The Box Has Twelve Sides

I LIVE ON THE streets, but I don’t come from them.

Once, I was like you. At home, warm in front of the fire, with children and a loving wife by my side, pets pawing at the door to be let in from the cold. The cold which I now endure regularly.

Once, I lived life instead of avoiding it.

If in reading this you feel a twinge of concern, a pang of remorse, a twitch of embarrassment at my situation as opposed to yours, hats off. You’re human. You feel.

The toughest things I’ve had to get used to are the looks I get when people finally recognize me.

I ran into an old pal of mine who used to play basketball with me at the Y on Thursday nights. I was loitering at the Hardees fast food joint downtown, sneaking packs of ketchup to mix with hot water to make tomato soup. You never know what you’ll try until all the options are gone.

His first reaction, before he realized he knew this bum sitting at the table next to him, was of disgust. I’d seen it before. How could someone let themselves go, get into that type of condition? What has to happen to a person for them to sink to those depths, to run out of hope and dreams and desire? He glanced my way and immediately averted his eyes.

Then… something made him take another look. Maybe it was recognition. Most likely it was just plain curiosity. We homeless do tend to be the urban sideshow for the well-to-do masses.

He caught my eye and turned away even quicker than before. But this time I saw a recollection in his eye.

“Hello, James,” I said, casually. “How’s your life?”

You’ve got to realize what a shock it was to this guy’s system. In a matter of seconds, his empathy toward me went from abhorrence to pity to recollection and remembrance. He probably hadn’t had that kind of emotional swing in weeks. To say it overloaded his system was an understatement.

“Kevin? Kevin Brigman?” He was barely able to breathe the words, to exhale them from his throat. “Jesus. What…?” His breath finally exhausted.

“What happened to me? Is that what you’re wondering?” I asked.

“No, no. I just… You took me by surprise. I didn’t expect to run into somebody I knew downtown… down here. I don’t usually…” Again, his words trailed off into nothing.

“Hey, Jimmy. It’s all right. Trust me.” I tried to flash him a smile, but that only succeeded in maiming his already wounded psyche. You see, I’ve lost most of my teeth since I’ve been on the streets. The dental plan out here ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“Damn, Kev. Where’ve you been? The last I heard, after the separation, was that you moved into Donny Jackson’s garage apartment on the other side of town…?” Still, his eyes betrayed the raw emotions running through his core. It was all he could do to sit there and not bolt for the door.

“Yeah, well, things went south, that’s for sure.” By this point, we both just wanted the conversation to be over as soon as possible. It was useless for both parties to drag it out. “Jim, that life is gone. I’m not the same guy I was back then. Let’s just leave it at that, OK?”

“OK, Kevin. Whatever you say, man,” Jim said. He started to get up and then sat back down. “You need some…”

“Money? Not a chance. Not from you. Not from anybody.” Tears were starting to sting my eyes. I didn’t want this conversation, the first I’d had with anybody who knew me from before, to end like this, with me breaking down, crying like a baby.

“OK. It’s OK, Kev. I’m just trying to help.” Jim reached out and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Just trying to make things a little better.”

“Then just leave, Jim. And for God’s sake, please don’t tell anybody you ran into me, OK?”

“Sure, Kevin. No prob.” He patted my shoulder again and then my chest the way we did back when we’d take some of the suckers at the Y on the basketball court, a hundred years ago.

And he was gone.

I put my head down and silently sobbed in the world’s loneliest fast food joint.

The Hardees manager came by a few minutes later and escorted me out.

The place I call home is just like any other southern town bordering the Smoky Mountains. Its name is not important. You could throw a dart and hit a handful of identical places throughout western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee and southern Virginia. It’s the type of town which attracts tourists in the fall to see the leaves change. The winters get the northern folk because it’s a helluva lot milder than what they’re used to. The spring and summers bring the Floridians up from the oppressive gulf coast heat.

It’s a big enough city to attract some name acts to the community civic center, but it’s still relatively small so people don’t feel the big city rush and hectic pace. Life here is pretty decent for the people who don’t live on the streets.

