THE SURPRISE OF A LIFETIME

It was springtime, but you wouldn’t know if for the weather. Rainy, cold, blustery. It wasn’t the kind of May you enjoy, but that’s global warming for you. I decided to administer a spring cleaning of the apartment anyway. Vanessa was going to be out of town for a week, and since she has always been the messy one in this relationship, I thought it would be a good time to get to work on all the nooks and crannies neglected during the winter freeze. Knowing Vanessa’s tendency to pack rat-hood, it was also a perfect time to get rid of some of the stacks of shit that have been annoying the shit out of me for ages, but I haven’t been able to actually 86 in her presence.

I did the kitchen first because that was the area that is usually the grossest, and I wanted to just get it out of the way. I wanted the wet work done first, so I swept then mopped the floor, even moving the garbage cans and recycling bins to get at all the raisins and onion skins and bottle caps that had been hiding there. When the floor was dry, I emptied the garbage (though it was only half full), tied up the newspapers and US Weekly magazines with twine, and dragged the lot to the curb. Lastly, I lit some incense.

Next stop: upstairs closet. This was the dry work, so I was a bit happier about that. The closet started off being a place to keep sporting equipment, but after my accident last year, I decided I wouldn’t be needing my lacrosse sticks and hockey gear anymore, so I ditched them, and the closet became a place where Vanessa started storing her shit. It started with clothes she hardly wore, and her ever expanding collection of vintage loafers (don’t ask). After a while, though, I noticed she was throwing other random stuff in there, and that’s when I started to get worried. Several times I asked Vanessa to clear out the crap in there, as I was worried it might become a nest where vermin could hide. She consistently ignored me, and the only coherent response I ever got to my plea was, “What for? You don’t have anything to put in there.”

“That’s not the point,” I responded. “That closet is a terrible example for the rest of the storage area in the house. Imagine what would happen if this closet started hanging around with the others? It’d be a nightmare.”

“Your sock draw would be the first to rebel.”

“Look, don’t start with me. A lot of people lay out their clothes for the week.”

“Not a month in advance!”

Bottom line: the closet never gets cleaned. So in I went. I didn’t last 5 minutes before I had to break out the face mask and rubber gloves. Filthy! Wow. I turned up film canisters, medicine vials, clothing, shoes, socks (mostly unwashed by the smell of them), old board games, unopened mail, and a motherlode of pistachio shells. I dumped it all in the trash. Then I got to the stash of Vanessa’s abandoned hobbies: a tennis racket, knitting needles, crochet pieces, even a make-your-own-beer set. It was ridiculous. I didn’t even remember all that shit. I started going deeper and deeper into the closet, not knowing where it was going or how far down the rabbit hole I could go. I was just throwing stuff over my shoulder with wild abandon, like nothing mattered. I tossed that stuff all over. Finally, after toiling thorough what looked like an entire year of tax exempt receipts, I came to a dusty shoebox. I was going to simply throw the entire thing in the garbage without even opening it, but stuck to the top were the disgusting remains of a banana peel—black and shriveled with wild whitish grey mold that, if left for much longer, would have probably taken over the entire closet, consuming it all with its bacterial spray. I almost threw up in my mouth at the sight of it. Not wanting to even have it poison my line of sight any longer, I reached my gloved hand out and grasped it betwixt my index finger and thumb and tossed it into the garbage. The banana peel must have been stuck to the shoe box cover, because in the process of doing this, off it came.

It was dark in that rear corner of the closet, but enough daylight reached in to glimpse a flash of reflected color. Curious, I pulled the box out of the corner and shed light on it. Inside was a pile of glossy photos, faded with rounded edges, 70s style. Most of them were from Vanessa’s college days, long before I knew her. Wow, they were something. She was thin back then! And sexy. There was something curious about the nature of the photos, though. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But the more I stared at the photos, they more it made sense to me. There was something about Vanessa—an essential essence to her that was gone. Something different abut her. She seemed so much more… I don’t know. Studious, different, more serious. Something about that young girl with crazy curly brown hair and paisley dresses… it just seemed like a woman that I didn’t know.

I kept going through the photos and I came across one that made me stop. It was a photo of Vanessa holding an infant child, which wasn’t too extraordinary—she was the oldest of a large family. But what made me stop was the crucifix I saw around her neck. I had seen it before, and that’s exactly what scared me

I pulled out my mobile phone and dialed her number. Though she was probably partying with her girlfriends for the bachelorette weekend, there was a chance she would answer, and I needed to know the answer immediately. To my surprise, she picked up. I described the picture for her and it took her a while to place it.

“Where the heck did you find that?"

“In a shoe box in the junk closet.”

“Interesting. So what?”

“Well, it’s the crucifix around your neck. I didn’t know you were Catholic.”

“I’m not technically. I was given that cross by a friend. She got it for me while I was traveling.”

“She didn’t happen to be travelling in Egypt, was she?”

“How’d you guess?”

I sighed. IT was a bad sign. A very bad sign. The cross itself was not a Christian symbol at all, but rather something that was used in a satanic mass in the 3^rd Century A.D. in the Egyptian deserts, near the Fertile Crescent, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers co-mingled, and humanity supposedly was born. Legend had it that it wasn’t just humanity that was born there.

“Vanessa, I just need to ask you one more question: where is that necklace now? Do you still own it?"

“Yeah. I think it’s still in my jewelry case. Bottom shelf. I hardly ever break it out, but it’s still oin there.”

My heart began beating faster. “OK honey, thanks. I’ll let you go now. Sorry to bother you over the weekend. Have a good time with the girls, k?"

The phone clicked off and I walked into the bedroom. It was quiet in there. Deadly quiet. I tip toed over to the jewelry drawer. Opening slowly, I heard a sound that was ungodly. I rifled through and found the cross. It looked evil. I smelled it. IT was evil. It chopped off my hand, and here I am today, an amputee.

I’m sorry my penmanship is so bad.