By Alexander Greco
April 5, 2019
Hours after I planned to
begin, hours after the sun had risen above the horizon, I lowered the stairs to
my attic. At the top of the staircase, I stopped half inside the attic, half
inside everything else.
The Sun beamed through
the left-hand window. Outside I could see the forest surrounding my Father’s
house. Dust covered everything up here, most of which hadn’t been touched in
years. It was a mess up here, a chaotic city of boxes piled against dressers,
cardboard towers leaning against bookshelves. Dust covered the city like the
snow of an ashen winter. Some parts of the attic clearly hadn’t been explored in
years, where some objects were almost invisible beneath a couple decades of
dust.
For a moment, I stood
still and stared around the attic. For a moment, the attic seemed to stare
right back at me.
I had no idea where to
begin, or what I might find. Everything in the attic was an accumulation of my
Father’s forty-year stay in the house. I had moved in when things first started
going downhill, about five years ago. His life slowly came to an end two years
ago. Only now did I finally force myself start cleaning the house out, deciding
what to keep and what to throw out.
I looked around the attic
once more, mentally preparing myself for hours of digging through old memories.
I sighed, then stepped forward.
My first steps across the
floor were slow and cautious. One wrong step, and who knew what might come
tumbling down. One moment of incaution, and-
Shhhf.
…
Something had moved.
I looked around. There
was nothing.
Probably a rat, I
figured, or a mouse. And god knows how many spiders, cockroaches and cluster
flies there up here.
No… No, no, no, I don’t
want to do this, I don’t want to deal with
I turned almost went back
down the stairs. I’ll call an exterminator, then maybe I’ll hire someone to
haul all this stuff downstairs.
But then I stopped, and
looked around one more time.
Maybe I shouldn’t have.
Maybe I should have looked away. Maybe I should have kept going, closed the
ladder, and never looked back, but I didn’t. I looked around, and I started
catching sight of things I’d completely forgotten about. Stacks of books my
Father owned, old furniture, and ancient relics from childhood.
Old memories began
wrapping themselves around me, and I tried pushing them away. Just leave, call
the exterminator, and come back to this another day.
Then my eye caught a lone
box on the floor, only a yard from the ladder.
“PHOTOGRAPHS” was written in sharpie on the
side.
I studied it for a
moment. Then took a short step to where it lay on the ground, and knelt down to
it. I studied it like it was some curious yet potentially dangerous specimen I’d
found in the jungle. I almost stood up to leave, but I wanted to know, “What
memories are in this box?”
I picked it up, and the
bottom fell out a few feet into the air. Half a dozen 6”x8” albums crashed to
the floor. I jumped back, and cursed, “Fuck,”
at the sudden calamity.
Then everything settled
into a new, stable chaos. The box was empty, and the albums were still.
Again, I almost left. I
almost called it a day, right then and there.
But maybe, I thought to
myself, I should at least pick these albums up. I set the box down, and knelt at
the pile of photo-albums, beginning to re-stack them. At the bottom of the
pile, one of the albums had completely opened. I glanced briefly inside. They
were pictures of my friends and me, pictures from high school.
I’m not old, I’d say—early-thirties—but
people I saw in those pictures were so much younger than the people we’ve
become. I honestly don’t know who a lot of these people became.
I flipped through the
pages, and wondered how much Joey has changed, or Mike, Kris or Drew—how much they’ve
all changed; everyone I knew. Who did they all become? Who are they now? What
are their lives like?
Then I saw a picture of
Mary, the last we ever took. The one after we’d both graduated from college,
after we hadn’t talked in months. We took that picture, ate dinner, hugged and
said goodbye, then never talked again.
And then all my memories
of her pulled themselves out from the old closets of my mind, like ocean Leviathans
being reeled in on 30-pound poles. All the peaks, and all the ravines. All the
steps forward, and all the stumbles down. All the nights out, and all the days
lost.
Everything we did
together, all the thoughts we shared, constructed itself like an architecture
of memories. Words we’d spoken that built bridges between us, and dreams we
painted onto a shared canvas.
What secrets did we share
in our dreams? What cities did we walk through that will never have a map? What
people did we meet that will never have a name?
Something moved again.
I looked up.
