Radio Silence - Part 10

PANDORA’S STORY

It was an unassuming jar, a plain earthenware jug that came up almost to her hip, sealed with a plug of red wax, drips staining the lip of the container. She lifted the heavy lid, exposing the wax, and tapped it with one long fingernail.

She had been given it with strict instructions not to open it, no matter what. She was to keep it safe, keep it hidden, and make sure that no one ever, ever, opened it.

She walked around it, the hem of her dress causing eddies of dust to swirl up. “It doesn’t look like much,” she said quietly, though there was no one else in the room.

Anesidora ran her hands across the jar. How could something so simple, be so…what? She wasn’t even really sure exactly what was in it. How could he have neglected to tell her what was in it? If he’d told her, she wouldn’t want to open it so badly. But the curiosity burned at her, like a physical thing that she could feel, a tingling that rose up from the soles of her feet and raced across her skin, making her fingers itch. She tapped the wax that stretched across the opening. It didn’t feel very thick. She could just make the tiniest of holes in the top and no one would probably even notice…

She pressed a long ruby-painted nail into the wax, leaving a small crescent behind. She did it again, in the same spot until she felt a slight pop where the nail pierced its way through the barrier.

She made another crescent with her nail opposite the first mark so that a circular piece fell away, into the hole it made. There was a small pop, and a sudden breeze erupted from the tiny hole, as if she had disturbed a vacuum. She peered in but there was only darkness.

She shook the jar, gently with both hands, rocking it side to side. It was silent. Nothing made a sound. Had he given her an empty jar?

She pulled a matchbox from a pocket within her skirts, and flicked it expertly to light against the side of the box. She held the small flame over the hole, and it snuffed out immediately. She lit another and again the flame was extinguished when she held it over the small opening.

“What?” she asked, as if hoping the jar itself would give an explanation.

It wasn’t the jar that answered her. It was the voice from the darkness.

“I’m not inside the jar,” the voice said, slightly irritated. Anesidora jumped backwards away from the jar with a small shriek. She leant tentatively forward trying to peer inside the hole again, just to be sure.

The man spoke again with a soft sigh, stepping quietly out of the shadows that made their home around the edges of the room.

“This vault was made to keep things safe. To keep them pure, unconsecrated.”

Anesidora almost dropped the match she was holding as the man appeared within its glow, the flames lighting the hair that fell to his shoulders with a red-golden sheen. The door to the room had been closed and had remained so the whole time she had been here. “How-?” Anesidora began.

“How did I get here?” The man asked in an almost bored tone, anticipating her question. He tipped his head slightly toward the jar. “I said my voice wasn’t coming from inside the jar, not that I hadn’t been inside the jar, until you opened it. Then I got out, and that’s how I’m here on this side of the room, opposite the only way in or out.”

Another voice, this one much deeper, yet quieter, spoke on the other side of her. Anesidora whirled around, placing her back to the jar so she didn’t feel as exposed. “What?” her voice rose, shrill with panic. “Who are you?”

The owner of the second voice stepped into the wavering light cast by her match that was now trembling, and had burned down almost to her fingers. She dropped it, the flame dying as it fell to the floor. She struck another one with shaking hands.

A third voice spoke, this time from the other side of the room, so that Anesidora had to turn her back from the funerary jar once more. She hunched over it, grasping its edges in an effort to keep from collapsing. This next voice shocked her, by the fact that it was a woman’s. “Haven’t you figured out who we are yet?” she said, her voice low and seductive in a way that made Anesidora’s spine crawl.

“Are you telling me you all came out of this jar?” she asked, so softly she wasn’t sure any of them could actually hear her.

“We were trapped in there,” said the man with the long dark hair. “You helped us escape.”

Escape. The word hit Anesidora like a slap, that made her shiver.

The second man, Anesidora looked at him closely for the first time, was a thin, sickly looking man with a long drawn face, and hair that seemed to refuse to stay on his head.

The woman, who wore a long dark dress the colour of dried blood, took a step forward, making Anesidora take a reflexive step back in an unspoken tango of fear. “We are eternally grateful, my dear girl,” the woman said, her voice gentle and soothing.

The woman strode up swiftly, only the jar separating them. The woman waved a hand over the wax seal, and Anesidora watched with widening eyes as the small hole disappeared, leaving the surface smooth and unmarked.

The woman smiled and winked at her. “We don’t want anything else getting out,” she said slyly.

Anesidora swallowed. “Anything else?” she said, her voice rising to a squeak. “What else is in there?”

The first man that had spoken, stocky with a short greying beard and dark hair beginning to turn at the temples waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing important, now that you’ve released us,” he said, the corners of his mouth twitching up into a small smile.

“But who are you?” Anesidora asked, her voice small and childlike in the cavernous room.

The man shook his head. “You should have listened to the man who gave you the jar, my dear,” he said, disapprovingly.

Anesidora’s heart jumped and began to race like a startled rabbit. And like a startled rabbit, she did the only thing she could think of – she bolted for the door, the only exit in the dark tomb-like vault. She almost made it, but a dark shape, hunched, like a pile of black clothes crumpled on the ground suddenly seemed to block her escape. She screamed and tried to skirt the shapeless mass, when the shape suddenly grew an arm that barred her way. She moved to the other side, to go around the way that was free, and another arm materialized out of the dark. And then the dark spoke, so softly it was almost as if the words were carried on a slight breeze.

Anesidora froze. She could feel the other three people behind her, the woman and two men, regarding her silently.