But… I do.

There are two shelters that we street folk frequent when the weather gets too cold or the food runs out. Over on Lexington there’s the Salvation Army which is more or less run like its namesake. On the other side of town, near one of the malls, is the Miracle Day Shelter. Both are usually full during the winter and fairly empty all other times. I tend to go to either of these places only when I’m starved half out of my mind or in need of medical attention.

Life on the streets is everything you’ve heard or read about, multiplied many times over. I’ve had my head bashed in more times than I care to remember. Usually, it’s by transients, people on their way through who don’t have to reside in this, for all intents and purposes, community that we live in.

Trust me, if I didn’t have to live like this, I wouldn’t.

If you’re reading this, I apologize. I’ve had this old composition book for about two years now, but never really had anything important enough to record for posterity. Until now.

Forgive my handwriting, forgive my ramblings.

I am an educated man. Four-plus years of college, a job for ten years in a manufacturing facility, been married, had kids, a couple of pets. The American dream.

None of that means shit on the streets. I might as well had been born out here and reared by the hookers and pimps.

You may be able to overlook the incoherent writings on these pages, the constant changes from pen to pencil, the incomplete pages. I’d like to tell you that the water stains smeared on some of the ink in places was all rainfall from the times the impulse to write overcame the need for shelter. But I can’t.

They’d taste salty, if you had the inclination. The saltiness of tears.

I left Hardees after talking to Jim and walked towards the center of town. It was a fairly pleasant fall night with just a tinge of the impending winter in the air. It was the sort of night I used to say, in my former life, made you feel alive. Nowadays, any night I was able to take a breath made me feel alive.

I pulled the army coat which I’d worn for a couple of years tighter around my shoulders. In doing so, I heard a crinkling in the breast pocket. I reached in and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. Jim must have palmed it there when he was patting me in the chest.

Hot tears hit my eyes. Again. It seemed that I was easily moved to tears these days.

I kept walking; head down, tears littering the sidewalk, trailing behind me like breadcrumbs.

I looked at the twenty gripped tightly in my hand. The bastard. He’d given me enough money to live on for the few weeks. I could never repay him, no matter what the situation.

I stopped and stared again at the money. What could possess someone to do such a thing, to give so easily and so blindly? We hadn’t seen each other for at least five years. And when our paths do cross, he gives without even thinking twice, do so in such a secretive way as to allay any type of thanks or gratitude. He slipped it into my coat pocket without a second thought, just assuming I would find it.

I stood there on the streets of my hometown, a city that had turned its back on me, crying. Crying at the thoughtfulness and kindness a long-lost friend had bestowed upon me. Me, a once-human carcass who no longer had a real life.

And that’s when someone hit me in the back of the head and I lost consciousness.

I guess they did it just to remind me that I really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. They probably did it to keep me humble, to make sure this kind act by a lost friend didn’t serve to give me hope, to provide a glimmer of a way out of this hell-hole.

And, of course, they did it to take the twenty.

By the time I woke up, it was raining. Which was just as well; I hadn’t bathed in over two weeks. I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious.

The bastards took my coat, too. And my shoes.

The sad thing was that I probably knew who did this. I had most likely sat beside them at the soup kitchen, or my cot had perhaps butted up to theirs at the local shelter. Those of us on the streets live by a different set of rules. All of us are desperate: not knowing where the next meal will come from, wondering if there will be a shelter to go to and hoping to just have clothes against the weather. Heck, most of us don’t even know if we’ll make it through each evening. But some of us still hang on to enough humanity to be kind to each other.

Some of us, but not all.

It had to have been early morning by that time. The rain had chilled the air and it was a lot less comfortable than it had been just a while before. I needed a place to get warm and dry.

I stumbled toward the middle of town, in the direction of the central square where a monument and fountain had been erected for some historical figure who founded this godforsaken place. I knew the city had been working on the fountain earlier in the day. I was hoping there would be a bulldozer or something left behind that I could wedge open and crawl inside. There wasn’t.

