She approached the white box on the table, virginal looking in its innocence, and opened it once more. “Hell!” the flames hissed in her face. “Here's hell to you, Kirk.” She raised the open box high in the air.
What a shame to have to wrap the box, but then she also couldn't wait to send off this bit of mischief she'd concocted. She felt proudly sly.
She didn't expect earthshaking results. The box of hell was mainly a way to vent anger. She wished that receiving this odd artifact might knock unflappable Kirk off balance, put some fear into him. But if opening the box gave him nothing more than a shaky moment, she'd still be pleased.
Kirk had a loyal ragtag band of disciples, but he also owned his share of enemies. What about the fat cats who parked their BMWs and Lexuses, leaving engines running for as long as it took to duck into his house to swap a wad of bills for a tidy packet? How many had been burned? The guy who'd just gunned his truck down the street was not a satisfied customer. How many former girlfriends nursed grudges, had brothers, boyfriends, fathers, who wanted revenge? A disgruntled ex-minion or two might even be in the lot.
She doubted Kirk would suspect her. They'd had a few skirmishes, all one-sided, Kirk barely taking notice of her even as she complained. “That wasn't my dog you heard,” he'd say in his grating, factual voice. “I keep my dog penned up. That wasn't me you heard. I wasn't even here. Those ain't my vans. You'll have to talk to the guys that own ‘em.” His expression was neutral, at most a mild scowl, the same expression Audrey herself wore when interrupted by phone solicitors. His vacant denials upset her more than his noise. She had no impact; he didn't even know her name.
Then there had been that clash a month ago. While sweeping her walkway, she'd noticed tire tracks worn into her lawn and skid marks on the sidewalk. Kirk had recently begun pulling his new red Jeep up onto his lawn, parking it over the stump of what had once been a pretty mimosa tree. Soon after he moved in, the tree died and had to be cut down (Audrey didn't blame the tree for dying), and now its stump functioned as an oil catcher for the Jeep. She tried not to let the Jeep get to her, but this was too much. Instead of backing out of his own driveway, he was simply tearing across her lawn.
Holding the broom in both hands like a peasant's crude weapon, she had marched to his front door, seized the mold-encrusted knocker, and banged it so hard her fingers vibrated. The door swung open. Kirk stood there wearing his usual unperturbed expression, a can of Dixie beer dangling from the fingers of one hand. Otherwise, he had nothing on but a towel wrapped around his middle, a fact Audrey didn't fully register until she'd finished her accusation and stood, redfaced and trembling, in its aftermath.
"They ain't my tracks,” he said in his factual whine, as if merely turning down a Girl Scout selling cookies.
Audrey shook the broom handle in his face. “What do you mean? That's your Jeep on the lawn. The tracks arch from your side to mine. You know damn well those're your tracks."
"Don't know nothing about it."
"And I'm sick of your friends parking their crummy vans in front of my house. If I want a used car lot, I'll put it in myself."
Kirk downed some beer. “You don't own the street."
"You think you own it, the street in front of my house.” Seeing the words MODEL MOTEL printed on the towel in black, she blurted, “You steal towels from motels too.” An urge to spear his belly button with the broom handle came over her, but before she could act, Kirk freed the towel at his waist with the flick of a thumb. As it dropped, his brows hiked upwards in a blasé look of superiority. With a flourish, he gave the door a shove. Bang! Audrey dropped the broom.
Back in her own house, she plopped on the sofa, gripping the broom across her lap. She let go with one hand, held it palm down, and watched it shake. Powerless rage. How could she put an end to this scourge? She'd already tried the police, mentioned the suspicious visitors. They weren't interested, said there was no probable cause for a search. She could show them the tracks, accuse Kirk of exposing himself, but he would deny it. She pictured two cops snickering at her. Kirk would use his good-old-boy humor to win them over. One might even drop by later for a beer and a tidy packet.
Her thoughts turned to revenge. She could slash his tires, but hers could be slashed too. She could launch a noise campaign in the morning hours when Kirk was still sleeping, but he probably slept like a dead man. No, the plan she carried out would have to be anonymous.
