Brieyla Cady

The blackened lightbulb sputtered with a crack. It exposed the attic for half a second—dusty cobwebs, fat mice engorged on stale popcorn, and neatly chaotic aisles of cardboard boxes—then just as quickly engulfed me in darkness. “Rats,” I muttered while clicking the button on my flashlight. The attic came back into sight, but I could illuminate only a slice of the past; the rest danced within me, just outside memory’s grasp. If I dug deep enough within the boxes of my mind I could unbury each memory; but I needed each segment of my life put aside to make room for the future, with the past organized in boxes, in aisles, then left to gather dust.

There was one memory I could never manage to box, no matter how determined I was. Hiding it within a cardboard shell had no effect. Its essence gnawed away at me, even as I forced it back into a shoddy cage. Using the flashlight’s dull yellow cone for guidance, I shuffled through the precarious aisles. In the far corner, beside the grimy window which hoarded all sunlight and left the attic shadowed, I found it. I pushed the dusty cardboard box through the attic’s maze with my foot, letting it tumble again and again until it stumbled through the opening in the floor into the beacon of the hallway underneath.

I descended the ladder with languorous care, each wooden step creaking in time with my hip. It had never recovered from that minor fracture a few years ago and protested walking more than the length of my hallway without a cane’s support. Upon reentering the hallway, with its walnut wood panels and familiar faded orange shag carpeting, I paused to calm my heart’s frantic labor. Deep breaths, as if the air were stretching my lungs in a medicinal exercise. Then my slippers pulled me into the kitchen: it glowed like a beacon despite the low lighting thanks to a bright coat of lemon yellow paint. I rummaged through one of many drawers—filled with discarded paper clips, rubber bands, and losing scratch tickets—before exchanging the flashlight for a boxcutter strong enough to penetrate the ribbon of time which had safeguarded the box’s secrets for five decades. Trembling, I slit the sealing tape. One by one secrets slipped through the crack and illuminated long abandoned hallways within my cerebral attic.

The trio watched mesmerized as the moon come into view, biting the sun as it descended through the sky. The celestial exchange climaxed when the moon eclipsed its elder sister to rule the spotlight, illuminated by a brilliant halo as the earth grew ever darker. As this took place in the heavens, serpentine shadows slithered along the ground like the ephemeral reflection of a body of water. Responding to a plunging sensation within her gut, Celeste broke her skyward gaze and was awestruck by the terrestrial migration.

“Look!” squealed Mitchell, pointing upwards, as the tendrils trickled across the field, coalescing into a writhing mass a short distance from where they stood. As the mass became increasingly engorged, it evolved into the third dimension; shadows building upon shadows until the mass stood just as tall as Celeste, who could not seem to tear her eyes away.

“Ty? Do you see that?” Celeste’s voice trilled.

“Yeah babe, it’s great!” Tyler responded with his usual grin, still staring into the sky. Celeste could not manage to scream. She was shackled by shock. Ever so slowly, the black form began to fade into wispy grey smoke, then transformed again into a physical form. Her form. It even wore the same sweatshirt Tyler had bought her in Brazil years ago.

Celeste took a trembling step backward and the entire world reeled around her, as if it were all an enormous dryer with its spin cycle set to high.