The Box

by Chris Harris

Table of Contents
Part 1 and part 2
appear in this issue.

Conclusion

Imperceptibly, the blues and violets of the dream plains evolved into the silvers and greys of oneness. Here we began to see, that in the same way as words and emotions intertwine, individuals may also simply be different sides of the same coin.

Until now, the strangers who were my travelling companions had been individuals. I knew them all so intimately and every one of us, having been exposed to each others’ innermost feelings, felt the strength of that bond.

So in tune had we now become, that I wasn’t sure which one of us was me. Was I myself, looking at another form within? Or was I really that other person all the time? Could I actually be the other person, and merely be trying to understand or experience what it might be like to be studied by another from within?

This was the strangest and most beautiful sensation. To be the source of one’s own joy and companionship or to be the shoulder that you yourself may cry on: the ultimate peace and solitude without the isolation of being alone.

Outside of the box and away from the silvers and greys of oneness I’d been a single entity. My traits had been that of a loner and were driven by the false notion that the company of others could not supply me with fresh stimulus.

I was nauseated by the mass of trivia in conversations. I felt that I could see through the masks of my peers and into their ugly, competitive inner minds. I found solace in the selective companionship of books and journals, where conversation and discovery ran unhindered.

A book that is chosen, and its reader, co-exist for the duration and beyond. A friend that is unchosen, and the listener, form no such bond. I believed that all friendships and all conversations, were simply self-counseling sessions.

Here, in the oneness of the box, companionship was pure. It was pure because one was alone. I knew and loved the others so well, because they were me, as I was them. To be a loner is to have experienced a crowd, and to be verbose is to understand the taciturn.

The state of oneness as presented to me by the box could best be compared to a house where the walls, ceilings and floors were all mirrors. The reflections given, however, were not of the image before them, but were of the inverted image, showing the reverse sides of all aspects of the subject viewed.

The oneness faded to nothing. There were no longer any companions, only myself. I felt somehow grown in stature and self-esteem, yet the isolation touched me. All around me was now silent and without colour. The sense of motion had passed, and I felt the weight of my body upon my legs and feet.

Slowly my eyes adjusted to the new and darker surroundings. Taking a few steps, the sound of my feet on the wooden bottom of the box, echoed against its distant walls. Peering through the darkness, I could see the edges some two hundred metres in either direction, and towering some hundred metres high.

I was standing in the middle of an empty wooden box. My height compared to the outside world, could now have been no more than three millimeters. Overhead, a huge opened lid allowed the glow of amber streetlights to invade the now sterile inner sanctum.

Without thinking I began to walk towards one of the four corners. Slowly my pace quickened and echoed in the emptiness as onwards I strode. The corner to which I traveled would be the one nearest to the fireplace in the room beyond; but how would I scale the walls?

Suddenly my left foot struck an object making me jump and throwing me off balance. Down on one knee in the darkness to investigate, the spectacle before me sent shivers down my spine.

There upon the floor was a box. The jolt of my foot had flung it across the floor and left its lid ajar. From within the box, a blinding white light shone into the darkness around me.

For a moment I hesitated, but then lowered the lid of the box to avoid its hypnotic attraction. I felt no fear, but the tiredness already administered by today’s events outweighed my curiosity. I repositioned the box by the marks in the dust where it had stood, and moved on.

Rapidly now, I approached the corner. Somehow, I knew it would be here, and sure enough, it was. In the corner, scaling the distance from the floor to the top of the wall, or rather the side of the box, was a ladder. Its construction was much more solid than could be purchased nowadays, and its thick handrails and rungs felt very reassuring.

I began to climb the ladder. After thirty or so rungs I stopped and looked back over my shoulder. From this height, the entire box could be seen and seemed to stare back at me like an empty football stadium. Even with its powers and insight gone or shut down, the box still retained an air of majesty and calm.

Climbing still further, I could now see the rim of the top of the box up ahead. Glancing over my shoulder, I became anxious that the enormous lid that hung at a precarious angle above me, might come crashing down and trap me inside forever.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was clinging to a ladder some ninety metres above terra firma. When painting the house or fixing the gutters, the infinitely lesser altitude of seventeen metres or so would normally, even in the wintertime, generate beads of sweat on my forehead.

The box, excluding the irrational fear of the slamming lid, had never frightened me. I scaled the remaining ten metres with ease and now found myself peering over the edge and into the old familiar sitting room.

Placing my right hand on the rim resulted in such an outrageous response that I almost fell. My fingers, or at least the parts of them protruding beyond the box, at once assumed their normal size; I withdrew them immediately.

More tentatively this time, I began to experiment with just one finger. By poking one outstretched digit out of the box and into the room, I slowly adjusted to the spectacle. The effect was identical to placing one’s hand under a magnifying glass and reminded me of a close-up working glass I’d once used.

The task concerning me at this point was how to get from the box and down to the chest upon which it stood. I knew from memory that no ladder existed on the outside face, but now the dynamics of the distances had completely redefined the problem. By simply increasing that part of my hand outside of the box to include all of it up to my wrist, I was able to curl my extended fingers down to touch the top of the chest, a hundred metres below.

I began to experiment further, and then, rather stupidly, thrust my entire arm into the room. Straightaway the box began to tilt up on one edge. The angular momentum and weight of the full-sized arm, being attached to and protruding from its interior, almost threw the box on its side.