No.
Mary was standing in the attic.
She was looking at me. Looking into my eyes.
I blinked, and she was
gone.
No… No, this is
impossible—I must have just imagined it—this is impossible.
She had been standing
there only a moment ago, but now she’s gone. She had been standing there,
standing by my… By my father’s…
My father’s old hunting bag.
No. I stood up. I didn’t want
to deal with this, I didn’t have to deal with this. I’m going crazy just being
up here. I need an exterminator. I need to hire someone to do all this for me.
I flew down the attic
stairs. I didn’t even bother closing the attic up, I just kept walking through
the second story, down to the first floor, and out the front door. The moment I was outside, walking out into the
trees surrounding the house, I lit a cigarette and took a long drag. I kept
walking, and walking, and walking away from the house. I didn’t want to think
about what I saw, I just wanted to fall into the trees.
These woods had been my
father’s woods—a whole square mile of it my father bought in the 70’s. It was
on the outskirts of the suburbs, and in the suburbs, the city at the center of
us all kept encroaching on us, so these woods were like a last bastion of something
old and natural. They’d been my father’s woods. I guess they’re mine now.
I kept walking, and
walking, and walking away, but I was still in my father’s forest—my forest.
Autumn had crept into the world, slowly and
subtly until its presence was undeniable. The forest was a small world of
silent giants carrying a canopy of green, yellow, red and orange on their shoulders.
Beneath the giant’s feet were roots dug into soil, roots cracking stones
beneath the earth. Worms, beetles and mice burrowed beneath the grass. Deer eat
the grass, wolves eat the deer, vultures eat the wolves, and time eats the
vultures.
I kept smoking
cigarettes. Each one, I put out on the sole of my shoe, then put in my pocket.
I wouldn’t dare leave them in the forest. I wouldn’t dare drop them on the ground.
Not even the vultures would eat them.
My father was somewhere
in that world now, buried in rock and roots, rivers and grass. Buried somewhere
where the world dies, only to feed the dying giants above.
I never made it anywhere
near the edge of the forest, I never made it to the deeper trails and through
the deeper glades. Eventually I stopped, and sat down on a tangle of knotted roots.
I lit one last cigarette—I’d gone through three already—and stared into the forest.
I tried not to think about the attic, or my father, or going back to the house.
I tried only to stare.
But then I turned back
toward the house. What had I just seen?
Was that real?
There wasn’t any answer—not
from the woods, not from the grass, not from the dirt, not from my head. The grass
churned with the air, the birds chirped, and the air danced across my skin, But
there was no answer.
I stood up, and turned
toward the house—well out of view through the trees.
It doesn’t matter. No, it
wasn’t real. It was your imagination, that’s it.
I have to go back soon. I
have to… I don’t know, I have to do something. I’ll call pest control, that’s
what I’ll do.
When the house came into
view, something seemed odd, but I couldn’t tell what it was at first. The front
door was open. I didn’t remember leaving it open. Closer now, and I could see
colors across the windows.
Ribbon? Tape? What was
it?
And… And there were
colors coming out the front door? I started jogging up to the front of the
house.
Yarn trailed out from the
front door, across the wooden patio, and onto the grass and dead leaves. Yarn
of all different colors, and string, twine, strips of silk—what the hell
happened? It didn’t make sense—nothing made sense for a moment. Then I saw
something run by the windows of the second floor, then through the front door I
saw something run across the living room.
Kids. A bunch of dumbass
kids tearing up the house. That was my rationalization. I don’t know what they
were doing, I don’t know how, but I didn’t care. I would get them out of the
house, and I would clean their mess up. I forced myself to be mad, forced
myself to be furious, and walked inside.
And the moment I stepped
inside, I wasn’t furious anymore. It wasn’t kids. It couldn’t be. The yarn, the
ribbon, the string and the twine were everywhere.
All across the walls,
coming down from the ceilings, wrapping across the floor, and tied in chaotic
nets through the air. Like fauvist cobwebs, ribbon, string and silk covered the
walls, and like a surrealist’s spider-webs, all the string and silk and ribbon wove
in and out of each other through the air, forming an insane cloud of color
between the walls.
Thud
thud, thud thud thud…
Something ran across the
floor above me. There were voices, people talking.
