunt, as if it were saying ‘why aren’t you opening me? What are you afraid of exactly?’. A bit like that time, in your twenties, with your best friend Michael, sitting on that sun-dappled couch, chatting away, fantasising about the future…who would be a doctor, who an airline pilot, with that feeling of endless possibility that defines those years. Then, a lingering smile had led to a hand on a shoulder, time seeming to slow while it converged towards some momentous change…but, just like in the case of the parcel, you’d dropped things and mentioned something about an essay to write, and didn’t Michael also have some work to do back home? You’d seen very little of one another after that, until the friendship died off and you’d completely lost touch. You’d then gone on to do what you felt was expected of you in life, following some rules that seemed to somehow have taken root in your mind. Instead of the fancy, prestigious job you’d imagined, it was something more workaday in the end, office administrator in some small company. A humdrum, 9-5 job, but it paid the bills. Married, twice, actually, but no children. These relationships had also seemed to peter out until, in the end, ‘there was no there there’. Would things have been different if you’d followed your passion, your sense of excitement, instead of opting for what you thought was, somehow, expected? Taking those jumps that life seems to offer, however fleetingly and ambiguously? And was this box, this unassuming box, not inviting you to do just that?

-‘I say Roger, you seem to have drifted a bit? Are you quite alright?’. Stewart is leaning forwards, his voice slightly raised, yet his words seem more and more muffled to you, almost dreamlike. You nod at him, without saying aa word. Nobody can reach you now, as you plunge back into the dreamscape of the package. What if this was, as unlikely as it seems, the key to taking those steps that you evaded in the past? To take this one chance for you to be you? Sure, the opportunities of the past would not come back, of course, but it was not unheard of for people past a certain age to get a new lease on life…the silver foxes or whatever they called them now. Go travelling, discover places, take up skydiving, and, heck, why not try and re-connect with Michael? You’d heard that he’d had some health concerns lately, some heart stuff, but he was doing okay. And then, why not, face those strange youths in the neighbourhood, the ones with the weird names and sometimes ‘ethnic’ outfits, the ones you thought were playing a prank on you with this box. What if it was possible to reset, start by returning their hellos on the street, not pointedly changing street sides when a gaggle of them were ‘blocking’ you?

You head towards the box, still lying there on the lawn, and now seeming to shimmer in the pale winter light…how is that even possible, you ask yourself, boxes don’t shimmer. It reminds you of that mysterious suitcase they were all after in Pulp Fiction, the one that just emitted a golden shine when opened away from the viewer’s eyes…We never did find out what was in there, but the fun was all in the chase, in the excitement, the not knowing and the hope, the sheer hope of something transcendent in there. Something that’d blow your mind, take you out of your everyday reality, the disappointments, the fading hope, and now, those bloody joint pains and other ailments. The box shines, tantalising, as you approach, bending over stiffly to open it. You feel the smooth brown paper surrounding the box, the twine tied around it. Somewhere in the distance, Stewart’s nagging voice is calling out to you ‘Roger! Roger! Are you OK?’ and you hear him drop his shears to the ground. Maybe he, too, is scared of what could be in this box. After all, even though he plays it cool with his weed, his guitars and being half cut all the time, he’s your age and has never lived outside of the neighbourhood, his old, shabby house inherited from his mum. You’d often ask him, jokingly, if her mummified corpse with in there somewhere, like Norman Bates’ mother in Psycho. He did not seem to take kindly to that which, in a way, kind of gave more reason to suspect that he might very well have been dabbling in some taxidermy here and there. Ha! It was so good to put people like that, the politically correct, in their place!

You tear the paper now, uncovering a cardboard box with no markings on it, and slide your hand under one of the flaps, trembling with a mixture of fear and also, it must be said, increasing excitement, and even elation. The shimmering halo around the box grows, reminding you once more of the Wallace suitcase in Tarantino’s gangster movie…you pull open the flaps, reaching the contents of the box, finally, your fear gone now, driven simply by a childlike excitement, like opening a Christmas present. The sight takes your breath away…it’s…

-‘Yes, I just found him like this….he came out of the house, rambling a bit, not making much sense, saying something about a box, a box… It’s just shocking, we didn’t talk much but he seemed healthy enough.’

Stewart is talking to the medics who surround you in the garden. Their sense of urgency has diminished now that it is obvious that you are gone. They say it was probably painless and quite quick, a heart attack or a massive stroke, not a bad way to go, all things told, especially after a certain age. And look, one of them says, even seems like the old boy was smiling in his last moments.