Button Eyes

I don’t know how I landed here.

I’ve been to Paris, New York City, Rome and Beijing. I’ve travelled through Europe, through America, through Australia. I’ve been on trains, planes, hot air balloons and trams.

I’ve been to many places, seen many things.

I was rich. I was popular. I was well loved. The parties I attended were in sky scraping buildings, patios and cocktail bars.

I don’t know how I landed here.

I’ve climbed up the Eiffel Tower. Stood at its peak. I’ve sat in leather booths. Watching yellow taxis stop and go with the lights. I’ve stood at the crumbling Colosseum. Imagined hundreds of spectators admiring me. I’ve walked along the thousand bricks of the Great Wall. Rising and falling with the curves of the land.

We were so close. Intimate. Like two lovers travelling the world. Travelling through present and past.

I don’t know how I landed here.

***

Silk lined and a exterior. I hung next to siblings, some older and some smaller. I was the middle. Size ten.

A young girl entered the store. She was alone. When she got to my rack I chose to ignore her. I limply lounged on my hanger. She stopped and ran her fingers around the cusp of my sleeve. I almost shivered. She touched me more until she took me off the hanger and draped me across her shoulders. I hung on tight. She stared into the mirror for a while. I didn’t really know if she was looking at me or herself.

She returned two days later. This time she came straight for me. Picked me up. Ignored my price. Bought me with her MasterCard. Credit and a pin.

When we arrived at my new home, she showed me to the man of the house.

‘What do you think?’ she twirled.

‘It’s nice,’ he said and wrapped us in his arms, ‘Now take it off.’

A padded coat hanger became my home. It was beautiful. Lace, pink and soft. So soft. I was surrounded by other elegant clothes, all new, some with tags still on. I relaxed and slept in my new home.

Over the many months, perhaps years, I became used to sleeping in suitcases. I was always laid out on top, protecting the rest of the clothing. We travelled through foreign languages, changing dialects and strange lisps. He travelled with us sometimes. Hugging, pushing his woolen warmth against us. Changing his tone with each town. The threesome, the lovers, the travellers.

One unusual chilly summers night she wore me to a roof top party. Her man attending another party on a patio. She wore her new dress which matched my colourings. She mingled and swirled. Moving through conversations and stories. She accidently spilt six dots of champagne on me. I noticed, she didn’t. I felt dizzy soon after.

On the way home she fell into a taxi with a man from the party. He was tall, unfamiliar and also dizzy. I could tell. They laughed and chatted. Slurred words and unfinished sentences. He kept placing his hand on her shoulder and arm. My shoulder, my arm. We arrived at a random house. It was huge with plenty of windows. The giggling pair went straight to the bedroom.

I ended up crumpled on the floor. Clothes were flying everywhere. A black g-string landed on me and cuddled in. I had a perfect view of the tall man’s closet. It was beautiful. Filled with suits, jackets and some very good-looking coats. All new. I lay staring at them.

Later, I was returned to my lace coat hanger. The next day, the fight happened. It woke everyone up.

Yelling and crying. Crying and screaming. The dress hung seven hangers down. We were the only ones who knew.

I don’t know how I landed here.

***

When I awoke, I was in a ball of clothes with two arms wrapped around. Bobbing and jumping. Lumped into a pile on the floor, we lay sprawled and combined. Forgotten. Used. Old.

There was a lady staring down at us. She had a stern face. Eyes that looked permanently frustrated. She picked up the black g string, grunted, and threw it in the bin. I tensed. The dress got an almost sincere nod of approval. It was saved.

She lifted me up by my shoulders and looked up and down. Her frustration did not leave. I stole a breath. A sudden pierce of my skin caused a new edition to my cotton. A tag hung from my sleeve and I was labelled.

A quick rub down. Pat, pat, pat. I ended up on a wire coat hanger. It was thin and hard. Digging into my shoulders, from underneath. The cold wire sent chills through me. I was put in, what I assumed, was the sections for coats. Shoved between leather and pleather, everything was tight.

Eternal dust. No air. Trapped in a timeless place. Lost in a pile of threads. Waiting to be found. Waiting to be discovered. Waiting for air.

At three o’clock in the afternoons, the sun shone in. Through the window, a beam of light. It caressed a bookshelf. Silked over each pale book spine. Jumped back at itself in the mirror. It hit my left sleeve, my hip and moved all the way to my bottom hem.

Eighty-four days passed. Dust was gathering on my shoulders. Clogging my pores. My left side began to fade. My beautiful vibrant colour turning bland. Old.