I looked across the ribbon-strewn
ceiling, then around the rooms of the walls, and then to all the doors and
hallways littered with yarn.
My heart thumped in my
chest, and I could feel my palms getting sweaty. What the hell had happened?
What was this? Who was upstairs?
I turned to the staircase.
It was almost completely clogged with webs of twine and silk. I studied it
nervously for a few moments.
THUD
THUD THUD THUD.
I whipped my head up to
look at the ceiling. Someone had run across the floor upstairs.
I looked back at the
staircase. I had to do something… I had to find out what the hell happened, and
who the hell was upstairs.
Slowly, calmly, I
approached the staircase—evading hanging webs and bridges of string as I did. I
stopped a foot away from the bottom of the stairs. There was so much hanging
between the walls—I could avoid getting touched by most of it, but I’d have to
come into contact with most of it. I don’t know why it made me so nervous, but I
hesitated there for a moment before plunging in.
There was a moment where
I wondered if this was real or not—like the moment before you dive into cold
water, and wonder if you’re actually diving into cold water.
But as they brushed
across my skin, the ribbon and silk and yarn all felt real. This schizophrenic
tunnel of craft-supplies felt real—felt tangible, physical, material. There was
a part of me that had been wondering whether this was Along
the way up the staircase, I began to notice photographs dangling from the webs.
Photographs, then newspapers clippings, and then lines of text cut from books, cities
cut from maps and definitions cut from dictionaries.
They were all hanging
from the string and yarn, like they were apart of some arts-and-crafts mobile,
or the creation of some conspiracy theorist. What the hell was this? What had
been made in my father’s house? What was this filling the halls and filling the
staircase? What happened?
Someone—a child—I think
-ran across the top of the staircase. They flitted into existence one moment,
then ran into oblivion the next, but I could still hear their footsteps
pounding away at the floor. No…
Had children done this?
Was this the work of small kids? With many careful steps and uncertain
maneuvers, I made it to the top of the staircase. Immediately, I noticed small
movements that seem to fill the second-floor hallway. Crawling all across the yarn
webs were mice, bugs and spiders… And they were all carrying objects with them.
I saw small mice carrying
little nick-knacks with them—pens, miniature figurines, keys—bugs rolling
marbles and dice across silk bridges, and spiders preying on toy soldiers caught
in a twine web. They all maneuvered through the webs, around and across photographs,
and between pillars of newspaper clippings.
For a few moments, I
tried to digest what I was looking at. I tried to digest the sight of all the
bugs crawling across the silk bridges and yarn spirals, with all the little
objects they carried on their backs and in their mouths, and all the mice running
through the air like naked tight-rope walkers. But several moments later, it
still didn’t make sense. Several minutes later, I still couldn’t understand
what I was looking at. It seemed so obvious though, it seemed like everything
was right their, like all the pieces of the puzzle had already been put
together, and it was just the image the puzzle formed that didn’t make sense. My
eyes travelled to the end of the hallway. The staircase to the attic was still
open. Mary was standing at the base of the staircase. She was staring at me.
No. No, she couldn’t be
real, that couldn’t be right. That person standing there, that can’t be a real
person, that can’t be…
“Mary?” I called out.
Mary didn’t move. She
kept staring.
I put my hand out, almost
as if to wave at her. “Mary,” I spoke, “is that you?”
Mary stood and stared a
moment longer, then turned and walked up the stairs into the attic. “Wait!” I
called out, “What’s going on? Where are you going?” But she wouldn’t stop.
She disappeared into the
attic.
I hesitated only another
moment, then plunged into the hallway.
As quickly as I could
without tearing the webs of yarn and string down, I made my way down the
hallway, toward attic. The webs got thicker the further I went. Only a yard or
so from the stairs, the webs were so thick that there was no maneuvering around
them anymore. I had to push through thick mats and nots of fabric, ridden with
crawling creatures. Mice investigated the back of my neck before scurrying back
to the webs. Cockroaches and water beetles crawled across my arms and hands. One
spider stepped like a manic dancer across my face before I swatted it away, and
god knows how many other spiders had found their home on me.
