The Black Box

I have copied and pasted a short story that I wrote a couple years ago and recently revised. It's not too long and feel free to critique.

James Garlock

The Box

Every August, from age five to fifteen, I went to the carnival in the next town over. My parents had taken me there as a child until I was thirteen years old, at which point I entered Junior High, and there was no way in hell that I would be seen with my parents there. Before that age, the carnival meant something different. It was bright, and colorful with delicious food. I always came home with an inflatable Spiderman on a stick or a plastic sword with a neon colored handle and sheath, wrapped around a belt loop. During that time, the summers were longer. The carnival acted as a marker. The last night spent at the carnival was the summer’s peak. It brought out a bittersweet emotion in me. It was sad that the summer was now coming to an end, but the new school year brought a sense of excitement, and a new start.

            By the time I was fifteen it had become something different. It still held the wonder it had before, but it was more of nostalgia. That’s not to say it was lost, it just had a new look. Now, it meant something a little darker, and a little sleeker. I went there with my friends now, not my parents, and there were girls there, hot girls, everywhere. Now, there was exciting, rebellious stuff to do. Stuff your parents told you not to do. I was in a different place, and fun had a whole new meaning.

            I came with my friend Vitaliy. He was named after his grandfather, and the name either still is or was at one point common in Russia. He was the kind of kid that could do things your average kid couldn’t. Things seemed to come easy to him. He never studied for anything, yet he got good grades. He mastered anything he picked up be it baseball or guitar. Everyone loved him, especially the girls. All the parents loved him. He was really an all around great guy. I, on the other hand, was awkward and lacked confidence. I had a difficult time talking to girls, and I seemed to fail at a great many things. But, be that as it may, I don’t think my teenage years would have been quite as fun as they were without Vitaliy.

            We didn’t have our licenses yet, so we still rode our bikes. That was our transportation to the carnival that year, two slender wheels between geometrically twisted metal. The sound of pinwheels and wind hitting your ears. Vitaliy did not want to pay the $8 dollars to get in. He wanted to ride behind it into the woods, park the bikes, and sneak in through a trail in the back that the employees used. I didn’t share his sense of adventure, and I didn’t mind paying the money to get in. I also wasn’t too thrilled with leaving my bike alone like that, but there was no point arguing with the kid. He always won somehow or another. So, that’s what we did, and found that we needed to climb a six foot, rusting, chain link fence to get in. Vitaliy, of course scaled it and jumped over as smooth as a cat. Then it was my turn. I busted my ass on the dirt, compromising the stealth we wished to achieve. But in the end no one caught us.

            The time we spent was great. Vitaliy had brought a flask filled with the most disgusting cheap vodka I have ever tasted. It was delicious at the time, but nowadays the smell of such a cheap excuse for liquor turns my stomach. I have no idea where he got it and when I asked him he just said, “Don’t worry about it.” That was him in a nutshell, no worries. We played the game where you have to throw the rings around bottle necks, and the one where you have to spray water through a clown’s mouth to pop a balloon, both times winning nothing. Vitaliy played the game of chance, which consisted of putting quarters down on a table which had boxes with a number inside each one. The guy behind the table, who resembled a gypsy, would spin a huge wheel, and if the spinner landed on the number you got a quarter on, you would win a prize. He won a huge stuffed elephant, and of course, gave it to a blonde before getting her number.

            He wanted to go on some ride called the Paratrooper, I remember the name because of the horrible experience I had with it. It was a huge metal circle that tilted diagonally, laughing in the face of my sense of gravity. The person riding would sit in a seat attached to a wire and the wheel would spin you on a slant, high above the ground. Now, I have always been reluctant to go on rides such as these. The only one I have managed to muster the guts to go on is the Gravitron. The Gravitron is the one that looks like a spaceship. You sit inside and lean up against a side without a strap and it spins around so fast that gravity is the only thing that holds you in place. I could handle that because when you were inside it did not appear as though you were spinning because it moved so quickly.

            He was able to convince me to go on, and with a stomach full of two pretzels, a corndog, cotton candy, two funnel cakes, Pepsi, and that cheap vodka I was fastened on the Paratrooper. Suffice to say, it was awful. I got off the ride and found my way behind some stand where no one could see me, and heaved up all the once delicious treats I had previously devoured while Vitaliy stood behind me laughing. It was then that I decided I could never be an astronaut or join the Air Force. He, on the other hand, was perfectly fine, and I had to decline to go on anymore rides with him, even the Gravitron. He went on a few more rides himself while I sat down on the nearest bench, unable to watch him or anything else for that matter. Even the inside of my eyelids were hard to look at. Each time he would tell me what an awesome time he had, and that I should go on the next one, and each time I told him to go fuck himself. Eventually, I felt better and we decided that it was time to go. Vitaliy suggested that we meet up with some friends of his, and I agreed, as my stomach was back to its normal self. We went out the normal exit and circled around to find our bikes.

