Short Stories and Flash Fiction

  I yank the rope to unlock the pull down stairs that lead into the attic. The rope first unlatches the panel that slowly slides down. Then the first part of the ladder appears. It stops sliding until the mechanism clicks. Then you need to pull the steps down. Normally I appreciate the slow, safe movement but right now I am so impatient that I do not wait for the safety features and yank the steps down. They hit the hallway hardwood floor and I am pretty sure they made a dent. I don’t care and secure the steps in their place. Like a chipmunk so fast, I climb the steps making sure that I do not hit my head when I stick it into the attic. I immediately get hit in the face and I scream. I forgot, the duct vent from the forced air unit faces towards the stairs. I open my eyes and carefully climb up trying to adjust to the minimal light in the attic. Then I walk over to the panel and turn the lights on.

  I feel like I am in an out-of-body scene. It looks like I can see myself standing there trying to decide which side of the attic to inspect first. One side has equipment like the heating/AC unit, a dehumidifier, and some other unit but I cannot remember exactly what that unit does. OH.MY.DEAR.GOD.

  I do not know what that unit does but it is in my very own house! Of course that has to be related to the screw and the people behind it. They were probably monitoring us to see what we know and who we told about the colour-coded tell. Right now I regret that we do not have any weapons in the house. We do not have kids either so there are not even toy weapons around or a baseball bat. I turn left and right spinning my hair so often that it gets stuck in my mouth. That’s it!

  We have bags up here with Halloween costumes and some include wigs and other materials. I start rummaging through those bags until I find it: hairspray! I arm myself with the Elnett spray can and sneak up to the unit. His illusive presence in the attic ends right now. I charge and attack it with a wolf like howl only to be bitterly disappointed. The unit isn’t a unit but merely a metal box.

  It is dented, greenish-brown, with a lid on the top. The lid is rusty and doesn’t open immediately. I hesitate. Maybe I should examine the rest of the attic first before exploring the box. Reluctantly I get up and start to inspect the rest of the floor and the roof. Nothing too suspicious. Just construction, insulation, and wiring. I have to assume that the wiring is for the heating/AC units. I am not sure why but I lean closer to the wires. I see red and black wires. And in between those red and black wires there is one that is red/black coloured. My heart beats in my throat and I just know that I have found the connection to the colour-coded screw. My eyes follow the wire and I see it goes down the wall. It leads to the metal box that isn’t an electrical unit.

  This is it.

  This is what they must have left behind to spy on us or it is the bounty that someone was supposed to pick up. And they hadn’t yet so they could still come. My heartbeat just won’t go back to normal and the tensions is making me hyperventilate. I decide to carefully life the metal box to see if there are any wires going through the ceiling down towards the second floor. When I touch the box something rolls inside and I hear a sloshing sound as if there is a layer of liquid inside.

  I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and squat to lift up the box. It smells awful. A metallic odor combined with rust and smoke. I pick it up. It isn’t heavy and now that I stopped panicking it is much smaller than I had first imagined it. It isn’t attached to anything. I cannot wrap my arms around it but I can reach the bottom of the box. I carefully go down the stairs back to the second floor.

  I do not go back to the spiral staircase. Instead I walk into the master bedroom and kick open the balcony doors. They open into a wrap-around porch that goes around the back of the second floor and winds down to the first floor. It was built by the previous owners who had a wheelchair-bound child and they wanted to give him some independence.

  I never understood that because at the same time they installed a spiral staircase. Why would you install a spiral staircase when one of your kids is…

  OH.MY.DEAR.GOD!

  There must have been another family here! But the realtors only told us about two families. The original owners and the people they sold it to, the ones who installed the second floor with the spiral stairs case. Why would the realtors hide that there was a third family? Unless the realtors were making it possible for that third family to move in here and be inconspicuous until someone would come to pick up the metal box!

  It all made sense now. The people in the swindle were the realtors and the third family. The colour-coded screw was a tell to indicate what it was they needed to come pick up. But the tell never reached the intended receiver in time. The third family moved away without picking up the box. But what if the realtors placed the box upstairs after that third family had moved out when the house was temporarily empty? I feel my nose tingling and I know I am hyperventilating again.

  I reach the bottom of the wrap-around that ends into the front yard. I walk over to the driveway. If you look down the driveway you have a beautiful view of the mountains and forests. I love looking at the mountains. There is something about mountains that always makes me pause. They have been around longer than we have and have seen so much more than we ever will in our lifetime. I close my eyes and I inhale the fresh air. It calms me down. I look down at the metal box and put it down.

  I squat, place my left hand on the edge of the lid, take the handle in my right, and yank it open. I didn’t have to use a lot of energy and honestly, I feel a little bit disappointed. Inside the box is an old Tupperware container with a clear liquid in it. And there is a small cylinder box. The kind that used to hold film rolls.

