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"Images"

A Supernatural Journey

By S. Hileman IannazzoPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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S. Hileman Iannazzo

“Images”

Brown Paper Box Challenge Entry

7/22/2021

The old man had been ignoring the tattered and slightly damp brown paper box that was sitting in the corner of the foyer of his assisted living apartment complex for over a week. There were six units in his building, and since he almost never got mail, save for catalogues and bills, he figured it must belong to one of the other five elderly folks. For eight days he walked by it before he finally stooped to read the name on the package. “Marcus White”. “Well, I'll be damned,” he muttered to nobody. He carried the box into his home and set it on the coffee table. It was tied with twine, and it had no return address. He struggled to remember if he had ordered anything, his mind got confused sometimes, he was after all 98 years young. Old fart’s like him were talented in the practice of forgetting shit. He set about putting his groceries away, such as they were, since Meals on Wheels brought most of his chow, he usually came home from the market with some prune juice and maybe something sweet, diabetes be damned.

He snapped on the radio, which was an old fashioned transistor type with a bent antenna and a discolored olive color. Didn’t matter, it worked just fine and he’d had for decades. Claire appeared in the hallway, meowing and winding her way through the space between his legs. “Hush now,” Marcus whispered, “I’mma feed you right now”. He tried to scowl at his cat, but couldn’t manage it, she was his only companion these last few years, and he was apt to spoil her. The big orange cat jumped on the counter while Marcus fought with the can opener, finally dishing out a few tablespoons of Fancy Feast. He stroked her back while she devoured her lunch. “That's a good girl” he said. She purred and quite intentionally, turned away from him, concentrating on her meal. “Ingrate,” Marcus retorted with affection.

He returned to the living room, it wasn’t really a separate room so much as it was an annex to the tiny kitchen. It was dim, the shades drawn tight. Kenny Rogers was singing about his four hungry children and the crop he had in the field. Marcus picked up the box, his fingers curled with arthritis, he pulled at the string. It wasn’t especially heavy, or especially light for that matter and he couldn’t imagine what he’d find inside. As he began to tear at the paper he was struck with a moment of pure terror, it was fleeting, but very real. He paused only for a second, and removed the lid of the box. “Letcha mind get the best of ya” he mumbled, as he peered inside the box. He’d been talking to himself and Claire for the last five years. There was no one else left to gab with anyway and the cat was as good an audience as any. Certainly, she was easier to confide in than any of his five neighbors. He was a brooding man, and when he said hello, it often sounded like an insult. His well meaning neighbors had long since given up on foyer gossip and small talk. Least with him they did. He rather liked it that way.

The photo album inside the box was white, and his full name was embossed in gold leaf across the front. “Marcus William White”. His birthday was etched directly under his name. Absently he ran his fingers across cover. “June 17, 1923” The album was the old kind with cellophane pages that sometimes stuck together. He reached across the couch to turn on the lamp, curiosity building inside him, mixed with a fierce and sudden impatience. He all but slammed the book down on his knees, eager now to know it’s contents.

It creaked a bit when he cracked the spine, as if no one else had ever opened the album before him.

On the very first page was a grainy, faded, dog-eared black and white photo of his mother. She was young, and there was the simple hint of a smile in the corners of her mouth. Her hair was pulled back and she was dressed in her Sunday best, her glance avoiding the camera. Mayhap she was 19 or so, standing in front of what was then, a shiny new Ford Model T. “Mama” Marcus thought, before turning the page. This time the woman in the picture, again his mother, was holding an infant, wrapped in blankets, he couldn’t see the baby’s face. In neat handwriting, someone had scribbled ‘November, 1923’ underneath. He’d never seen these photos before! And he didn’t recognize the handwriting. He did note, apathetically, that in the image of he and his mother in 1923, his father was noticeably absent. His father would stay noticeably absent for the rest of Marcus’s life. He stared at the picture. He could see courage and pride in his mothers profile. He chuckled a little bit at his mothers ‘devil may care’ life choices. She worked hard and she never let him down, not once in his whole life. “Mama” he smiled again and turned the page.

On the 3rd page, Marcus looked at himself, give or take five years old, wearing biballs and holding out an ice-cream cone triumphantly. He was sitting on a blanket between Mama and George. George White married his mother in 1928, and made an honest woman of her, and he’d given Marcus the gift of his last name. Until the day he died in 1957 of a massive heart attack in the garage, Marcus called this man, this great bear of a man with a heart of gold “Dad”. Before he turned the page, he wiped away the tears he hadn’t realized were welling up in his eyes.

