Costume Jewelry

Costume Jewelry

News via Facebook; the government had been overthrown by enormous hordes of armed militiamen. The capital in Washington D.C. had been set afire and the Washington Monument had been toppled. Whoever had taken control of the government had also seized control of social media and news outlets. According to evening news, martial law had been declared, and a new president would be installed shortly. Cell phones would be suspended within a week. By the end of the first month email would be cancelled too. While phones still worked, we called Mom and Dad and our other sisters.

Caravans of flag waving blue shirts began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and open-door jeeps warning everyone to stay indoors. We didn’t open the door, but we heard them loud and clear. “The new order has arrived,” they shouted over megaphones; firing handguns and rifles and AK 47’s into the air to demonstrate their firepower. The terrorists had won. We were terrified. We were three unarmed, teenaged siblings, hiding in a two-story house in a small town in Arizona. Besides family, no one knew we were there. So, we followed their orders, locking ourselves inside. We knew we couldn’t just sit there in fear, sitting on black plastic bags waiting for the end of the world. We needed a plan.

Aunt Mary had been a master hoarder. If you have never seen the television show called “Hoarders”, don’t think for a minute it is all made up. Hoarders are very real. Some are mentally ill. Others begin as collectors who fall down a rabbit hole where throwing away becomes impossible for them. That was Aunt Mary’s path. Once, at an estate sale she found a treasure trove of costume jewelry. She bought dozens of bracelets and necklaces. Her prize possession was a ruby red, heart-shaped locket on a thin gold chain. Of course, to a hoarder, every possession is prized. Mary thought the delicate heart was carved from quartz for its translucence. Less than an inch wide by half an inch deep, the locket had a gold hinge and clasp and sported a fine filigreed edge. Aunt Mary gifted me the locket upon graduation. As Aunt Mary clasped the gold chain about my neck, she said, “This is a special locket my dear, one day it will save your life.” I wear the locket daily, just in case. Aunt Mary was moved (against her will) to a group home for the mentally deficient. She died within a month. She died the day of the great collapse.

We had fled from the city to this, her relatively remote house in an attempt to avoid what would surely be a nasty, bitter end of the world. We had to take stock of what we had to work with. First, the necessities; food, water, toilet paper. Secondly, we had to remain unseen, undetectable. We decided to take turns keeping watch while the other two would continue the inventory of usable things Aunt Mary had hoarded. While Sister Sue took the first watch. Bev and I made sure all the doors were locked and barred by pushing heavy furniture against any door that opened into the room. The front door, the side door, and the back door to the deck were locked and blocked.

The house’s “street appeal” was that it appeared to be a single-story home. The front door, south of the free-standing garage, opened to the upper level. Just inside was a spiral staircase to the first story, lower level which held two bedrooms, a shared full bath, a storage room and family/entertainment room. The door on the back wall opened out onto a small patio. A steep slope into the arroyo gave a clear view of the foothills across the wash. One can imagine the airy spaciousness of this lovely house. You would be challenged to imagine every nook and cranny packed with fifteen years of a hoarder’s possessions.

We first cleared out the lower level bedroom at the front of the house. It had no windows. Shifting the contents of that room uncovered bunk beds and sofa. The built-in closet was packed with survival foods. Before Auntie became a hoarder, she must have been a survivalist.

We found candles and a small battery radio. The sun was setting that night, imprisoned in Aunt Mary’s house. I took the night watch while my sisters crept carefully down the stairs to the dark room. I sat in the dark watching the quiet cul-de-sac. A javelina family crossed the road looking for food just as a pack of coyotes in the arroyo announced dinner time by yelping loudly, as they do, once a jackrabbit had been secured. In the darkest darkness of a desert midnight I was startled by a mysterious red glow.

I first thought it was the reflection of jeep or pickup taillights, but the glow was coming from inside the room. The glow grew brighter until my peripheral eyesight identified the source of the glow. Aunt Mary’s heart-shaped locket was emitting the light from within. It kept getting brighter and brighter until I became afraid anyone outside would see the light inside the house. I closed my hand over the locket and felt the locket begin to pulse, reminding me of a heartbeat. As if in a trance, I stood up and descended the spiral staircase to the packed rooms below. I walked unencumbered to the back door and felt compelled to open it. I felt compelled to look at my watch. 11:11.

Having heard me coming down the stairs, my sisters watched with growing concern as I passed them without seeing them, my eyes closed. “Barb!” “Stop!” The sounds of their voices opened my eyes. I turned to smile at them. “We’re going to be okay; help is here.” I heard my voice speaking but I don’t know who said that.