Instead, the pool was empty, drained so they could work on the return feed and nozzle. There were a couple of big sawhorses protecting an area of the sidewalk where they had been doing some digging, presumably to get at the underground pipes. The hole they’d dug was about a four foot square. Just big enough for a homeless guy to crawl into and die.

And that’s just what I intended to do.

As I dropped down into the hole, my bare feet made a hollow sound, like I had jumped onto a wooden chest, not the muddied bottom of a dirt hole. Squatting down, I started clawing at the dirt under my feet. By this time, my hands were cold and I was shaking with the onset of hypothermia.

After only a few inches, my dirty fingernails hit what felt like wood. I managed to clear the dirt off what appeared to be an old door. I knocked and it answered with a hollow sound. Thinking there was the possibility of a room underneath and out of the elements, I worked my way around the edges until I found a hinge and a clasp. I tugged hard and it opened. Stale air rushed past my face from inside.

Desperate to just get out of the rain and cold, I didn’t give a second thought to what could’ve been down there. I was hurting and freezing and all I wanted was to get dry and warm.

Grabbing my backpack, I slid through the wooden door, dropping a few feet onto concrete steps. Reaching out to the sides with my arms, I felt brick walls on each side of me. Pulling the door closed behind me, I was greeted with absolute blackness.

I fished around in my backpack until I found the Ziplock baggie where I kept a box of matches to keep them dry. I struck one against the wall next to me. The flame blinded me for a few seconds, but when my vision cleared I saw a large room in front of me.

To my left were low benches against a brick wall. One of them was still standing, but the other two I could see had collapsed legs and sat directly on the floor. Straight ahead the feeble light faded into total darkness, the room stretching beyond my sight and the flame. On the right I could make out what appeared to be glass windows with more blackness behind them. Above each were faded signs which read ‘Tickets’ hand-lettered in old-style calligraphy.

The flame gave me a jolt as it reached my numb fingertips.

From my backpack, I found the old composition book I was keeping to write down notes, directions or anything I came across which could help me survive on the streets. So far, it was empty.

I grabbed a handful of pages, ripping them out. Lighting another match, I touched it to the end of the makeshift paper torch. The larger flame lit up the room much better and descended the steps into the room.

Still cautious, and not really believing my luck, I began gathering pieces of wood from one of the broken benches. Having practice with starting fires from a lot less, I managed to get a decent blaze going in minutes.

Around the turn of the century, when this city was still in its relative infancy, the main source of transportation in the downtown area was that of electric trolley. Some of the tracks were left behind, ensconced in the few remaining cobblestone streets. A couple of the trolleys have even been salvaged and are used as part of the public bus system. The quaintness is almost sickening, but it does contribute to the historical charm of the city.

In the center of town is a square from where the trolleys used to begin their routes. The fountain and a shallow pool have, for the most part, been turned into a bathing hole for the town’s overlooked residents. The street people. Us.

At the head of the pool is an obelisk which was erected to honor one of the region’s revered pioneers who helped settle the area in the early 1800’s. It is the same shape as the Washington Monument, only about a tenth its size and made of rough-hewn stone. To some, it’s a monument; to others, an eyesore.

Early on there were facilities for the public to use when waiting on the trolleys. At the turn of the century it was safe to go down the few stairs to where the public restrooms were dug into the earth, without fear of today’s common sins.

When the pool and monument were erected, these public amenities were sealed, ending that type of commonplace decadence. It was quite a ceremony from what I understand. The barbarianism of using public restrooms was at an end. Civilization was upon us.

I’d heard this tale among those of us who live on the streets. It’s rumored that some of the street people have managed to find their way into the sealed off rooms and actually live down there, just a few feet below the everyday world.

I always thought it was a myth and doubted the existence of these rooms which had been sealed off. I thought it was a fairytale, something out of a Neil Gaiman novel.

I was wrong.

Once the small fire was burning, and I had gotten dried and warm, I decided to explore my new home. Finally my shoeless feet had thawed and it wasn’t painful to walk. Oh, yes, I thought. I’ll be living down here for a while. This can be my palace, my mountain retreat, my beach house. I always had an active imagination, even in the worst of times.