A friend who worked in the college's biology lab said he had access to bags of frozen skunk glands. He would gladly pilfer some and she could simply toss them under Kirk's house. Heat and decomposition would do the rest.
Great idea. Kirk, skunked out of his kingdom. But what if the odor drifted back to her house? Throwing skunk glands under a house was something rowdy fraternity boys would do—beneath her dignity.
But making these boxes wasn't. The night before, watching him through the blinds at four A.M. as he banged on a pirogue with a stick yelling commands at Brown Dog to amuse his friends, she'd been granted a flash of inspiration. Kirk belonged in hell. She pictured him in an old-fashioned kind of hell, one that the most fanatical fire-and-brimstone preacher would approve of. But he wasn't in hell. He was firmly entrenched next door, banging on pirogues and driving her insane. Justice was not being done.
For her idea she needed a box. She found this one wedged between others like it in her junk closet. A Christmas gift had come inside the box—another piece of Belleeck china from her stepmother. She aimed to please and somehow got the idea Audrey liked Belleek china. Audrey didn't. She thought it boring—all those creams, pale yellows, and shy touches of shamrock green. Expensive but incredibly dull. Audrey accepted graciously, so the tradition continued, and she could expect to receive another fragile item the next Christmas.
As Audrey taped up Kirk's box of hell, she thought it fitting that the white cockle-finished box her drab china came in was being put to such dynamic use. In black ink she printed MR. KIRK SPILLER and his address on the brown paper, taking pains to give each letter a generic look. She batted the box between her hands. Now that her first creation was ready to go, she felt antsy, curious about the outcome.
Two days later came a let down. She hadn't expected huge results, but the very day that, by her estimation, Kirk would have received the box, he played his stereo at top volume for hours, something he didn't often do. Was he being defiant or did he need the noise to calm his nerves? Either way, the music was unbearable.
Powerless over her own environment. The truth of it made her sick. But once she began planning her next box, she felt better, clearer. This one would be more complicated—it should make him think.
In the library, she pulled out art history books and poured over depictions of hell. She settled on one by the fifteenth century Dutch painter, Hieronymus Bosch. This time she sliced down the four corners of the box with an X-Acto knife, flattening the panels so that drawing would be easier. With India ink and colored pencils, she copied Bosch's rubbery naked people. Many of the tools of torture he'd devised for the damned were musical instruments. One sinner was trapped inside a drum; another tied to a giant mandolin, his back painfully stretched over its bridge; a third appeared to be sliding down the trumpetlike shaft of a flute. One unfortunate sinner hung suspended in a harp, arms outstretched, his body pierced through by its strings.
She took care to copy it exactly. The painstaking work absorbed her attention, calmed her. After laboring for a week in her spare time, she taped up the corners to reform the box and looked inside. What she saw was too beautiful to give away. She kept the box several days for her own enjoyment, but mailed it after someone blew a car horn in Kirk's driveway for two hours during the night.
The Bosch box arrived Saturday afternoon. Audrey saw him receive it, for she peered through the blinds of the window that overlooked his porch, watching on and off until his door finally opened. He stretched as if he'd just gotten up, and stepped to the mailbox that dangled from one nail on the
porch's column. He pulled out envelopes. Turning, he saw the box on the step. Audrey could make nothing of his expression. What she found encouraging, though, was the way he stumbled as he stooped to pick it up. His face registered an uncharacteristic momentary surprise at his own clumsiness.
In the next two weeks little changed out front, except that a new van appeared. This one, dirty white, its grill bashed in, had the words BEST AIR painted on the side panels. Audrey especially disliked its owner, who had a stubby nose and wore safari shorts and an Aussie Outback hat. She asked him not to park in front of her house; he gave her the finger. Best Air would pull up on a Monday, enter Kirk's house, and not emerge for a week, except to drive off with Kirk in his red Jeep. Gradually, it dawned on her that Best Air was living there too, with Kirk and the girl named Star.