The next five or six pages were a blitz of Marcus growing up. At the beach. Halloweens, Christmas’s, birthdays and graduations. Always with Mama and George, and eventually his two sisters joined his family in the pages of the album. He had doted on them both. He pushed them in their prams, and snuck them warm cookies off the counter. He had walked them to school and home again each day. Amy and Mary idolized him; they grew into beautiful women, married, and had given him 4 nephews and 6 nieces between them. The pages of the album were bloated with captured memories of his ever growing family.

He put the book down, went into the kitchen and poured himself a drink to help with the inevitable melancholy he now felt, realizing his sisters and their families had all gone. Cancer, car accidents, cancer, 2 wars, a stroke, etc. etc. He took a deep pull off the whiskey, and wondered if he still kept that pack of Lucky Strikes in his dresser drawer. He did. And so he smoked and he drank some before returning to his perch on the couch.

As the pages turned, the black and white photos became colored, and for some of the book, the photos were the instant kind that a person would shake back and forth to dry or develop or whatever. Polaroids and Kodaks were taped in place.

Marcus caught his breath as he turned the next page. There, a 25 year version of himself grinned stupidly back at him. He was on the steps of city hall, freshly married to his high school sweetheart. He exhaled slowly, and involuntarily smiled back. At the same time a painful sob caught in his chest. There was his Evie, holding tightly to his hand, looking at him and not the camera. She was clad in tulle and carrying flowers. No one had been with them in the day they eloped. Certainly not a photographer! He couldn’t imagine where this photograph had come from, in fact he didn’t recognize any of these pictures. Still, he reveled in seeing his bride again, so young and so extraordinary. “Evie” he said to Claire, who had nuzzled against him on the couch. “Pay attention Claire” he said to his cat as he flipped the next pages eagerly. Snapshots of he and Evie at the carnival, he holding Evie in his arms, posed in front of their first home. Evie holding each of their children. Peter, then John, and finally his baby, Megan. Marcus loved being a father, and there were dozens of photographs of his children, laughing and playing; pictures that no one had a camera with which to take.

They had never even thought to get a camera until Peter had taken an interest in the sixties. That was before he went far away to die alone in a jungle. Pete had loved sneaking up on people and snapping candid photos, although none of those pics were in this particular book. Marcus sat quietly staring at the image of his long dead son, Petey, as they had called him, was alone lying still in a puddle of blood, his eyes dark and wide with horror. “Petey” he said to the empty room. Angry, Marcus threw the book at the floor, and bent over with a wave of nausea and threw up the whiskey onto the cheap carpeting. Incredulous, and bewildered, Marcus had never wanted the details of Pete’s time in Vietnam or the specifics of his death. He simply had accepted the telegram and the neatly folded American flag that was handed to him by strangers.

Marcus stretched out on the couch, suddenly exhausted, and quietly nodded off. It was dark when he woke up. Claire was still sleeping, only now on the back of the sofa. He lit a smoke. He retrieved the book, the album of photos taken by a phantom when no one was looking. A book that was a blessing and a curse at the same time. He was coming to the end. The pictures were becoming brighter and clearer, but there were less and less with each turned page. Evie on Megan’s wedding day, with sadness alive in her eyes. The lens had caught John, in the twisted carnage of a motorcycle accident, dead on the shoulder of the highway.

Another photo, of his wife, wasting away in a mechanical bed, dying, her eyes were closed. Marcus let out the sound of a wounded animal, seeing in vivid clarity, his love leaving him behind, more than twenty years ago.

He hated this album now. This showcase started with happy thoughts and ended with tragic, searing memories. He wanted to throw it in the trash and never look at it again.

One last page though.

It was a picture of him, Evie, and Petey and John, and Mama and George, his sisters and all the rest were crowded around the dining room table in his old house. A broad smile broke the sadness in Marcus’s expression. In this photo he was young and strong again, Evie’s eyes still smiled, and his sons had their arms draped across his shoulders. He held the album against his chest.

When Megan found her father the next day, there was an ashtray full of stubbed out Lucky Strikes and a hungry cat waiting for her. She collapsed on the kitchen floor and cried the tears only a daughter can cry for her daddy. She called all the appropriate folks, and they’d be there soon to collect her father’s body. In the meantime, Megan plucked the white photo album from her fathers arms, barely glancing at it, she placed it gingerly on the book shelf, before going into the kitchen to feed the ever impatient Claire.

Short Story
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About the Creator

S. Hileman Iannazzo

Writers read, and readers write.

I write because I enjoy the process. I hope that you enjoy reading my work.

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