“You need to be prepared,” the voice said quietly. The words were clipped and stern. A warning.

The words brought Anesidora up short. Any thought of fleeing turned to confusion. “Prepared? For what?”

The shape, stocky and short suddenly rose, and, it seemed to Anesidora that it wouldn’t ever stop. The figure towered over her. She chanced a glance back over her shoulder. The other three were still watching her. She thought she saw a flicker of amusement pass on the woman’s face.

“For the world outside,” the darkness said, which brought Anesidora’s attention back to it. She looked up at it, at where it’s face should be, but it was shrouded in a cloth so black, and in the dim light of the room, she couldn’t make out a single feature.

The world outside? What about it? She had just been outside, and everything had been fine. The men at the market stalls smiled and chatted with her, and the women were pleasant, offering a smile as well if they didn’t have time to stop and speak. People in New London were busy, she knew. They had things to do and lives to live, as it had always been.

She asked the figure just that, which elicited a laugh from the woman behind her. “You still haven’t figured out who we are yet, have you?” the woman said, before shaking her head. “No, of course not, why would you? You have had no experience of us before, not for a long time anyway, before you, and before all the people in New London. We were why New London was needed, was constructed in the first place. Do you know your history?” she asked, slowly, as if speaking to a child.

Anesidora nodded slowly, unsure where the conversation was headed. “Yes, the Old World was abandoned because of famine and turmoil and things that turned people against each other like jealousy and hatred and passions which lead to war and death.” She stopped.

“And?” the woman prodded, an edge to her voice that urged Anesidora on.

“And when we moved to the New World, it all stopped,” she finished.

This time it was the dark figure that blocked her way out that laughed. “Except,” he said, his voice almost impossibly deep.

She looked puzzled. “Except?” she prompted.

“Except death,” the darkness replied sharply, irritated.

“Oh. Well, of course,” Anesidora answered. “But death is natural here, not as indiscriminate as it was below, where many people died, of sickness and…” The day she had last seen her father flashed before her and she turned away, tears springing to her eyes. “And their lives taken too soon, unfairly.”

“Do you ever wonder why it all stopped?” asked the woman.

“Because the Old World was corrupt, it was ruined beyond repair. People were greedy and full of hate, and too much passion, which caused many…problems. ”

This time the room filled with laughter from all of them.

The woman stepped forward with a pitying look, her arms stretched wide as if to embrace Anesidora. Instinctively Anesidora stepped back and almost bumped into the tall darkness.

“You poor thing,” the woman said sarcastically. “Maybe we should introduce ourselves and that will make everything clearer. She pointed to herself. “I am Desiree. But the name I’ve taken is just a bastardization of what I am. Desire. You may also know me as the cause of famine and reckless passion.” With a sweep of her arm she gestured to the thin, sickly looking man. “That is…well, he doesn’t have a human name…” she paused momentarily before continuing. “That is the cause of turmoil and strife.” She singled out the man with the hair tarnished by the flame of her match. He was young, fresh faced, but had a strange, sharp look in his eyes. “He is the source of all Hatred and Jealousy.”

And lastly the woman pointed across the room to the figure behind Anesidora, the dark one. “And I’m sure you can guess who this is, attempting to help you by telling you what the world outside will be like when you open the door and leave this room.”

Anesidora turned, slowly, not wanting to bring the darkness back into view. She stared up again at the shapeless face that blended seamlessly with the shadows . It was unnerving not being able to look someone in the eye because you didn’t really know where their eyes would be. Desiree spoke the words even though they were unnecessary. Of course Anesidora could see who this would be. She had felt the thin wiry arms, made of not much more than bone itself, when it had tried to stop her from leaving.

“This,” Desiree said, pausing for dramatic effect, “is Death. Sickness and Death, of which your New World has not been plagued besides death from natural old age.”

Anesidora stood hemmed on either side by the beings from the jar. She couldn’t find any words to fit the tumult of emotions swirling inside her. She looked at the three figures, wishing that Death wasn’t still standing behind her. A chill raced up her spine at the thought of him. It. Whatever they were.

“So…” she started but was afraid to speak aloud the thoughts that had been filling her mind in a whirlwind. “You’re...” she began again.

Desiree smiled widely. “Everything you don’t want released into your precious, happy, carefree world?” she offered helpfully. “Thank you for the gift you have given us.”

“Gift?” she replied, puzzled.

“The gift of freedom, of course,” rasped the old sickly man who was Turmoil and Strife. His words were followed by a wet cough and he gave the figure in black a dark look.

Anesidora didn’t know how to answer that, so simply nodded, staring glumly at her dusty shoes and the now similar state of the hem of her dress.

There was a loud thud at the door, and in the distance Anesidora thought she heard a scream. She looked up from her shoes, after what felt like only a second and she was once more alone in the room.

The thick wooden door trembled in its frame and there was shouting outside. Loud, urgent, angry sounding voices.

Prepare yourself. The unnervingly soft voice of Death and Sickness rang in her ears.

Cautiously she moved to the door and hesitantly pressed an ear against the cool, smooth wood.

All she could hear was the pounding of her heart in her ears.

She opened the door to chaos.

The world was a blur of noise and motion. Anesidora clasped her hands to her ears as she fought her way through the throngs of people. There was shouting, screaming and children crying. A young man leaned sprawled against a wall looking pale and coughing in a way that made Anesidora think he hadn’t long to go in the world. The work of Sickness, she thought bitterly. And it was all her fault.

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Check out Part 11 (or start at the beginning with part 1) below!