It looked like the depot windows across the room had been boarded up for years. Cobwebs and dried shells of insects littered the countertop. Behind each glass were sheets of plywood to keep the frames from falling in on themselves. Eventually another source of firewood, I thought.

I thought it strange I hadn’t seen a single live insect or rat or anything since I’d been down here. There were plenty of empty husks and dried up shells, but no pests or bugs like I would have thought. I dismissed the thought as just being a byproduct of the cold winter evening.

Parts of the ticket window frames extended down to an iron grated pass-through, allowing merchants to exchange money for tickets when this trolley depot was alive. The metal was ornate, and I wondered how much it would bring at the local salvage yard. There was a time when I would have paused to marvel at the intricacies of the iron work. But that life had passed, like this room, lost and forgotten.

So far I had explored three sides of the old depot, leaving only the blackness opposite the stairs and the trap door. I shuddered at what might lie in wait: a feral cat, trapped bats... Even a hungry raccoon would likely send me screaming from this place.

That imagination of mine could work both ways.

I picked up a burning bench leg from the fire, tapered to a point on the other end, and turned toward the dark part of the room. Holding the makeshift torch in front of me, like some knight brandishing a sword, I tentatively left the comfort of the firelight.

Blackness enveloped me. The feeble light from the flame I was holding illuminated maybe three feet in front of me. Beyond that, for all I knew it dropped off into a gaping pit. Still, I walked forward, knowing I really didn’t have much to lose even if it was the edge of a precipice I was skirting.

I began to smell something unpleasant, an odor I hadn’t noticed while by the fire on the other side of the room, miles away now, it seemed. To say it was decay or something festering is not the right way to describe it. The odor was earthier, more that of nature and minerals instead of rotting flesh.

Pressing ahead, I finally reached the far wall, brick like the others, unremarkable. I could go left or right; either way provided the same amount of uncertainty about what I would find.

I chose to go right. My mother used to say, when I was a kid and we frequented weekend markets, Go right and you’ll never go wrong. The premise was that you would eventually circle around back to where you started, catching everything along the way. I never had the heart to tell her it worked just as well going to the left.

Keeping to the wall with my ever weakening torch, I came upon a wooden door covered with peeling paint. The knob was the old brass kind, maybe worth something if I could pry it loose.

I tried the knob but it was frozen tight, no doubt corroded beyond repair. I shook it but it held fast, unyielding. I was able to make out the edges of the door, the hinges and the inch or so gap at the bottom of the door.

A gap where a soft green light shone through.

I stopped, a chill coming back over me as if I had never gotten warm from the fire. A light. It was very faint and very weak, but it was there nonetheless. I wasn’t imagining it.

Several things went through my mind at that point. Could someone else be in there? That was the most unpleasant thought. The very idea I would have to either fight someone for my newfound turf, or God forbid share it with them, did not sit well with me. I deserved this place as much as any other person.

“Hey,” I said, banging the palm of my hand against the door. “Who’s in there?” Although barely a whisper, my raspy voice reverberated against the crumbling walls.

I listened for a response, for the shuffling of clothes, for the sound of movement.

Nothing.

By now my source of light had diminished, the ember slowly cooling and keeping the light only for itself. But I could still see, my surroundings faintly lit by the light coming from underneath the door.

Well, if nobody is in there, I thought, then what’s the light coming from? There had obviously been no one down here in years, maybe even decades. The uninterrupted dust on the floor was proof of that.

Mostly by the green light, I was able to make out faint writing on a sign attached to the door: JANITOR. So this was a broom closet, I thought. There was probably little of use in there, but the faint light coming from within, more than anything, was reason enough to get that door open.

I turned back toward the little campfire across the room. Just looking in that direction gave me a sense of warmth this side of the room had vacuumed out. I debated returning to its warmth and investigating the other side of the door in the morning. Whatever was inside the small room could probably wait. But I couldn’t.

