The Box

“Okay, I have to call him.”

I pinched my nose as my face curled at the smell of something rotting. I was already pissed that I had to clean out this stuffy attic, filled wall to wall with boxes and dusty sheets. It was the last part of the house we cleaned, and I wondered how we didn't notice the smell until now.

If my mother was here, we could’ve used her help. The sweltering heat of the attic turned the stench into something of a drug, bringing on a lightheadedness and weak knees. I couldn’t stand it anymore, turning my body away and back to the small attic door that was split half open, leading back down to the house's second floor. 

The walls looked like they were crying away their wallpaper, torn and tattered as it fell to the floor. I stepped off from the ladder, and heard the sound of someone rummaging through something. My brother, finishing up the bedroom. I headed toward the sound, floor boards creaking under my weight.

I wasn’t sure how my mother lived here comfortably. It’s honestly no wonder she ran off. She was consistently flakey and absent anyway, like she had been my whole life. I couldn't understand, however, that she wasn't at our fathers funeral. We all hate him to death, no pun intended, but the man was gone. She could've at least shown up for him one last time. Could’ve at least shown up here for us. Nothing new.

“Hey-” My brother glanced up at me, the sound of my steps alerting him to my presence. “Did you finish the attic?” I sucked in a breath and exhaled.

“No. I got up there and there was this god-awful smell, like something died.” He made a face at me.

“So for the last 20 minutes you’ve done what, exactly?” He was irritated, nothing new. 

“Well, I was trying to find the source.”

“And did something die?” I looked off into thought.

“That's the thing, I don't know.” I crossed my arms and furrowed my brows.

“What do you mean you don’t know.” My attention was back on him. Always up my ass.

“James, I just don't know. Theres this box that fucking reeks how the hell am I supposed to know whats inside and why it smells so terrible?”

“Well. I don't know, maybe you open it?” I scoffed, and rolled my eyes. “So what then, are you gonna call him?”

“Yeah, maybe. I'm not sure yet, I wouldn't want to bother.” He was looking at me like he always had. Like I was unable to do anything myself. Older brothers always have something to say. He was waiting for me to blow up, I could see it in the smirk splitting his face. I relaxed myself. “How about you just go. I can finish up alone.”

“Well, okay.” He shrugged and smiled at me. “Have fun.” He walked out of the room and down the steps. I thought he was joking, but when I heard the old rickety screen door weakly latch itself, and the rumble of his car start up and slowly fade away, dragging up gravel pavement behind it, I realized how stupid I was being. Alone in this shitty house, falling apart at the seams. It was getting dark, and I’d be damned if I was still here with no electricity. Lugging around a candle like some sort of Ebenezer Scrooge. I headed back toward the ladder and lifted myself back onto it, pulling myself back into a layer of heat and crippling foulness. 

As I made it to the top, my eyes landed on the large frame of the padlocked chest in the center of the room. It had scraped the wood and drawn up small splintered chunks when I pulled it across the floor. I stepped toward it, holding in my gags and reaching down for the silver padlock held onto it.

It gleamed in the little sunlight that showed through the small window, shining with a cleanness that I could only describe as new. That was off putting, considering the chest looked older than half the things crowded into the dank crevices of this withered excuse of an attic. I pulled at it, hoping somehow it would crack open. It didn’t. I pulled again, losing motivation to discover what lied within the worn, damp wood. I stared at it for a moment, contemplating.

There was a box, I remembered. A box that my father had kept every key in. This realization beckoned me back down onto the second floor and to the study. I hurried through the hall, combing my memory, grasping for any idea of where we left it. As I approached the doors, I stopped in my tracks, staring blankly at the wide mahogany doors that gawked back at me. They came with a connotation instilled in my head from when I was young.

No one goes in dad’s study. Not even after death. He made us promise to keep out of it, and when the house was to be reduced down to ruble, that the room would be fully untouched by anyone but him, dying away with the rest of the rooms. A whisper in a sea of screaming. But he was dead now, and I wasn’t an eight year old boy anymore. 