From outside this must have appeared a minor curiosity. But from inside, I felt like an occupant of a high-rise apartment might during an earthquake. Just in time, and with reflexes that fear alone can produce, I snatched back my extended arm.

With an almighty thud, the box was saved from toppling over and crashed back upon the top of the chest. Contrary to my earlier confidence, beads of sweat were now highly evident upon my furrowed brow. How could I ever reaccess the sitting room?

Somehow I had to overcome my fear. But what exactly was I frightened about? I wouldn’t fall far if I leapt from the box, because my full size would be restored. Of course I’d still probably tumble from the chest to the floor, but I would be simply winded and not dead.

I was also more than a little concerned about man handling the box. For surely, at the moment of departure, with my full-sized weight transmitted through one giant hand, the stresses on its construction would be damaging.

There I stood upon the ladder. One hundred metres below was the emptiness of the sleeping box. Beyond its confines lay the familiar and beckoning warmth of the sitting room. Between the two worlds, I clung to the rungs of the ladder, wondering what in the world I could do.

My feet and ankles began to tremble at supporting my weight for so long in an unusual position. The palms of my hand slid easily upon the handrails as the moisture and tension mounted.

On two occasions, my subconscious mind, in an effort to solve the problem for me, almost had me flinging myself into the room against my will. Should I return to the floor of the box? Was I meant to enter the small box within? I wasn’t sure.

At last, with courage greater than I knew I possessed I flung myself over the wall. As I rose into the room, so it shrank to its normal size. For a single frozen moment I could see my sleeping body curled up alongside an unlit fireplace.

In a moment the bubble burst. There was I in full size, falling from the space on the chest that was now too small to support me. I rolled over and fell heavily onto the floor below.

The loudness of my return seemed to startle my alter ego by the fire. His eyes flashed open just as mine slammed shut against the impact of the floor. At once we were reunited. I saw nothing of myself either falling from the box or arriving on the carpet. I did, however, see an opened lid of the box, just moments before it fell closed again.

I rubbed my eyes and blinked. Rising from the floor I then stumbled over to the chest and tried to open the lid of the box. It wouldn’t budge.

How cold it felt in my hands. The room itself, was if anything warmer than usual, yet the box felt cold, almost metallic. It felt lighter too, as if it were made from balsa wood or from nothing at all. I replaced it upon the chest. It had always felt so heavy for its size as antiques do, and never cold to the touch. I picked it up again, this time to find its nature restored in both weight and temperature.

Once more returning the box to the chest, I turned, and noticed not unusually, that the elapsed time as shown by the old clock, had been barely four minutes. Perhaps the clock and the box were working together, I thought.

The thought stayed in my mind and wouldn’t leave. It had never occurred to me before, but the designs of the clock and the box were really quite similar. Although plain, the curves and symmetry of both could have been from the one common source.

The magnitude of this revelation seemed to force me down upon the sofa. Both items were of unknown and unquestioned origin. So how could their allegiance have remained unnoticed for so long?

One thing however that had not escaped my notice, was the curious alignment within the room of the three pieces. The chest stood in an ugly asymmetrical position in relation to the window. Its length jutting out left of centre.

The box upon the chest occupied the same place in the rectangle of the top of the chest, as the chest did in the rectangle of the room. An unusual mark on the top of the chest to the left occupied the same relative position as the clock did in the room. It was as if the top of the chest were a map of the room itself.

Another mark on the chest suggested that something else should have stood in the room directly opposite the clock and alongside the fireplace. I can remember now, when as a child I’d lifted the carpet absent-mindedly in search of the missing object, and was amazed to discover an outline of darker varnish on the floorboards below.

That this missing item had stood there for many years was obvious. That I’d discovered its predetermined place in this world, as a result of the map on the top of the chest, was uncanny.

Equally uncanny was my boyhood discovery that my scout compass always showed north as being seventeen degrees east whilst in the proximity of the chest or clock. And when placed on the floor by where the missing object once stood, it would spin slowly in an anti-clockwise direction.

As I matured, the compass anomalies I’d attributed to hidden electric cables. It was only now, with the rebirth of a connection between the pieces of furniture, that I remembered the compass. And it was also only now, that I remembered the missing item in the room.

The magic and discovery in the lawlessness of childhood... how wonderful it felt to be reliving those emotions. But where would it lead? I felt sure now that not only the box but the entire room held secrets I’d only just begun to understand.

This had been my house for all of my life. Nothing beyond its walls had ever lured me in the ways that the sitting room could. Tonight seemed clearer than usual, and in the darkness on the sofa, I cried.

Somewhere in the past I’d changed. In my mind’s eye, all of my boyhood days were crystal clear and magical. The school friends, exams and sports days, all were as if they’d happened just yesterday. I can remember a sweetheart in my adolescence and was sure we’d marry; perhaps we did.

Some days I could see other things, but it was all so clouded. Some days, even in this house, I felt like a stranger, where I both knew the people and didn’t.

Just then, a familiar creaking told me that the door to the sitting room had opened. From the hallway, a brighter light stung my eyes. In the doorway stood a very young girl, and behind her was a lady I took to be her mother.

I wondered what they might want when the girl said, “Daddy, please come to bed. I’ve poured your medicine.”