Shortcuts

The candles flickered in the soft breeze coming from the open window, carried in with the din of traffic below. Night had descended some time ago, exchanging the harsh rays of the sun for the even more abrasive glow of neon signs advertising weekend drink specials, hotel vacancy, and nighttime store hours. Blair had always preferred the twilight hours more than the extremes of day and night. Twice a day the sky would dissolve into calming purples and oranges, whispering the shift change as tired commuters wandered home, allowing for the streets to be at their quietest, if only for a moment. Daytime only offered the alert, and all of their annoyingly persistent energy. Nighttime offers an energy of a drunker, rowdier variety. This evening had an especially grating quality to almost every minuscule detail: karaoke singers wailing too off key, car horns honking too loudly, neighbors fighting too aggressively. Though, Blair supposed, everything had been this way recently. Too exhausting, too overwhelming, it was all just becoming too much.

Blair reached for her headphones, the only item in this disarray that she always had a visual on. Sometimes dropped near the clutter of shoes by the front door, sometimes nestled in a bed of scrap paper and books on the desk, sometimes gently placed on a napkin above the stains of the kitchen counters. The soft hum from the noise cancellation of the headphones is a welcome reprieve from the distractions of her surroundings. This apartment was a nomansland of chaos, and the headphones stood as the lone soldier among it all. The dust bunnies and dirty dishes hadn’t always been a fixture of this increasingly claustrophobic apartment, though. Sinking mayhem had only entered Blair’s life 6 months ago, in a whirlwind of financial losses and dwindling security. Economic hardship was nothing she hadn’t experienced before, but letting herself become complacent in her new life was a mistake Blair would regret nightly.

Empty snack wrappers and coffee mugs gathered in a crowd around the laptop on the coffee table, joined by new members brought from the kitchen each morning, standing guard over Blair as she scanned the screen with blood shot eyes. The job search was not going well; rejection emails chime the same ringtone as job start dates, but Blair’s inbox is only a graveyard of condolences and deadends.

Blair lowers her head sharply, dodging the blow that the thought of those countless emails bring: worthless. No, no she mustn’t think about that now. Lighting a cigarette from the crumpled pack on the bed, she exhales a cloud of smoke, a personal exorcism. She slides down from the edge of the bed to the floor, recoiling slightly from the cool touch of the wooden surface. Blair fixes her gaze on the open box in the center of the room, a black boat adrift in the amber sea cast by the candlelight. Long shadows dance on the walls, suddenly towering over Blair from her new position on the floor, an interpretive display of black neutrality performed with such excitement one can’t help but be enchanted by their frantic silence.

Extinguishing the cigarette on the edge of the overflowing ashtray at the foot of the bed, Blair reaches for the jar, careful not to knock over the candles which had been carefully placed in formation as the book described. It was just a random glass jar, perhaps a souvenir from a long ago outing with friends or a disposable from a discount aisle dinner, but big enough to hold its required contents; items such as dried rose petals from her mom’s second wedding, three different herbs which cost Blair way more than she was expecting to pay, a lock of her hair, and a penny she had found outside the corner store, all of which had been “consecrated” with Blair’s tears. That last step hadn’t been nearly as hard as forking over forty-five dollars on three stems of herbs; crying buckets had become part of her nightly routine between brushing her teeth and taking off her makeup.

“This better freaking work.”

This came both as an angry huff and desperate whisper. She wouldn’t admit it, but being pushed to this level of desperation had taken more of a mental toll than she could have imagined. Endlessly scrolling online for the glimpse of a job opening was one thing, but pulling that worn, green leather covered book off the farthest corner of her back shelf had forced Blair to cross a line she couldn’t have anticipated. Her mother had given the book as a housewarming gift.

“All of the women in our family have gotten a book just like this, a tradition your grandma’s mom started. She told me if it’s ever used for something other than decoration, you better be in serious trouble.”

Blair would consider glaring student debt, delinquent credit and car payments, and the threat of getting her water and electricity shut off as “serious trouble”. This page of aged paper, with its neat cursive handwritten instructions, was now the only thing standing between Blair and a ruin she couldn’t bear to contemplate. Her hand wandered to the pack to fish out another cigarette, food for thought. The last instruction was something Blair had been struggling with for weeks, something hopefully the silhouetted box could help her solve. The inked instructions demanded that the jar, once sealed with wax and twine, was to be buried in earth.

Unfortunately, living in a highrise in a densely populated city does not offer much in way of a secluded yard to bury weird jars. She had considered finding a quiet corner of the local park to finalize this strange ritual, but the instructions were remarkably vague on what was supposed to happen after the soil was packed over the jar and she wasn’t about to sit in a sketchy park all night waiting for a genie to pop out. So, the handfuls of dirt Blair had picked up on her daily walks from the tree planters out on the city sidewalks were routinely deposited in the box until there was just enough to qualify the jar as “buried.”