There still remained a sort of anxiety in my chest as I went inside. The only time I’d ever see what was locked within was when he would go in. Or when women would. I swallowed, and approached the doors. They creaked on their hinges, swinging open in one push, allowing a dry musk to escape its once thought eternity .They were heavy, thick, and I’d never noticed how well kept they were compared to the rest of the house. And only when I finally broke the seal I'd been keeping myself from, and opened the door to a grand room adorned by a desk and a lamp, did I realize how well kept the room was too.

My eyes wandered, observing the shelves of books upon books, papers spread about the floor, diagrams of the human body on the wall, beside his varying degrees and awards. He was a doctor. Of what, I never was told. I made it to his desk, littered in papers with messy writing, written in haste and what seemed almost like panic. The man was strange, this I’d known, but when I observed the drawings I did that day, a sick feeling entered my stomach. A strange book of cloth sat right in the center of his desk, and it beckoned me like a siren calling her victim into the deep. I brought it into my hands, gently as though it would fall apart, and I opened it to the first page to find nothing but his signed name, placed kindly at the bottom left corner.

I began to flip through the pages, confused at first, but then a horrifying realization set in, like an inescapable shadow cast in broad daylight. I was looking at diagrams and notes, drawings and rules, body parts separate from one another, and instructions, instructions on how to dissect the human body into parts. It wasn't just arms and legs, it was everything. The eyes, the nose, each finger with tendons intact. Genitalia, the entire scalp, how to cut a person into even units of meat, like some sick butcher and his cow. 