           

Through the trees a distance back, we could see a campfire blazing. The air smelled of fire and something else which I could not quite identify. Vitality wanted to go investigate and I agreed. I suppose the vodka had drowned a lot of my nerves and I somehow thought that it was a great idea. We walked through the woods until we eventually found a path. Then, we followed the path until we found the campfire, which had a circle of brown skinned, gypsy looking, people around it. I realized that they were the people running the rides, and the games. Upon further surveillance I saw that there were tents, trailers, and pick-up trucks situated around the area. I looked back at the people and no one seemed to be paying any mind to us. Some of them were smoking cigarettes and potent smelling weed, others were talking in a language I could not understand, and some were just staring into the hypnotic blaze of the fire.

            Vitaliy nudged me and pointed to the few men who were passing around a joint. I looked over at him and nodded my head. I had already noticed. “How much money you got on you?” he asked me. I took out my aging, peeling black leather wallet and found that I had seven dollars crinkled up inside. I told him and he said that he had eleven. “Excuse me, boss.” He said to the man who was closest to us. The man was wearing brown mud covered boots, ripped blue jeans, and a black T-shirt with a graphic that was concealed by white paint drops and bleach stains. The brown skin on his face resembled the branch of a tree, and he had long black hair with grey streaks in it that went down past his shoulder. All of a sudden the atmosphere changed. There was a warmth now that was not from the fire. There was a presence among us that was not quite eerie but not entirely calming either. The entire campfire scene visually embodied this feeling too; nothing remained constant in the shadows left by the fire. Everything seemed to shift around. I couldn’t get a good look at any of the people there. My nervousness returned to me then, and the hairs on my body prickled up. The man did not answer Vitaliy, and the only sounds heard were the crackling of the fire, and the crickets chirping.

            “We’ve got about twenty dollars here.” Vitaliy said to the man breaking the silence, “Do you think we could get some of the stuff your buddies are smoking over there?” The man still said nothing and seemed to not hear us, and neither did any of the other people there. We stared at him and I could tell that Vitaliy seemed to be nervous too now, and that was not comforting. After a moment Vitaliy finally said, “Okay, I guess we’ll get going then.” But then the man looked up first at him and then at me. I don’t know how it was for Vitaliy, but the look the man gave me seemed to last an eternity. I couldn’t face whatever it was I saw in his eyes it for very long and turned my gaze to the ground. The man got up and went over to a tent.

“What do you think?” I said to Vitaliy.

“I have no clue.” He replied.

“You think we should get going? Do you think he even heard us?”

“I think he heard us.”

            He was right, the man returned with a black box about the size of a shoebox that appeared to be made of wood. He came up very close to us and then held out the box motioning for us to take a look. We both slowly leaned in and took a look inside.  

            The box appeared to be empty, and then all of a sudden I could not see the bottom. The next thing I knew, I was falling, falling deep inside the blackness of the box. It was a frightening sensation, much worse than that stupid Paratrooper. I had no idea of what to make of anything, or whether I was upside down, or sideways, or what. Then images appeared before me, and I could not just see them, I could feel them. They touched my soul, an unexplainable sensation that I have never felt before or after. What I saw were dark terrible things. Nothing that I saw was concrete enough to be remembered, though. Everything made sense at the time, but like a dream, when it was over I could only catch a glimpse or an idea of what I saw. I saw death, suffering, fear, hate, and pain. I saw all of my own fears, insecurities and sins right in front of me pulling at my heart. I felt as though I was about to lose my mind, that I would never be able to come back from this. I think I can safely say that I know what a disturbed schizophrenic feels like. Then, just as I was about to fall off the deep end of sanity into some great abyss, the scenery changed. I stopped falling, and began to float in place. I was filled with love, the love of everyone, everywhere. The love of past, present and future. I saw all that is good and all that is of worth- real worth not material worth. I saw the meaning of life. I watched my life pass from start to finish, birth to death and knew what my purpose on this earth was. I saw bright beautiful colors, colors that can not normally be seen by the human eye. I felt complete, and old beyond my years, as if I had lived through all time. I seemed to be in this place forever and a fraction of a second at the same time. The concept of time was irrelevant here, and had no place.  

           

Then, I woke up, lying on the grass. I got up quickly and saw my bike on the ground in front of me. The sun was just now coming up, and I could hear the songs of birds. I heard Vitaliy groan next to me and I looked over at him. He too had been asleep and when he opened his eyes, he turned to meet my gaze, and I could see in his eyes that he had experienced the exact same thing.

            We rode home in silence, never once saying anything to each other. I felt as though my brain had grown in size and I had acquired a wealth of knowledge that there was no way to access. I tried my best to hold on to the memories of the black box. Though I couldn’t remember any specific detail, I knew that this was an experience that was important, that had changed me. I didn’t want to lose those feelings; I wanted to be able to remind myself of the box everyday. I felt that if I lost grip on this experience, I would lose grip on the most sacred and meaningful event of my life. However, life goes on. I went through many more books, teachers, tests, jobs, girls, women, friends, carnivals, and everything else, all the while the box became pushed deeper back into my head. I could have gone back to the carnival, and tried to find those people, but there was no point. I would never see them or the box again.