Best Air was as good as Kirk at tossing beer cans off the porch. The day Audrey struck one with her lawn mower, she began her third box. She tried to imagine how Kirk saw things, and doubted that he'd given much attention to the intricate detail of her Bosch box. He probably hadn't even noticed his own likeness on the face of the man strung through the harp, or Brown Dog, walking on his back legs, masquerading as a devil with pointy ears and tail. Kirk's limited attention span required something simpler—an obvious image that would deliver a sharp punch to the gut.
She colored the next box black and enclosed a piece of white paper, three inches square. In its center she drew a circle the size of a quarter, and colored it black. The Black Spot. Surely Kirk had read at least a comic book version of Treasure Island and knew the Black Spot meant death. Even if he didn't remember the blind buccaneer, Pew, and his tapping cane, the significance of the Black Spot seemed obvious. Maybe he'd think the Mafia was after him.
Soon after mailing the Black Spot box, Audrey came home to find that the boat that always straddled the curb in front of Kirk's house was gone. One of the trucks, the Jeep, and Brown Dog had vanished too. For a week, nothing stirred next door. She couldn't believe it. Had the Black Spot scared him? Was he staying with friends, looking for another house to rent, or considering a move back to the wilds of South Louisiana where he came from?
But the next Sunday morning he returned; the boat reclaimed its spot. Best Air was back too, along with some other bare-chested friends. They drank beer, whooped it up, unloaded ice chests filled with fish. Later, a gun went off. On tiptoe, Audrey peered through the blinds in her bedroom and saw Kirk aiming a rifle down an alley behind the dog pen.
"You can't shoot worth a shit!” yelled Best Air.
Kirk fired again.
"That rat's ass is in the next state by now."
"Freakin’ rat,” Kirk bellowed.
Audrey began work on her next box. She turned it into a peep show like ones she made in grammar school. She cut a square in the lid for a skylight and covered the opening with pink cellophane. Then she cut a hole at one end for viewing. She decorated the inside with instruments of torture like the ones used during the Spanish Inquisition. Instead of drawing directly on the box, she made cut outs and glued them on. Manacles hung from the walls, and a cut out man with hair the color of Kirk's was chained to a pair of them in the center panel. A shrouded figure stood to one side, its bony hand on a lever operating a rack. Pokers and eye gouges littered the floor. Battle-axes crossed on one wall, and a coffin-shaped box leaned against another. Audrey had seen one of those in a Vincent Price movie. When the door shut on the victim, he was impaled on spikes sticking out of the back.
The torture chamber peep show took longer to complete than her Bosch box. When she squinted through the small hole, she could swear that the figures inside were moving around. The pinkish light filtering through the cellophane gave the scene a horrifying glow.
* * * *
A month of calm followed Kirk's receipt of the torture chamber. Best Air seemed to have disappeared along with his van. The faded blue and rusted white van weren't coming as often as they used to. A spot had been freed up in front of her house, a little window on the world. Audrey didn't feel as walled in. She slept better. Brown Dog stayed in his pen at night. Doris, the lady on the other side of Kirk, said it was because of the complaints she'd made to Animal Control, but Audrey liked to think her torture chamber had something to do with the change.
She was down to her last Belleek box. It sat on the dining table, but making another seemed unnecessary now.
At work one day in late August, the friend who had offered the skunk glands showed up at her desk, curious about how things were going next door. No more late-night parties, Audrey was pleased to report. Life was bearable at last. She missed making the boxes, but for the first time in a year, she was beginning to enjoy living in her house.
But that very night, Audrey's peace was shattered. She sat upright in bed, startled awake by a girl's insistent voice. “Not fair, Kirk! Not fair, not fair."
Audrey groaned. Her bedside clock blinked 3:14.
"Open up, Kirk! That's not fair!"
Audrey threw her pillow at the wall. She could hear the girl on Kirk's front porch, pounding the knocker. Not fair. No, not fair to be awakened in the middle of the night. She could shoot that stupid girl, and Kirk too.
She slipped on a robe and paced her front room. The knocking continued. “That's enough,” Audrey said aloud. She opened the front door and stuck her head out.