The lid of the box snapped shut with finality, and Blair turned her gaze to the instructions. The page had been cut off right at the end, leaving no other details besides the how-to.

“Figures.” Blair sighs, turning the book over in her hands. Wax from the candles has pooled around their bases, inching out in an attempt to explore the rest of the room. Blair pulls herself off the floor with a sigh, tossing the book on the bed.

“Well, might as well see what I can scrounge together for dinner. You want anything?” She chuckles, looking down at the box. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

--

Blair stops abruptly at the door of her bedroom, a nearly expired granola bar-- the only reward she could find in the barren pantry-- held between her teeth.

Something’s not right.

A quick scan of the room provides everything as it was; candles burning lower, box still in the middle of the room, atmosphere still a mess. Her eyes lock on the bed, the apparent culprit of this sudden unease. A square void has opened on the sheets, a crisp black square on a backdrop of lavender covers. Cautiously edging closer, Blair can see the void lays yawning in place of the old book she had tossed there. Heartbeat quickening, she extends a shaky hand, making contact with the void. Solid surface, fingers going under corners, lifting the black mass from its conspicuous place on the bed. It’s the book. Blair blinks hard, turning the hardcover over to inspect the back. Nothing but black.

“That can’t be. . .” Blair mumbles around the granola bar. The book her mother gave her, the one that she held in her hands not a moment ago, the book that was supposed to hold her salvation, had transformed to an onyx cover with crisp white pages.

Icy white pages flutter before Blair’s eyes, a flurry of blinding white encased in the black. Empty. The whole book is now empty. The granola bar hits the floor like a gunshot. Head swimming, Blair sinks to the floor in stunned disbelief. Pages of unread material, originally skipped over entirely in her manic search for the instructions she thought would miraculously solve her problems had just evaporated off the pages. What if she had picked the wrong page? What if the key to her salvation got up and walked off the pages while she went to get a freaking snack?

First came the tears, the sobbing, then the laughter. Crazed, hollow laughter. She knew she sounded ridiculous, she knew this was ridiculous, but she couldn’t stop laughing at the blank pages that humorlessly stared back.

Is this amusing to you?

The air is gone from the room, laughter and tears simultaneously stopped with a strangled choke. Blair’s eyes stare wide, unblinking, fixed on the abrupt blemish of words on the page.

Oh? Suddenly not so funny anymore, no? I really must insist you answer truthfully, as I am not much in the mood for jests; I am terribly uncomfortable. This space is unexpectedly cramped, confining. Where am I?

Blair’s mouth gaped, wordlessly attempting to answer.

“You’re. . . You’re in my bedroom. In my apartment.”

. . . We are not outside?

Oh crap. Blair’s eyes snap to the box on the ground, her makeshift “earth”.

“Uh, no. No, we’re inside.”

Blair’s grip on the corners of the book tighten, white-knuckled in breathless anxiety. The pages seemed to contemplate her answer, the candlelight waning in agreement with the book’s apparent displeasure.

Ah, well, nothing we can’t work with, hm? We all have to make sacrifices, even if they may be. . .strenuous. Now, you are here due to a pointed concern in regards to your finances, yes?

Blair tries to swallow, her dry mouth unable to produce any moisture to enable her to speak.

Yes yes, well, the sooner we get started the sooner it’s over! Now, I’ve had a better look around. This is dire, hm?

Tell me, how much do you suppose that candlestick is worth?

Blair’s eyes dart to the candlestick set on her dresser, a set of three, a gift from her grandmother. “Um, I don’t know. Maybe a thousand dollars?”

Works for me.

In a flash, hardly the blink of an eye, the candlesticks have evaporated and in their place, a crumple of bills on the dresser top. Blair blinks hard at the sudden transfiguration, unprocessing the shift in the air.

Excellent. Now, what about that laptop? Hardly of any personal enjoyment of late, correct? How much is it worth to you, to see it gone?

“Two thousand,” Blair whispers, eyes fixed on the hand-me-down laptop from her brother, now across the country.

For the next hour, sentiment has no room in Blair’s consumed mind. Nonsensical trinkets and personal effects have all morphed alike, into a sizable amount of cash on her coffee table, approximated at the sum of twenty thousand dollars.

Satisfied? I presume this shall put your mind at ease for the time being. Blair.

Breath catches, the first time the entity has addressed her by her unspoken name.

I do hope I could have been of service this evening. Do tell your mother I say hello.

Farewell.