Finally, my hands found the
staircase to the attic, and I swung my feet onto the bottom steps. As I climbed
the staircase, the webs only got thicker and thicker toward the top. I was immersed
in the fabrics—my entire body—and all across my body was a crawling, scampering,
skittering sensation—my scalp, my ears, my lips, my nose, across my chest,
inside my pants, and down to my ankles—but I couldn’t see the things crawling
across me, and I couldn’t do anything to stop them.
The webs suffocated all
light, and the clutter and fabric grew so dense it was like digging my way up
from the bottom of a landfill.
Then suddenly my body burst
through a membrane of fabric and photographs. I was gasping for air, as if I’d
just emerged from underwater, and I pulled my body through the writhing fabric
into the attic.
Laying on the ground, I
looked around the attic. Networks of yarn wove through the air in complex
patterns and structures. Photographs and newspaper clippings dangled from the material
like cosmopolitan leaves. The entire attic was a thicket of chaotic material,
with a clearing at the center—surrounding the entrance of the stairs—but
otherwise there was nowhere to go in here.
Mary was nowhere to be
seen.
There was no path to the
windows. The only other way out was back down the crawling hole next to me.
There was no path to
anything in here.
I sat up and looked
around. No path. Nothing. No where to go. No path.
Then my eyes caught sight
of something.
No. That wasn’t true.
There was one path.
It led to my Father’s old
duffel bag. It was my father’s duffel bag he used when he went hunting in the
midwest. He would carry the few changes of clothes he brought into the
wilderness, his compass, a map, knives, and other small things he brought with
him. I crawled across the floor of the attic, hand over hand through to the
duffel bag.
It smelled like oiled
leather. Gun powder from spent bullet casings. The earthy aroma of dried
leaves.
It reminded me of him.
I never went hunting with
him. I was afraid of guns. But I can’t count the number of times I wish I’d
gone with him.
My thoughts travelled
back to when he’d be gone. My mother let me rifle through his things in their
room. There was his bed and his closet, his flannel and his coon-skin hat. In a
dream I had when I was a small child, I crawled across his floor at night and
into this same duffel bag. I wormed my way through the contents until I came
out into a forested mountainside. In the dream, my father was there, waiting.
Next to his duffel bag, I
saw a pile of old drawings I had made when I was a child.
There was an old picture
of mine where the moon was keeping me safe as I slept. When I was a child, I
used to think the moon followed me overhead. The moon was alive and thinking.
No longer. There’s a picture of a half-man, half-deer person. I’d shown it to
my father, and told him he’d meet the deer person one day in the woods.
So many ideas I had, so
many creative and beautiful thoughts. Elves in the woods, dancing in whispering
glades. Towering monsters that stalked forests in twilight hours. Aliens lost
from space, trying to survive on our planet. So many small ideas from when I
was child. From long before my father’s disease had taken hold, long before he
had passed on.
Something moved behind
me.
I turned around. Standing
in the center of the room, in the clearing of strings and yarn, stood my
father.
It was as if he had never
died. As if he was still here with me. No. He was there with me. He looked at me with watery blue eyes and
smiled. Every wrinkle cracked across his face with stark detail, and every line
was so beautifully human.
“Dad?” I asked.
He only smiled.
Standing up, I took a
step toward him into the attic, and stepped into the forested mountainside.
I was in the attic still,
I knew I was, but… I was in the forest with him.
My father beckoned me
over to him, and I walked with him through the forest. We walked together
through this dream, and then we began walking through all my other dreams. He
knew the way through all the moonlit cities, where shadowy creatures flew
across the sky, and knew the paths up spiraling architecture—bent and contorted
as they pierced into the starry heavens.
We went into the castles from
various nightmares and spoke happily with the ghosts and the vampires, like long
lost friends. Old, hidden caverns and buried temples were rediscovered. We admired
these galleries of secrecy like children in a museum.
There were beaches we
walked across. Waves crashed against our ankles, and soon we were walking into
the ocean. Fish of all colors swam by. We stepped through the streets of coral
reefs where eels snaked across winding alleyways and dark tunnels.