I took my hand away allowing the red glow to fill the space between them and me. That same other someone’s voice continued, “Open the door to the next dimension. Come into the light. Be not afraid.” My sister’s eyes were wide like Walter Keane’s paintings of bug-eyed children so popular in the 1960’s but there was none of that sadness in them. They were both smiling and willing to follow directions. I turned again to face the door, my arms at my sides. The locket glowed ever more brightly and suddenly the door opened by itself. Slowly, the door swung wide, revealing a sunny day and a level garden full of flowers and butterflies. The scent of lilacs wafted over us. I looked back at my sisters to see absolute giddiness in their faces; expressions of joy escaping their lips.

Racing through my mind was a cavalcade of warnings, red flags, and trepidations. Why is there bright sunlight at the back of a house drenched in darkness at its front? Where is the steep slope, the arroyo, the foothills in the distance? What about the red hats surely coming to further terrorize us? What witchcraft is this? Still, we walked, single file through the back door of Aunt Mary’s hillside bulwark. The door slammed shut behind us. We turned to see the door only to be faced with a massive tree standing in a meadow. We had been transported to another dimension.

Gone was the fear we had faced. Gone was the stress. Each of us felt like dancing. So, we did. We danced and pranced and giggled and laughed and hugged and even kissed each other, over and over and over. Until we collapsed, exhausted in the lush grass, sprinkled with flowers of every shape and color. There were roses and daisies and violets and pansies and flowers none of us had ever seen. We lay on our backs, our three heads touching ever so lightly as we watched clouds drift lazily overhead. Bev pointed out a giraffe and I spotted a bear. Sue didn’t see any recognizable shapes.

The Kings and Queens of Narnia had their clothes closet, Harry Potter had Hogwarts Express, Alice had her rabbit hole. Perhaps we had discovered magic in Aunt Mary’s heart-shaped locket. We heard voices coming from behind the tree. We jumped up in a start and hugged each other close. We didn’t feel fear but the sound of voices other than our own did give us pause. We moved as one to the right side of the tree and saw nothing. We moved farther right and heard the others laughing at us as if we were playing hide and seek. We dashed as one to the other side of the tree when we realized the sound was coming from above us, in the branches. We looked up and there we were. All three of us, mirror images of ourselves were perched in the tree. Our eyes nearly popped out of our heads when the trio of our body doubles slowly floated down to stand directly in front of us.

My counterpart spoke first. “Hello Barb. My name is Maria. I am another facet of your infinite eternal self.” Her voice sounded as smooth and delicious as whipped chocolate gelato. I heard her speak but her lips did not move. As if to answer my question before I asked, she continued. “We are communicating telepathically. That is not completely accurate,” she added, ”but your English leaves me no better way to describe it.”

Trying my hand at telepathy I asked without moving my lips, what is this place? How did we get here? All five of my “sisters” laughed at me. Susi said, “Barb, you sound like an amateur ventriloquist. I think you only need think your question. Our hosts can understand us as well as we understand them.” The six of us sat beneath that enormous tree for what felt like hours asking questions and getting answers that wouldn’t have made any sense if someone tried to explain this moment now to us then.

Our hosts explained to us that “their” now was always (and is always) available to us whenever we need it. We have the power to move freely between their now and our now. They said we needn’t understand it all at once, that we have an eternity to “grock” it. They explained it was the talisman of the heart-shaped locket coupled with the no exit situation of our timeline that produced the portal we walked through. They said we were welcome to stay with them forever. They reminded us that we always have free will to do what we think is best for us.

Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we can always go home. In fact, our hosts suggested we might consider going back, at least temporarily, to save our parents and our other sisters, to lead them to the path of light and love and help them step through the portal to their own better, safer, more peaceful world. My sisters and I free will was unanimous, agreeing that going back was the right thing to do. If we could show our parents how to escape the dystopia that had engulfed our lives, we were duty bound to do so. When Bev asked her host where we might find the door of Aunt Mary’s house, everyone laughed because we all heard the answer as soon as the question was formulated in Bev’s thoughts. The answer is within. Together we can co-create the door. I looked at Sue and at Bev and before I finished envisioning the open back door of Aunt Mary’s house, we found ourselves standing inside, the door closed as it was before the locket had opened it. The locket around my neck glowed still but faded slowly. Once the pitch blackness was complete, we heard someone knocking on the front door upstairs. We scrambled as silently as possible into the room with no windows and waited for the gunfire. I glanced at my watch again. 11:12