I didn't want to open the box anymore. I didn't want to know. Didn't need to. But I knew if I didn't, the truth would gnaw at me like a malnourished wolf on a bone. It was time to call.

~~~~

I arrived at the facility, still riddled with confusion and fear. I wondered if what I’d read was real. If what I’d seen was just a result of the long day I’d spent burning in that house, it must have been. How could he have been doing these things, all those years we lived there. And those women I’d seen go into his office, I realized now that I’d never seen them come out. And then I felt guilty, guilty because I could’ve helped them, guilty at the idea that I once looked at them with such disdain. I was only eight.

They pulled me from my thoughts. The people in their black coats. I’d never been here before, I wasn't sure what to expect. I stood and followed them as they walked.

“He was reluctant to talk, angry even. We still managed to get him to stay, at least for a little while.” I nodded, observing the dimly lit hall around me, a humming blue light illuminating the path. They took me to a green, sort of metal door, which they pulled open and urged me inside. The room was small with a small table, and set in the center of it was a phone. A red, corded phone. The handset, separate from its base, up-facing on the table. I walked in haste, picking up the phone in hopes that he would not hang up. I curled the phone cord around my fingers.

“Hello?” A voice echoed from the otherside, familiar but painful to my ears. There was a silence. “Hello?”

“I- uhm. H-hi.” I didn’t know what to say.

“Alex?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” The voice groaned, clearly hoping for someone else. Nothing new.

“Listen, I was wondering if you could help me?” He sighed. 

“I’ve tried helping you your whole life, and your whole life you’ve refused it.” I rolled my eyes, stiffening at the remark. He was lying and he knew it. Manipulative, always. He interrupted the silence again. “What do you want.”

“Im looking-'' I paused, deciding how to word things, “for a key. I looked in your office but I didn't-'' I paused again, realizing what I'd just said. I stifled my concern so he wouldn't catch it and continued. “I didn't find anything.”

“And what are you opening?” He was reluctant. I knew him, and he knew something. 

“Well, there was this big, old wooden chest in the attic. It smelled rotten. I-I just wanted to see what was inside.” There was silence again. 

“There’s nothing in there for you.”

“Dad-”

“No. There is nothing in there for you.” He was stubborn, always had been. I always wondered if death changed you at all, altered your senses and made you some sort of better version of yourself. Turns out death is just as insufferable as life. “There's nothing in there.” I was angry. He was lying and he knew it. My instinct was to remain silent. Agreeable and adhering. I fell in line, just how he liked his children to be. But he was gone now, and couldn’t hurt me anymore.

“I saw your books, dad.” Silence. “I saw what you wrote, and what you drew dad, everything. How could you be doing that to people? How could-”

“You've got it wrong.” There was anger in his tone. An anger I’d never heard before, and he was always angry. “I told you to never go in that study. You promised me-”

“You beat it out of me dad! You made me promise you that! What respect do I owe you now? What respect did you give me!?” I stopped. This was going too far.

“I told you not to go in that study.” I slammed the phone back onto the table and pushed the door open. The people in the black coats called after me. I didn't listen. I just ran. Back to my car. Back to the house. I had to know.

As I crashed up the stairs and down the hall, I passed the study. The door was wide open, like I'd left it, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed something. The once disgruntled desk, covered from corner to corner in notes and papers, and that book, had been cleaned. Wiped absolutely empty. I didnt let it slow me down. I came to the unfolded ladder, or at least where it should've been. It was folded back into the attic, and the door was closed behind it. I didn't know that was possible. He may have been a shitty father but he always surprised me. I pulled at the string, causing the door to collapse, the ladder shooting out and unfolding. A cloud of dust followed. I crawled up, determined to discover what this man had done. I was lost. My father, my own father, had been studying the dissection of humans. He’d been doing this all along, his wife and children clueless to the truth. But I didn't know yet. I didn't have the proof yet, but I knew it was close, close like I could smell it. As I reached the top of the ladder, my eyes shot directly for where I knew the box was, but again, it had been hidden away. He was trying to make me give up. It didn't matter. I had to know. The scent hadn’t faded away, it only grew worse with the day's end, and I could feel my intestines churning in my stomach, my lunch threatening to return. I swallowed it back down. 

It was dark, too dark to make anything out. I pulled my phone’s flashlight out and I scanned. When scanning didn't work I searched. When searching didn't work, I pried away at stacked boxes, peeking inside every single one. All of this to no avail. I turned back to the door, defeated. But as I turned, the crisp glimmer of silver caught the light of my phone, and I'd found it, like a ship detecting the safety of a light-house at sea, I’d found it. I went to it, dragging it out of its damp corner with all my remaining strength, adorned by bugs and animals alike crawling out from behind it. Its wood nicked me, now dry from sitting all day in the light of the sun that showed into the rickety attic ever so slightly. I still didnt know how to open it. At least not in any civil way, so I looked around.

I spotted an old, corded phone sitting lonesome about the floor. I picked it up and dropped to my knees beside the chest, lifting the handset above my head.

“Here goes.” 

I came down hard. Willful. Hopeful. One solid crack. And yet nothing. Another, hard, strong, angry. And another, hard. Another. It wasn't working. Why wasnt it working? I picked up the base, slamming it down over and over and over. When I had just barely run out of energy, the final blow came. Up and down. Hard. I heard a loud crack, a new one, and a bang. The lock had fallen to the floor. Who knew a phone would’ve still been my saving grace?

I threw the phone to my side. Though I had finally opened the box, a part of me was still scared. What if they blamed me? What if they said I did it? Or what if they found it and thought I’d done it anyway. I exhaled, creeping my shaking hands toward the box. I placed my left hand on it, holding my nose with my right to brace it for any smell that would come my way. That didn’t matter, because when I opened the lid I was hit with an aroma of sickness and death. A scent that was inescapable. I even remember it now. I could taste it. It was everywhere.

I looked inside, and there was a letter. My father's handwriting. It was wrapped in an orange and pink spotted scarf. And then I knew. It was unmistakable. I unfolded the small note, which only read, “My proudest work.” Whatever was inside the box was tenderly enveloped in some sort of wrapping paper. I pulled it away to reveal, and god was it awful, what I could only describe as my mothers fully dismembered body. Her legs, her arms, all ten of her fingers. But the worst part, was her severed face, which was tenderly placed right in the middle of this gruesome display, smiling at me.