Godzilla

It was ornately wrapped, far beyond what my clumsy hands were capable of doing.  Time and care did not do its packaging justice, as it felt almost criminal to tear it open.  Part of me wanted to discard it with care, as to not tear the paper, working up the seams and folds of it so I could re-wrap it later and have it sit as to not spoil the sparkling hard work that lay in front of me on the table, but I would never be able to replicate the work present.  There was no sender or return address listed, and it was a surprise I had anything sent to me at all, especially on today of all days.  

Christmas had passed two months prior, and my birthday wasn’t for another few months.  Black mail, Anthrax, a nest of spiders with egg sacks waiting to burst, a bomb; these were all possibilities that ran through my head as irrational as they were.  Shaking it several times, a loud THUMP emerged beneath ornate ribboning.  That crossed off several of my prior thoughts, but it only added new ones with that sinister sound.  It made me feel as though I had brought the blankets to my chin again, cold sweat dripping down my nose as the minutes seemed to drag by in the dead of night as a creeping shadow grew closer and closer.  The very windows themselves seemed to fog over from cold, rank breath with jagged teeth that held the remnants of many poor, eight-year-old boys that had been caught in the dark hours of night, Nuggets pajamas and clutched red blankets lining rotten gums.  Floorboards creaked and then, nothing, only the sound of my little brother turning over in the bed below me, latched to his toy Godzilla, his teeth grinding in icy squeaks that broke the still water of our fish tank sitting on the dresser.  

Bringing myself out of childlike daydreams, as if to shake water out of my left ear, I searched a box cutter, my gnarled hands stumbling in the dim kitchen light for a switch.  It came in blinding overhead glares that seared into my milky eyes and watered them, spilling onto the countertop below.  The junk drawer, once a drawer reserved for Shondra’s fine silver cutlery was overflowing; matches, tape, photos of the grandkids beaming out of frame between gap teeth and popsicle stains, old receipts from ten odd years back that seemed like the other day, and next to a photo I chose to shove further back into the drawer, sat the box cutter.  The blade, still withdrawn, drew a thin line of crimson against my thumb, and cursing whoever left the blade exposed (me, I grimly acknowledged) withdrew sharply and turned the faucet on.  Sputtering to life it spat cold water that stung and ran in streams of oily red down the drain below.  Wrapping it in a paper towel, still muttering, I sheathed the blade, and wedged it out from the drawer, forcing it back to its place where it sat, a future trip to the hospital with a broken hip from a drawer I was too stubborn to clean out.  

The package sat still, blinking in blue and yellow paper forming the delicate reaches of a petal almost, alongside the vase of flowers long dried out and withered, their skin pruning in the last wisps of a winter sun.  Clicking the blade open and gingerly avoiding the sharp edge, I opened an incision right below the bow, and began to tear, almost wanting to apologize.  It was short, and I was in no mood for nimble, surgical incisions.  The paper now lying in a shredded pile below me, sat contrasting the colorful pile a brown box, perfectly square, the top slightly ajar as if it was crammed on, unable to contain whatever was inside.  Dimly thinking of Pandora’s box, my mind racing again of horror stories reserved to the smiles of platinum blonde anchors, dripping with plastic seals and cheap extensions.  Ignoring yet again the flow of incoming thoughts that throbbed in my upper temple, I reached for the box’s lid and slid it off, my breath held back as I reached inwards, and recognizing it, I gasped.  It was, it was.

It sat, collecting dust on his side of the room.  I hadn’t been here for years, and didn’t plan on coming back under these circumstances.  The muffled sounds of conversation and the start of another session of tears was imminent.  I had been given the job of cleaning the room and choosing what best represented him for the funeral.  A table is what the church was giving us, a long table, yes, but a singular table at the end of what would be the gathering area outside the doors of where they would commence worship.  “It’s a beautiful church, you’re so lucky you could get it for the ceremony, I’m sure he’d love to know it was being held there.”  That was a good one, better than, “He’s going to Hell for what he did to the family, I hope you know that suicide is a cardinal sin, and he was a terrible person for doing that to your family.” Anger had left me a long time before the comments came, and with them the seemingly never-ending stream of flowers and frozen meals that came with them.  We had yet to fill the hole in the wall where the bullet had planted itself, though the detectives had dug it out, along with what it had carried with it onto the wall.  

His clothes still lay in a rumpled pile on the ground, next to a pair of football pads and grass-stained practice jersey.  There were still small shards almost, of dried blood that lay hiding in corrosive puddles of venomous grief that ate away at the linings of my stomach and could only leave me with a mumbled, “No, go back downstairs, I’ll get them.”  Fast food bags and a jug of water laid shoved under the desk in crumbled balls of grease that was now surrounded by the thinnest dike of water that had begun to leak from the plastic lining of the jug.  Getting on my knees, I searched for a towel, before it came up in burning gulps.  I was convinced I was suffocating as I forced what felt like a stream of tears back and went again reaching out for the towel, I had brought up with me only to be faced to face with:

Godzilla.  He sat in the packaging, the only toy that we had been unable to find all those years ago in his room.  I hadn’t been able to think, much less speak of that week, the week we buried him, and chose simply to pretend as if it had never happened.  And yet, there he sat, Godzilla, already growing in size till he stretched and reared his head, the ceiling cracking under the sheer size of his head.  He grew larger and larger, his clawed feet the size of a small car no sitting in my living room as the walls around me burst, frigid winter air spilling in and huddling my arms to my frail frame.  He was overhead the neighborhood now and was looking at me.  Hot, prehistoric air blew from his nostrils that glowed a toxic blue that hadn’t been seen or heard from in generations to come.  He was looking at me still, almost human eyes seemingly blinking back something, tears.  A 200-foot prehistoric dinosaur was crying and I still sat, in denial, refusing to look up to the heavens and give in, turning red in the process.  My eyes clenched and shuddered, the faintest beginnings of tearful exchange beginning, before being forced down and suffocated in the deepest reaches of what I could best describe as myself.  I saw the faintest shell of my house remain, and with it flashes; blonde sandy hair flipping through the bushes following the salamander trail long past our bedtime, the angry shouts growing louder and louder behind us.  Tears rooted their way down my cheek, steaming from the cold and catching the blood orange rays of sunset in the distance.  We sat together, him and I, crying.