Jazzy Jinx
♥♪!?
Music Box
It has been a while now since that day. It was as scary as it was wonderful and I’ll never forget it until the day I die. It was raining hard for days, and I had been confined in my own home due to flood waters. My house was on a hill so I didn’t have to worry but I couldn’t leave since the flood covered the roads. If you really could be bored to death, then I think I would have died had I been there for another three days. Oh, but something interesting did happen huh? In some ways I wish it didn’t but for the most part, I’m glad it did.
To think that I would experience such a weird and wonderful phenomena on such a dreadful day. As I have said, it was raining like hell and I was all alone…
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I complained about how bored I was and how nothing good was happening. The T.V. wouldn’t work and every time I turned it on I would met with the annoying message of “Searching for Satellite Signal” to which my response would be a prompt click of the power button, I couldn’t call anyone since the phone lines were down, and I couldn’t read a book since I thought of myself as “too cool” to do so.
I find the arrogance in my youth funny nowadays. After the events that transpired that night I became a huge Edgar Allan Poe fan. Then again, what should I have expected it to be like at the still ripe age of 27? I was a party animal and any free time used to read simple words on paper was considered a waste of time. Oh, how arrogant I was…
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After enough shifting and shuffling about the house I decided to spend my time organizing things. I guess you could say I was developing an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Well, even organizing things didn’t last long as I had eventually organized everything in the house and was still unable to leave my home as the flood waters developed into a moat.
Without the ability to organize things anymore I slowly became shaky and even questioned if I was going crazy. Desperate to take my mind off of things I decided to make a sandwich and then just go to sleep but as I rose from the sofa, I noticed the attic’s wire hanging from the ceiling. I had completely forgotten about the attic so I decided to check it out having nothing better to do.
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I recalled that all of my grandmother’s possessions were in the attic. She used to own a music box that was painted a lovely shade of gold and was encrypted with beautiful decorations of human portraits and flowers in between the gaps of the faces. She left it in her will and gave it to my mother. For some reason or another, my mother absolutely hated anything and everything associated with her. She put all of my grandmother’s belongings in the attic and promptly told me at the age of 9:
“Mary Tai, never ever go up into the attic or you will be punished strictly! I am serious! Don’t you ever go up there!”
I knew she was serious since she used my full name and she only did that when she wanted to stress something.
I often wonder what happened that could have caused my mother to be so surly towards my grandmother especially since she treated my mother with nothing but love and respect. The fact of the matter was that she never really interacted with her too often. She even became extremely angry when I snuck off to visit her.
I searched for an answer and asked my grandmother why my mother had to be so angry, so unloving, to not even associate herself with her.
Ah, but my grandmother never gave me an answer. Instead she told me not to worry about it and that I would learn one day.
Not too long afterwards, she was murdered in cold blood within her own home, but an interesting thing to note is that the murderer was found dead as well and the strange music box lay near them covered in blood.
I was only 9 at the time so I didn’t quite understand everything about death. I wanted so hard to believe she could come back but slowly realized that would never happen. I thought about her every time I was laying down, trying to sleep. So many restless nights…
That music box was such a mystery as well. Why was it covered in blood? Why did it lie near them? Why did the murderer die as well? Strange things indeed. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I longed to figure it all out and make sense of it. I needed closure.
After many failed attempts at finding the truth, I finally gave up. Why bother? If I figured out what happened, it wouldn’t bring her back to me. She would still be dead. That was the truth of the matter. Figuring this, I just closed it away into the confines of my mind, locked deep away in my subconscious.
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Time doesn’t stand still for those in sorrow, however. After many years, I decided to go to college. I studied up on health care and related subjects because I wanted to become a doctor. My dream to become a doctor was fueled by the suffering I have had to watch people endure. My studies were difficult though. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t learn. Becoming a doctor proved to be an impossible position for me to obtain.
I realized how useless I was when my mother fell ill. I dropped out of school to care for her. She didn’t have insurance. She couldn’t receive good enough treatment. I struggled to make her comfortable and tried to save her but… she completely hated me.
Trying to find out about my grandmother in my youth, had made her come to resent me. She thought I was dishonorable in her eyes. Her cold judgment burned in my soul, tearing a hole in my being. All I wanted was to know more about her. Surely this was not dishonorable?