Star stood beneath the porch light. Her hair, usually styled in feathery layers framing her heart-shaped face, was wet and matted to her head. Wearing pink shorts and a white halter top, she appeared even smaller than Audrey remembered—childlike, though not in the sense of a robust, present-day child. Audrey thought of orphans in Dickens's time, pictures in history books of children who worked in mills during the Industrial Revolution, slight of build, with faces that seemed to belong to weary, defeated adults rather than to children.
"Kirk!” Star shouted. “Open up. Please. Let me in. It's raining!"
Audrey noticed the straight sheets of rain. She took a step outside under the protection of her porch roof, then another. She reached the end of the porch and gripped the railing. She was close to Star now, barely fifteen feet away, heart fluttering as the girl pounded on the door. “Give me my keys, Kirk. At least give me my keys."
Audrey gripped the railing and rehearsed the words she intended to say. Please have some consideration! Some people work and have to get up in the morning. Her heart beat wildly as she debated calling these words out. Standing there behind the railing, it seemed she was watching a little play unfold that was beyond her reach, magical and tragic. Hers was a front row seat, and though so close to the action, she watched from the unbridgeable distance that separates an audience from the stage. Star was so focused on calling Kirk she didn't notice Audrey. She pressed her head to the door and beat her palm against the wood. “I have nowhere to go,” she said. “At least let me get my things, my keys, Kirk. I didn't do anything wrong.” Her thin shoulders shook under the loose straps of her halter top. She began to cry.
The door flew open so abruptly, Star nearly fell across the threshold. Audrey couldn't see Kirk, but she heard his scratchy voice: “Still asking for it, huh.” His arm jutted into the light and a large hand grabbed the girl's wrist; she let out a squeak as he yanked her inside. The door slammed.
Audrey stepped back into the quiet of her living room. Kirk's voice echoed in her ears. She thought of Star going back inside, how little respect she must have for herself. Hopelessly sad.
She slumped in a chair at her dining table. The last Belleeck box sat amongst the crayons as if waiting for the next design. How foolish, to think these would have any effect. But what effect had she intended? To shake him up, get even? Lately, hadn't she hoped for something else? A change in his character? How silly.
A new idea flashed: Maybe her boxes were working, but in a way she hadn't anticipated. They were bringing out the worst in him. Kirk was becoming his own worst self, teetering on the edge of being the devil himself.
Audrey's eyes narrowed as she looked at the living room wall that paralleled his house. She clamped her lips tight and folded her arms. Good. Kirk would go down, down. He deserved to have something horrible happen, and it would. Surely. But first, she would send one last box, one that would haunt him like the Eye of God, the Eye of Truth. He was too craven to look inward, see his true state. If he could, he'd be so filled with horror, maybe he would pick up one of his guns and blow out his brains. He would be doing the entire world a marvelous favor. She would send him this last box, a harbinger of his final destruction.
She lifted the box and, gazing into its creamy insides, envisioned the image it was destined to hold. The design came to her complete. It would be a magnificent final statement.
She slid the X-Acto knife down the corners and pressed the panels flat. She selected two crayons, white and sky blue, and went to work. No need to plan. Her hand seemed guided by another, one that could not make a mistake. Soon she was retaping the corners. She slipped the lid on top and opened it to experience the full effect.
Instead of sulphur and brimstone, the box emitted a heavenly mist. The walls and bottom showed puffy white clouds floating across a blue background. Centered on the bottom panel was a life-sized eye. Audrey used her own right eye as the model, viewing it closely in a mirror. She colored the pupil midnight blue and gave the iris a translucent wash of violet. The finished eye, staring out from a sky of perfect clouds, looked real enough to blink. Audrey smiled with superior knowledge. The Eye of Truth saw All—the Eye of God, unblinking.
The next morning, she stood in line at the post office. The box felt so light in her hands, she imagined that, if released, it would float in the air. “Thing fooled me,” the clerk said, placing it on the scale. “Light as a feather.” He winked. “You sending somebody a feather?"
AHMM, October 2006 Page 9