A coral reef bloomed
around us into walls of buildings, with windows from old shipwrecks, and
statues from drowned civilizations. The city in the ocean became every city in
the world, and the people of the city became every person I’d ever met. I
looked around, and it was still my attic, but the attic was so vast now, so
infinite. Time was nothing, and for brief seconds we visited infinity together.
The cities we visited, the people I met, the dreams I had, and all the memories
forgotten; all were right there, right in front of me.
All of it was right
there, right before my eyes.
All the thoughts I had
never shared, all the ideas that fell apart and were lost in my head. All the
people I hated, all the people I loved, and all the people I passed by without
a second thought. We were all standing in my attic, we were all walking through
our memories of each other, we were all talking in this forest with my father.
There in the attic, I could hear every word and every sentence we’d ever spoken—every
movement of the eye, every posture we ever held, every movement we ever witnessed.
All of you. I could see
all of you
There in the attic, I
could see all of you, and you’re all pulling on me with fistfuls of yarn.
And you were all me. You
were all pulling these strings in my head, and you made me all I would ever be.
Every word you’d ever said is all I am. Every memory of you is all I am.
Everything that you are is all I am. All I could ever be is all of you, because
all we are is pieces of each other.
I saw all of you, and I
saw the truth. I saw myself, and I knew what I was looking at. I saw all of us,
and I knew exactly where I was.
Then it all began to slip.
Fall away. In my dreams, I was alone. The vampires slept in coffins I couldn’t
open, and the ocean cities were abandoned. In my memories, we never spoke again,
and I never found out if any of us had quit smoking. In my childhood, I
deciphered all the rational truths, and the moon couldn’t keep me safe anymore.
In our forest, you all turned your backs to me. In my attic, you all walked
back into the pictures in the boxes.
I ran after all of you,
yelling for you to stop. Bookshelves of all our stories fell down around me.
The bedrooms of friends I sat in collapsed brick by brick. Kitchens, dining
rooms and living rooms of family—blood or no blood—crumbled with age.
I scrambled through all
the wreckage, chasing after you all. Secrets glittered in the debris like small
gems, but I couldn’t stop to pick them all up. My lost thoughts peered from
ruined classrooms I couldn’t go back to. Wherever I looked, I couldn’t find my
old memories, or those old feelings I’d felt.
“Come back!” I yelled,
pulling on all the strings.
But you all turned away,
and now I can’t picture your faces in my head.
“Wait, come on! Where are
you going?” but you wouldn’t answer.
You all disappeared
somewhere, and I can’t see the lines on the map telling me where.
“Come on, Please! Please!
Come back!” I screamed, reaching out for them.
But I couldn’t believe
that the moon watched over me anymore, try as I might.
“No, tell me again! Just
tell me one more time!” I called out to all my old thoughts.
I couldn’t believe that
there were fairies in the forests, dragons in the mountains.
“What did I lose? What
was in my head? No, no, what was it? What was it?”
And, despite all my
effort, I couldn’t remember the truths I’d known as a child.
In my attic, you all left
me to the dusty relics and lifeless debris. In my attic, you all disappeared
into the walls, filed down the creaking, wooden stairs, and climbed out the
windows. All the webs of strings pulled themselves back into the cracks in the floorboards.
I wanted to stop them, I wanted to pull them back, I wanted to dig at the
wooden floorboards until my fingers bled, and find wherever these strings led
to.
I didn’t know who I was
looking at anymore, and it didn’t make any sense. I didn’t see the truth, and I
didn’t know the answer. I looked around for everyone, but everyone was gone. I
looked around, hoping I was still in a forest of people at the bottom of the
ocean, but no. I was here. I was in this attic. I was alone.
It was evening now. Yellows
and oranges were streaming in through the right side of the attic. “Damn,” I
said to no one, “damn it all.”
I looked out the window,
and imagined going outside for a cigarette. “Damn. Damn, damn, damn this place.”
Something moved.
I turned.
Mary stood there in the
attic. Staring at me.
I stared back.
Not even meaning to, I
blinked. She was gone.
All of it. All that I had
seen. All that I knew now, all the places my father had taken me, and all the
people I had met. It was almost too much.
I looked around the attic—completely
normal again, with no strings or lengths of yarn or ribbon—and imagined myself
clearing this room out.
I didn’t know where to
begin.
Fifthwall Renaissance 