OSHA compliant kidnappers.

There are two things that I’m terrified of… Moths and looking out of windows at night.

Last night, I dreamt an old memory. The one that caused the fear of the latter.

I was six and she, my middle sister, was almost five.

She has some mental handicaps, which bring forth a slew of other problems, primarily her seizures.

They were really bad when she was young. Violent, unearthly, feverish, foaming. Very early on, I had learned the procedure of how to handle these episodes.

When they hit, everything else seemed to stop. Silence begging the dramatic. The hush and chaos making me hypnagogic. Like an intense scene in a movie where the director takes the sound away so you can only focus on the images. It wasn’t real to me even though I knew the gravitas of the situation.

But that night, near the end of summer when the nights started getting chilly, when I was six, and she was almost five, the worst one occurred.

Mama was doing the dishes, her husband out in the garage working on his ‘67 Chevy, and her and I idly playing in the dining room.

My grandfather had made me an extensive set of building blocks that year for my birthday. Because then, I thought I was going to be an architect. She and I sat there building elaborate bridges and palaces. She didn’t quite know what she was making, but her pieces were precisely placed nonetheless. I could hear the clatter of silverware that Mama was washing, meaning that it wouldn’t be too much longer before she finished.

And as I put the finishing touches on my biggest bridge, I glanced up at her, and saw that look in her eye before the storm hit. I screamed for Mama, and busted through my bridge to get to her before she fell backward, too hard.

Her body convulsing rapidly sending vibrations throughout the entirety of me. Causing little primary colored blocks that were near to lightly jump on the wood floors. Her teeth chattering, tiny foam bubbles pouring forth from the side of her mouth. Her skin on fire, felt like a volcano. My fingers burned as I held her chin so she wouldn’t clamp down and shatter anything, carefully watching the tongue. Mama rushed in with a wooden spoon, placed it in her mouth. Screaming for her husband. Hoping it was loud enough to be heard through the walls, the doors, the expanse of land between the house and garage.

He ran in, nervous eyes, black hands from the oil. He pushed me out of the way, scooped up his child, quickly making his way to the bathroom. We followed, Mama with a little bottle in her hands, me crying because I couldn’t save my little sister.

The old porcelain bath tub streaked in the black from his hands. My sister’s cheeks and arms painted like a warrior. She was a white child, skin like alabaster. Tightly curled hair, roses in cheeks, like the perfect dolly. But in that moment she looked like a corpse, dirt on her from being dug up.

He yelled at me, his hatred obvious even then.

Mama in the quiet voice she used in the midst of panic told me to call for an ambulance, and after to call the neighbor.

I did as I was told.

I waited in the dining room. Someone barges in, sees me, scoops me up, takes me outside just as the flood of red lights start to tint the night.

People rushed in, people rushed out.

Mama then comes to speak with the person holding me, the neighbor. Asking them to take me for the night. Saying she doesn’t know what’ll happen at the hospital. Doesn’t want me to see it. Doesn’t know how long it’ll take. The neighbor, who was a close friend of the family for many years, agreed. Said I could stay as long as needed. Kissed her cheek, said to be strong, said ‘I love you’.

I was crying then… I didn’t take well to being away from my mother. I didn’t take well from being away from home. I was scared. I didn’t want to go with the neighbor. I wanted to stay with Mama… But they had to drive away without me.

The neighbor takes me to their house. She makes up a little bed for me on the floor of her daughter’s room. Her daughter four years older than me, already fast asleep.

The neighbor stays with me for a bit. Holding and trying to comfort me. Telling me that it’ll all be alright. That my sister is going to be fine.

What she didn’t realize was that in that moment I wasn’t as much worried about my sister as my mother never coming back to get me. I was afraid I’d have to stay there forever. That they were all going to leave me behind.

Eventually the neighbor made me lay down and try to sleep. She shut the door of her daughters room, and the little fairy night light glowed in the corner.

It was windy that night and a branch of the large tree in their backyard kept knocking on the small circular window in the daughter’s room. I laid there terrified. Afraid that the noise was that of two men placing a ladder against the side of the house. One man climbing, the other man holding the ladder steady. Afraid that they were coming to kidnap me. For what seemed like hours, I was paralyzed in fear that I was going to be gotten.

I made myself get up and check.