  Maybe the cylinder holds an old Fuji film? I guess the Tupperware holds some “M-Q" developers. I remember that the M stands for metol a.k.a. monomethyl-p-aminophenol hemisulfate and the Q is short for hydroquinone. We used that in our high school photo club all the time.

  What’s on the film?

  What’s the fluid? If it isn’t developer, what is it?

  What if the screw is not a tell at all?

  I shake my head and wonder if my mind has come unhinged. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Breathing in deeply, I feel the air sooth my lungs. I feel a calm returning to me. The knot in my stomach unwinds a little and I feel I have space in my ribcage again for normal breathing. The sun feels very comforting on my face. I am also instantly mad at myself for not being in control. I sigh deeply, blow some unruly hairs out of my face, and mentally make a plan.

  First, I am going to place the box into the unattached garage and secure it. Then, I am going to check our files to find the name of the realtor and the notes we made during the appraisal process. Then I will go online to see what I can find out about all these people.

  Part 2

  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!

  I am honored to stand in front of you as keynote speaker at this symposium on the human mind. Without further ado, let’s go straight to the presentation. As you know, I have a separate notebook for every patient I see. It is a practice I started decades ago.

  The case I wish to discuss with you is a complex one. Patient-doctor confidentiality prevents me from disclosing certain details but I can share the following.

  My patient’s mental breakdown occurred just a few months after moving into a new home. The house is a ranch e.g. a one story house that has been remodeled several times. The original owners had no children. They relocated and they sold the house to a family with children. That family installed the second floor with tow stair cases: one standard one at the front of the house and one spiral stair case in the kitchen. The new owners explained that decision as follows: it would give the wife and the children the possibility to use the kitchen unseen when the husband was hosting faculty and/or students.

  Since hosting large meetings was a regular occurrence in that household, they decided to invest in that second staircase. The original staircase’s location is in the foyer across from the glass paneled front door. That door and location of the
stairs make it impossible for the rest of the family to use the kitchen unseen. Slide #1 shows you the original building plans and here we see the adjustments made by the second family.

  The authorities conducted an investigation in these two families and found no criminal records. The husband has an excellent reputation in the academic world and I do not doubt the family’s wish for privacy. The spiral staircase is in clear view in the kitchen. Had it been hidden behind a construction than I might have been tempted to further explore the second family as a contributing factor. Therefore we will only concentrate on the third family that owned the house before it was sold to my patient and her husband.

  My patient’s mental breakdown started when three things happened simultaneously: she was exchanging the dust bag from her vacuum cleaner, a spider crawled out, and she found a screw.

  Analysis of all three occurrences is listed here on slide #2:

  1: Changing the dust bag cannot be the cause of her current condition hence it will not be further explored.

  2: the brown spider is cause for concern. The brown recluse spider, also known as the violin spider, is a venomous creature whose bite can cause children and adults to become ill. However, the patient has not been able to describe the spiders seen other than as “brown” hence the question remains whether this has played an active role. Since the early detecting of the mental breakdown, her husband had the entire house fumigated. Since the patient has not referred to the brown spider in later sessions, we will dismiss this for now as an element that needs to be incorporated in the analysis and treatment of the patient.

  3: the screw my patient found in the dirt that spilled out the dust bag had red and black painted rings on the cylinder. These painted rings set off a frenzy to find the place of origin. My patient’s initial reaction was that IF the screw was inside HER vacuum cleaner than the screw MUST have come from inside HER house. It never occurred to her to disregard the screw as miscellaneous dirt or to wonder whether the vacuum cleaner was a first purchase or a second-hand purchase. As we will find out later, this screw played a major role in my patient’s behaviour.

  As I mentioned before, the house was owned by three families before my patient and her husband bought it. They are critical in understanding the set-up of the house and how it was remodeled. As mentioned before, the second owners hosted frequently and the rest of the family wished more privacy. To compromise so all family members got what they wanted from the new home, the owners installed a second staircase. They left the choice of staircase to the children hence a wrought iron black spiral case. Slide #3 shows you this spiral stair case.

  As mentioned, the husband was and remains to this day a renowned member of the academic community. His forte was not in home repair. Therefore, this second family never invested in finishing the basement. They did finish part of the basement to make sure that the children had extra room to play. This is the finished part my patient used for storage as you can see on slide #4.

  When this family moved for reasons completely unrelated to this case but again reminding you that they have no criminal record, they sold the house to another family with children. This family too had no interest in the unfinished basement hence their reluctance to invest in finishing. This means that the basement never progressed past what the original builders placed inside the home: an unfinished standard model basement with untreated wooden stairs and unfinished walls.

  The third family made significant changes to the house and these did play a role in my patient’s behaviour. One of their children was wheelchair bound. To facilitate his independence, the parents had a contractor change all handles in the house to his level. The other children agreed that their sibling’s independence would be greatly improved if he could move around the house in and out of rooms on his own. An example of the adjusted handles can be seen here on slide #5 that shows you the door to the library.