I watched more and more people enter. No one special. No one interesting. The sun was still creeping through the glared window. I assumed it was still days of summer. While the sun was out, the coats collected dust. The browsers kept walking along the claustrophobic isle. The coat’s sleeves desperately reaching out to the passing people. They brushed past us. They never stopped. I longed to rest on their shoulders. Or even just for them to run their fingers down me.

At 5 o’clock on Fridays and 4 o’clock on every other day the lights are switched off. The door is closed. The sounds settle. Then it’s nothing but creaks. Cracks and shuffles. I know there’s a mouse who lives here. I know his scratch. I know the pitter patter of his feet. Weaving through the dusty racks. I hang and wonder what it eats.

Once the night has fallen, no light shines through. There are no street lights or traffic lights, the dark creeps through the shop. The shadows become swallowed. Days blend into dark. Nights blend into colour. Time blends into an eternity.

One day a small child and her mother came in the store. They wandered around for a while, her mother looking at odds and ends. The child threaded her way through the racks of stale clothes. Pulling at feathers, fraying hems and scuffed shoes. She reached my section and crawled directly under me. Giggling and grinning. Laughing with ignorant bliss. She stretched her legs as she stood up and placed herself in between me and my neighbour. She was facing me, her nose squished into my torso and I wondered how she could breathe.

She then pulled me off my wire noose and lay me out under my home. Her fingers drew around my buttons as she sang an unknown song. And then as quick as it happened it was over. Her mother grabbed her tiny hand and dragged her off me. She was gone and I was left lifeless on the floor.

It was a cold day when she walked in. She was young but not like the others I’d seen. She had un-brushed hair. Dirt under her fingernails. She muttered to the store clerk. Her eyes unconsciously filling with tears. She had a handful of small notes. I couldn’t hear much. But I saw the aged store clerk change. The permanent crease on her brow loosened slightly. She walked towards to me. Closer, Closer. I held my breath as she pulled me out and dusted me off. Tiny specks leaped into the air.

The old lady lay me down in front of her. I was discoloured. I was dirty. I was tired. The young girl smiled. Like I was beautiful, like I was fresh. We fell in love.

I was not wrapped in a tissue paper cocoon. I was not put in a cardboard bag with ribbon handles. I was pushed into a plastic bag. Crumpled and twisted. My new owner smiled and hugged me as she left the store.

I felt free.

***

She jiggled the door until it clicked and creaked open. The sounds filled the room. A vibrating intrusion to a forgotten building. It was hollow, bare. There was a small light coming from the corner where we were heading. She tiptoed through the blackness. Her steps barely echoing against the high roof.

‘You were gone for a while.’ A husky voice came through the darkness.

‘I went shopping,’ my owner said. A small barrel held a decent fire. Burning paper and wood. A face appeared from behind the flames. Cackling like a hyena.

‘What did you get then? A bag from Louis Vuitton? No. 5 of Miss Chanel?’ he asked with a chuckle.

‘I bought a coat,’ she said and squeezed me tight before she took me out of the plastic bag. ‘It’s real wool, the lady in the shop gave it to me so cheap.’ She draped me over her tiny shoulders as I was wrapped around her waist.

‘Looks warm,’ he said.

‘It is, it has silk on the inside and the colours are so beautiful,’ she looked at her arm, my arm, and smiled, ‘I’m never taking it off.’

We hung in the building for a few days. They had a barrel with a fire going, its long flames licking its surrounding darkness. Old mattresses, cardboard, a sleeping bag. The husky voiced man, she called Beater, had small amounts of food they shared. They sat for hours talking about things and stuff. Beater told stories about his adventures with whiskey. Travelling south to find bars with nothing around but desert. Walking through towns which time had forgotten. Sitting in bars with men in cowboy hats and women in corsets.

I soon became friends with the cat that hung with them. Its irritating fur clinging to me, balling up in my creases. It walked in and out of there like a pet. Bringing in dead birds and mice to feed on. My girl would hold it and stroke its scrawny body. It would rub its head on her, me. I think she liked the warmth it sent through her.

‘I’m going to name her,’ she said one night.

‘Are you sure it’s a girl?’ Beater laughed. She lifted up the cat and trying to find something, or nothing.

‘It’s a girl, I think,’ she smiled, the cat hissed and jumped onto my shoulders. Rubbing its head on her hair, ‘Maybe I’ll call it Ella, or Sam.’

‘Sam’s a boy’s name’ he said.

‘Beater’s not even a real name. It’s Sam.’ She said and smiled.