I shoved the sharp end of the wooden stick into the door jamb near the knob. As it slid between the door and the frame, I pushed harder and was rewarded with a sharp cracking sound. The wooden door had sat static for so long, dry rot had made it weak at the area where the knob and lock combined to keep it closed.

The door creaked open slowly. I pushed forward and followed the light into the darkness of the janitor’s closet.

As expected, there was nothing of value in there: a bucket with one side rusted out, a headless mop with only the pole of a body remaining, and a hanger or two still on the rod against the wall. There were shelves along the wall as well, but their only inventory was dust and bug shells. A couple of cardboard boxes lay in the corner, mostly coming apart from time and mildew.

But no green light.

Disappointed and relieved at the same time, I realized I was night-blind from the flame I was brandishing. The only way to acclimate my eyes to the pitch blackness was to leave the torch outside the closet and close the door, blocking my vision from it and the campfire.

The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention as I placed the torch on the cement floor outside the closet door and pulled it shut, closing myself into the small space. I could feel panic trying its best to set in. Just because I couldn’t see didn’t mean I wasn’t aware of the tightness of the room. I imagined insects and God knew what other creepy-crawlies there might be; ready to drive out the unwelcome intruder. Just the thought made me itch.

Putting my back to the door, I slid down, sitting on the floor and looking toward the back of the closet at nothing but blackness. I wondered how long I would have to wait before dark adaption allowed my eyes to acclimate to the dark. There was no such thing as time, it seemed. I had no sense, sitting there in the inky stillness that minutes or even hours might pass. There was only the absence of light, the realm of shadows. Sitting there I couldn’t even tell if I had my eyes open or not.

It was so devoid of light that I didn’t know I had fallen asleep until I woke up.

I started awake.

I knew I was awake because I could make out shapes in the closet. I saw the shelves and the decrepit old bucket with its skeletal mop pole sticking out of it. I saw the paint peeling from the walls and where it had shed on the floor. I saw the boxes laying in ruin in the corner. Everything was tinged in a soft, almost shadowy green.

Then I saw the source of the light.

One of the boxes was mostly intact. Along the sides it was split open in a place or two, but for the most part there was still enough structure to hold its contents. Through the openings, green light was seeping, almost like fluid, covering everything in the closet with a soft luminosity.

Blinking, I couldn’t trust what my eyes were telling me. I reached across, just barely more than an arm’s length, and slid the box to me. The soft glow persisted, didn’t waiver or dim when I moved it from its resting place.

The cardboard container which was its outer shell practically disintegrated, revealing another box within. Aside from the glow, it had no markings, designs or even texture. It was smooth, unremarkable and roughly the size of a shoebox. There was no lid; it was all one piece, cut and hinged in such a way as to fold upon itself and form a container.

The light coming from the box was persistent. It was mesmerizing, haunting, with a strange beauty. It felt warm and somehow familiar.

The green glow harkened back to my childhood.

When I was ten or twelve, my parents decided to build our new house and get us out of the apartment we were living in. The land we were to build on was just behind our apartment building, so I would walk over every so often and check out the progress.

On the property was a small shack, not much larger than an outhouse. It was pretty much empty, no doubt an abandoned storage shed. But inside, on one of the top shelves, I found an old AMT plastic model kit of Frankenstein’s monster. I immediately grabbed it and took it home, not thinking it could have been someone’s property. I rationalized my actions, telling myself that the shack would be torn down soon and its contents discarded. If anything, I was saving it.

Once home, I opened the box to reveal the unassembled model within. The clear bag containing the model pieces on their runners hadn’t been opened. But the remarkable part, especially for a kid like me with an overactive imagination and no friends with which to share, was the material from which the model was molded.

The cover of the box told me what I already knew: it was Glow-In-The-Dark plastic. The letters were purposely capitalized and there was a small copyright symbol just following. That was so cool, I thought.

I was so amped up that I bugged dad until he took me to the hardware store to get some model cement. I stayed up most of the night putting it together, smelling the acrid odor from the glue, getting some of it on my fingers like a second skin, but not minding a bit. When I was done, I sat the model under my reading light for a full ten minutes so it could get a good dose of light.