I climbed onto her desk that was underneath the window. I stood on my tiptoes, each knock of the branch making me jump. I kept trying to look out, but I couldn’t ever fully because I was terrified of the face that would be staring back at me… I was scared of screaming.

And so it began…

No more peering out of windows at night.

To this day, if there’s an unfamiliar noise, if my dog stirs and growls, I become panicked. I call for the other person who lives with me to check. Still scared that I’ll see the kidnapping bad man’s face.

Even if wacky, even if irrational.

Before the others come.

Tick tock, tick tock. Swish, swish.

You shake those hopes in that thick lace that drapes round those bones, over that flesh.

Tick tock, tick tock. Swish, swish.

Yeah, your hips move too.

I do this… Frequently. Every day. From late morning through the afternoon ’til the early eve. -If I’ve nothing else going on, which is every day these days.

I listen to old things spinning ’round the record player and I create stories in my head. Thinking that if God did exist, if fate and destiny were proven things… I would have been a woman back then. Because in this day and age, I’m always a girl… And it shouldn’t have been this way. I shouldn’t have been.

I dance around, dance with the music until others come home. I dance and I dance.

Yeah memories flood in. Of past lover’s hands and mouths. Of where I was when… Of where I could be… Of who was there… Who was not.

“Oh what the moonlight can do…”

And yeah, every last bit breaks my heart. Sometimes it causes me to laugh, sometimes to cry. And that’s why I can’t do it when others come home.

So while I’m alone I can sway, I can move, I can be what I should have been.

Trumpet and trombone could have made the tower. Dusty voice, the cable that ties.

“Because that’s how it goes when…”

My little Speed Governor, sweet as sin.

West of here and slightly North of here there was a quiet, simple home in the middle of a forest. The forest was surrounded by open land with tall grasses and rounded hills. A small creek curved through the middle, resembling a blue vein that runs the length of a white man’s arm.

The house was small. The only rooms that had doors were the single bedroom, the bathroom. Everything else was open. The kitchen flowed into the dining room which flowed into the living room. On the east wall there was a fireplace. To left of that there was a single rocking chair that held a knitted blanket and an old yellowing book. Other than the small table for two, with only one chair, the open space in the house didn’t contain anything else.

The floors were wooden and unfinished. Smooth from the feet of those that have tread over them for the last hundred years. They carried no rugs, because they did not require barriers. They were silent floors… They had done all the settling that they needed. When something lays flat, it becomes easy to see where you should be, where you should not.

I lived in that house. Slept in that single bedroom. Ate at the table for two, with only one. Rocked in the chair, wrapped in the blanket, reading a book next to the fire.

I lived there for a very, very long time.
Doing the very same things, every single day.
And I didn’t mind, because I did not know anything was missing.

Then one night, after I washed my plate, my fork, my glass, I turned in the direction of the rocking chair.

And something… was off.
Abundantly so.

I walk into the space, stunned.
Where did it come from?
Momentary panic set in, and I race to a window to see if I can catch a glimpse of someone leaving.

I stand over them, my ten little music boxes.They form a circle, large enough for me to sit in the middle and fan out my skirt.

I pick one up, gauging its weight with a squinted eye.
Set it back down, and move to the next.

I did not open them,
did not twist their cranks.
I watched them.
Figuring that if they just appeared,
they would just play.

But they did not.
They just sat there like ten little Indians before a hunt.

I picked one up again, and my fingers transformed into tools.
I took it apart, every little piece.
Closely, I inspected, determined to figure out the mechanics.
From the fine tooth comb to the brass cylinder and pins.
Dismantled, I saw where the pieces rotated and pulsed.
How the spring housing wound by means of the key, and the speed governor regulating the unwinding.
And how all of it, every last part set perfectly and precisely atop the base plate.
Orchestrated in a way that births the sound.
And how every little piece seemed like some character, some theme from Alice In Wonderland.

So I put it back together.
Exactly how it went.
And repeated, nine times over.

And finally, when the last little Indian was put back together, I stood.
I felt like a small girl in the summer time, so I spun with my skirt, appropriately, belling out around me.

Each music box started playing in that moment.
Each one starting a second or two after the one before it.
Creating a symphony of sound,
of a nameless tune.

So I spun.
And I spun.
Until the music ended,
and fell in a heap, exhausted and happy,
in the middle of it all.