Most mornings we get up and walk out the same creaky door. Some mornings Beater would look at the tin roof and simply say, ‘Not today’ and they kill time with words and lyrics. When we leave, she is carrying some cardboard. Wearing a hat. Weaving, ducking, stomping out the snow. We eventually arrive at a main street, endless rows of people, traipsing, strutting. She leans against an old doorway for a moment, catching her breath. She then slithers down, into a little ball and places the cardboard sign against her knees. The hat comes off her head and is placed on the street. This became our ritual.

As the clouds turned the dark grey of the aging winter, the cold chilled the concrete. It ran through me and into her bones. She sat hands out stretched, occasionally rubbing them together. The sign on her knees rustled in the slight breeze and sleet. ‘Please give,’ was scrawled on the cardboard in charcoal. Two simple words.

People kept walking past, heads down. Eyes down. Ignoring the small girl, shivering in the snow. Hours passed slowly. Foot after foot, shoe after shoe, coat after coat. One or two dollars dropped in the hat, occasionally, she would grab them and tuck them in my inner pocket. Warm against her breast. When she rose, her frozen joints cracked. We then begin the trek to the giant building, home.

‘How much?’ Beater coughed one night.

‘Fourteen dollars and twenty-five cents.’ She emptied her pocket onto the mattress he was spread out on.

‘I’ll go pick something up tomorrow.’

She curled up on a mattress and wrapped me tight around her. I spooned her as we both drifted off to sleep. Listening to the crackling of the slowly dying fire.

The next morning seemed cold, a chill biting at my threads. The fire was down to smouldering coals. Beater rolled over and began shoving crumpled paper in the fire. The flames lit up. Beater took the money from the mattress and walked to the door. Creak, creak. He was gone.

When she awoke she danced around the fire. Twirling and bending until she could absorb the most heat. She sat on Beater’s mattress, sighed and grabbed a packet of dried noodles. Opening the top, she sprinkled the mini packet of flavouring over them. Some specks creeping through the noodle maze, some drifting over the lip of the packet. Landing in between my tiny threads, nesting in.

My girl got up and stoked the fire with a stick, the tip catching alight for a second. She put on some wood and it finally gave some heat. She picked up a tattered copy of an old crime novel. Some pages seemed missing but she read on. Somewhat filling the gaps with her own imagination.

A few hours passed and she began looking at the door. A first only every ten minutes. Then every seven. Then every three. Until finally she got up, book in hand, and crossed the darkened room to the door. She walked for a while, not far. Going in circles of her block. She sighed and headed back.

After four lonely nights her small amount of food had turned to crumbs. She was out of fire wood and Sam no longer visited her. She finished the last page of her book and shoved it inside me. She picked up her sign, her hat and looked around. We left the building, leaving the creaking door behind us.

It was one of the coldest days I had ever felt. It pinched at me. She walked through the streets I now knew. Weaving and ducking. Until we came to her doorway.

She leaned on the door. Shrunk into a little ball. Rested the cardboard on her knees, and looked at the passing population. All looking at their feet. The tops of buildings. Anywhere but my girl.

She eventually stopped begging. The brightness from behind the clouds gradually disappearing. Her voice gone to the frost. I felt her heart beat slow. Her skin chill. She snuggled her head into my collar. I tried to warm her. To push the cold air into the gloom before it swallowed her. I hugged her as she stole her last breath. Fading like my faded skin. She was gone.

Frost was creeping over me. The sun was slowly rising. I waited desperately for a beam to creep over the buildings and reach my skin. But it didn’t. The blurred ball in the sky, giving no heat.

People began to walk past. Foot after foot, shoe after shoe, coat after coat. The sun was nearly at noon. No one noticed the little girl with blue lips and frozen eyelids. I hung on, stuck, frozen.

We eventually were found. Cold and lifeless. Moved and scrambled. After being thawed, I was taken off her. Put in a box with her other things. The book inside me. A story hiding in my skin. Wanting to be heard yet smothered, stifled.

I was moved around, carried and finally landed in a steel room. My frozen girl endlessly sleeping on a table. Two men gathered around her. They dressed her in a plain white dress. Lace covered her shoulders. The man muttered something to the other man and lifted me out.

‘It’s a nice coat,’ one said.

‘It’s only going to go in the bin.’ And so they put me on her once more.

We ended up in a simple wooden box. Thin and splintering. No lining, no pillow.

The silence swallowed the darkness. Everything still. Everything cold. Everything gone. I held on to her decaying flesh. Lying silently with the girl I fought to keep warm. As we both slowly, slowly, began to fade into the earth.

This is how I landed here.