When ready, I did the ‘big reveal.’ Turning my back to the model, I switched off the reading light and closed my eyes. After a moment or two, making sure I had gotten used to the dark and looking in the direction of the bedside table where the model was sitting, I opened them.

A beautiful, soft green glow greeted my eyes, emanating from Frankenstein’s monster. I was in a trance, gazing with wonder at this simple plastic model I had put together. The glow brought out details in the plastic I had previously not seen. Flaws, captured air bubbles and varying wall thicknesses just added to the beauty. The green glow of the plastic illuminated the table top and everything on it, casting shadows.

It was the same green glow coming from the box in the closet of the abandoned depot I had found under the city streets.

My head snapped up. I was disoriented for a moment. What had just happened? That memory was so vivid it seemed like I had actually been there. It was something I hadn’t thought about in years, and yet every detail stood out. It felt like something more than just a memory. It was like I had been there and was rudely snatched back.

It seemed I could still smell the chemical odor of the model cement, could still feel the tightness of excess glue on my fingers. Weird.

I turned my attention back to the box and lifted it from the outer, mildewed cardboard. It was surprisingly light. I told myself it probably was empty and therefore of no value. Something in my head answered: Not so fast.

I tucked it under one arm and slid back up the door, reaching behind me to turn the knob and get out of there. The door opened and I stepped out. The makeshift torch was completely cold. Looking across the room at the fire I had started earlier, I saw that it was down to just glowing embers.

How long had I been in there?

I walked across the old abandoned depot, stirring up dust along the way, the box under one arm.

Reaching what was left of the fire, I gently put the box on the floor near the lone bench which was still intact. Within minutes, I had the coals burning again. Whatever chill had been in the fire’s absence was soon gone.

Holding the box again, I sat with it in my lap and leaned against the wall. There was only one seam in its otherwise perfect construction. I held it to my ear and shook it. The empty sound of nothing was deafening.

The green luminescence was still there, albeit not as dramatic in the firelight. I put one dirty fingernail under the seam and began to slowly lift it up. I stopped as I saw something on the end of one of my fingers. Examining it closer, I couldn’t place what it was. It had a stiff texture to it, almost rubbery, adhering to my finger like a... like a second skin. Bringing the finger to my nose, I took a sniff, already knowing what I would smell.

Plastic model cement. On my finger. There was no doubt.

Remembering to breathe, I looked again at the seam that appeared to be the only opening into the box. Slowly, I started to open the lid. What was I expecting? Bats to fly out? A poisonous gas? Or, worse yet, nothing?

With a quick breath, I pulled the lid open.

The box was empty.

All that drama for an empty box? Sure it glowed, but this is the twenty-first century. Things are made today that were only dreamed about in the past. This was likely just some kid’s toy box which had once contained Legos or something similar long ago. The janitor probably brought it here to store oily rags. Some residue had obviously gotten on my fingers and was freaking me out, tapping into that overactive imagination I thought I’d long outgrown. There was nothing special about the box, I concluded.

Inspecting the underside of the lid for a hint of its origin, I could swear the glow seemed brighter. Not only brighter, but of a slightly different hue as well. It had taken on a slight amber tone where the green had been. Looking closer, I saw movement in that color, shapes forming, clouds churning, objects moving…

Life.

Activity.

What was happening? Was I seeing things? Was it the dust or something in the air down here causing me to hallucinate?

I closed my eyes tightly, but the new color persisted, even with my closed eyelids. Now I was hearing sounds as well coming from the box. Faint, but definite. I couldn’t discern exactly what I was hearing. Nevertheless, I heard... things.

Now I could smell a hint of newly mown grass in the stale air, another of my comforting childhood memories. A slight warm breeze blew across my forehead, enough so that I felt my hair wave with it. I suddenly had a taste of peaches in my mouth. It was so real that it triggered hunger pangs in my gut.

All five senses now fully engaged, I turned my attention back to the box, and stared in wonder at the world it was creating before me...