  Slide #6 shows you the definition of a screw and as you can see the informal use of the word screw includes “a cheat or a swindle.” A “tell” is an unconscious action but can also be an innocuous item strategically placed somewhere to show someone the way, a hiding place, etc. An example is the myth of the quilts leading slaves along the Underground Railroad to safety in the North. The quilt was a tell to lead the way. Note that this is a myth but since it is well-known I chose it to illustrate the meaning of the word a tell.

  Why my patient thought that the coloring on the screw were code or a tell is something that stumped us and we are still exploring this. Now on to the wires. Just as a side note here are the electrical wiring color codes we use in the USA:

  Red: red electrical wire indicates the secondary live wires in a 220-volt circuit, used in some types of switch legs and in the interconnection between smoke detectors that are hard-wired into the power system. You can connect a red wire to another red wire or to a black wire.

  Blue and yellow: yellow and blue electrical wires are also used to carry power but are not for wiring the outlets for common plug-in electrical devices. These colors are used for the live wire pulled through conduit. Yellow is mainly as switch legs to fans, structural lights, and switched outlets. Blue is mainly as a traveler for a three-way or four-way switch.

  White and gray: white and gray indicate a neutral wire. White is the color most often used for this function. A neutral wire connects to the neutral bus bar within an electric panel. (A bus bar is made of conductive metal that attracts the electric current for distribution outward to feeders.) You can connect white and gray only to other white and gray wires. Although neutral, they can still carry current, particularly the unbalanced load — the electricity not being used and being returned to the electrical service.

  Green: green indicates the grounding of an electric circuit. A green wire can connect only to another green wire and should never connect to any other color wire. Green wires connect to the grounding terminal in an outlet box and run from the outlet box to the ground bus bar within an electric panel. The purpose of the green wire is to provide a path to ground for a circuit's electric current if a live wire within the circuit happens to touch metal or some other conductive material. In the event of a fault, it could carry significant current, so treat green wires cautiously. You can find more information about this online. I took this summary from Angie’s List, see here: https://www.angieslist.com/articles/what-do-electrical-wire-color-codes-mean.htm

  Now my patient found several wires in the attic but mainly red ones and black ones. Those single coloured wires did not worry her as much as the one that was red/black. Upon further inspection, it turned out that the red/black wire was actually one red and one black wire that were rolled together. Due to age, they had become sticky and at-a-glance they looked like one wire. If she had taken a closer look she would have seen that the “single wire” was in fact a combination of two wires.

  My patient panicked when she saw a box she didn’t recognize. As it was positioned next to the loose hanging wire she assumed it was leading to it. However, on her husband’s request a certified technician inspected the electrical wiring throughout the house. The illusive red/black wire is simply a never removed remnant from a previous installed and removed heating system. It wasn’t attached to anything and after a safety inspection, it was removed.

  Now the metal box in question is another matter and I will get to that in a minute.

  Are there any questions so far?

  Before we discuss the third family further I need to point out that my patient did indeed pick up the unknown box and took it to the unattached garage. There, she stored it in a locker. Several of my colleagues have pointed to this moment as it conflicts with appropriate behaviour. When in doubt about unknown fluids and materials found one should always call the authorities first and not store it anywhere near or inside a residence. It could be a health risk.

  Other colleagues immediately pointed to the risk of combustion if certain fluids were stored in a hot, unventilated garage. My patient cl
early did not think about these risks to her, her husband, the house, and the neighbourhood.

  Can we get the next slide please?

  Thank you.

  Here you can see the alterations to the house made by the third family to own the house. As you will recall, this is the family that lowered all handles to accommodate a wheelchair bound son. They built a ramp from the second floor to the ground level to further enhance his independence. My patient used the ramp to walk down with the box towards the unattached garage. She rightfully questioned why the ramp started in the master bedroom. She speculated upon the parents keeping strict control over the son’s comings and goings as he would have to pass through their bedroom.

  If you please look at slide #7 you can see that the master bedroom was the only upstairs bedroom with a bay window. Construction crews were able to transform that bay window into a doublewide entrance. No other bedroom on the second floor gave the parents that option without breaking through supporting walls.

  Further investigation of the second floor map shows significant alterations in the master bedroom where the bathroom is concerned. It is fully adjusted to facilitate the wheelchair bound son. Upon selling the house, many handles were removed and the vanities were re-adjusted. However, it was still easy to see that it had once accommodated a disabled person. Apparently she never questioned the type of shower that was installed. It has no raised profile.

  On slide #8 you see how the second floor was transformed to break through some walls to make another master suite from two smaller bedrooms and one of the two hall bathrooms. The rest of the second floor was not altered.