But she expressed hate that I went against her authority. She believed I had no place in learning about my grandmother and when I tried to, I was disobeying her. She looked down on this and never forgave me, not even in death. She had taken her hate of me to her grave. I could never remove that pain. It still burns in my heart to this day.
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I didn’t have a father as he had left the family when I was still only 3 years old and my grandmother was dead. I didn’t have any aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, anything. The only good thing was that I didn’t have to go to a foster home since I was old enough to make it on my own.
That isn’t to say it was easy, however. I struggled to find a job but was turned down almost everywhere. I was in severe debt and actually picked up drinking. I thought that women could hold their composure a lot better than men ever could so I thought I would never drink, I thought I was above it. Oh how wrong I was…
I slowly became an alcoholic but after meeting Jonathan I was able to slowly break off of drinking. We met at a bar and it was clear I had, had one too many. He stopped me from continuing my drinking marathon and took me home.
He was so nice to me. He treated me with total respect and considered me his equal. In my honest opinion, I believe I am far from being his equal. I was had become such a pathetic human being. To think that any other individual on the planet would even group themselves in the same category as me was unbelievable.
For this I had complete respect for him, I wanted him to be happy, I was in love with him. I still drank here and there but I was not longer an alcoholic and Jonathan had given me my life back. He gave me a job, a home, and best of all, the chance to experience what true love was. Times were not great forever though, Jon had caught a strange virus that didn’t have a cure.
I stayed by his side certain that he would live because he looked so healthy and fine. But looks can be deceiving. He died three weeks later.
I was seriously thinking about committing suicide but I never could pull the trigger. Time passed and I slowly accepted the way things were.
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After a stunning revelation of things that had passed, I was curious to learn more about my grandmother. I made up my mind and decided to look around the attic for the music box. Pulling on the string, the attic door opened and crashed on the floor.
I jumped nervously but then shook it off. After a short breath, I began climbing the ladder up into the dark abyss. I thought I was being reckless going up there. What right did I have to search for the music box? Was it really my place to look at it?
My mother’s hatred for my grandmother must have rubbed off of me in some way or another. I didn’t know if I should have trusted her or not for a while. But I shook this off and just kept climbing.
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When I reached the top of the ladder and climbed into the attic, I looked around. I saw some dusty old boxes covered in blankets worn and torn from the several years of lonely solitude. While scanning the area, the golden glimmer of a shiny object among the dusty boxes caught my eye.
I walked over to where I saw the glimmer and looked down to see the music box in all of its glory, perfectly intact and unhindered by time. The box was painted a shade of gold and had portraits of people on the side.
In between these portraits were flower decorations. I hesitated to touch the box. The desire to touch it was as strong as my desire to leave immediately and forget it all. My desires collided and forced me to stand there and just stare at the box as if it was hypnotizing me.
I felt my hand slowly come down upon the box without consciously making myself do so and before I knew it, it was in my hands. I stared at it without doing anything else for a long time. Slowly, the urge to just open it started to overpower me.
In the process of opening it, I think I felt ever emotion in my body explode in a course of under three seconds and my mind drew a blank. I heard a tune slowly take over my mind as I soared through a series of past memories and thoughts. They surged through my soul and I was in a daze.
All of a sudden I saw my grandmother walking towards me as the memories continued to soar by. It was as if the memories were televisions rapidly switching channels while my grandmother was the only solid being. She kept walking until we were face to face. I didn’t know what to think.
Was this a dream? Was this reality? Did I die some how and is this the afterlife?
I didn’t know what to think. I wanted to just hug here, but I also wanted to run. Before I could think it through, she slowly rose her hand and handed me a single white flower. I held it in my hands and looked at it. It was almost as hypnotizing as the music box.
When I looked up, she was gone and everything returned to normal. But I still held the flower in my hand. The most unbelievable thing had just happened to me and I just stood there. After a few seconds, I felt a tear roll down my eye.
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Yeah this story sucked. I wanted to flesh this out more and make it longer and more detailed but then I would FAR exceed the word limit. I don't expect to get a high score in the contest but I will move this to Creative Minds and make a fleshed out version so you always have that to look forward to. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this story regardless.
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