cycles

 A woman awakes with a start and is suddenly aware of a curious smell. No, a chorus of smells: perfumes, baked goods, and plastic, all tinged with an underlying scent of rot. Is that a hint of basil and feta? Her eyes blur with sleep, but her surroundings gradually come into clearer vision as she blinks herself awake.

The woman is in a parlor of sorts. The room has gabled windows with heavy curtains drawn tight. She puts her hands down and feels something smooth, but when she applies more pressure to stand up, the surface snaps into coils. She looks down to see what her hands are feeling and sees that she is sitting atop a mound of slap bracelets: fuzzy, velvet, and in rainbow and psychedelic shades. There must be thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, rippling in a psychedelic sea that fills the room. She couldn’t resist sweeping her hands over the rippling bands. But then, she notices a set of unblinking eyes buried deep inside the snap bracelets, staring up at her. She freezes. What kind of creature does this set of eyes belong to?

She decides that knowing is better than not knowing. Gingerly, she pushes the snap bands away, revealing the deranged, beautified owl face of a Furby. She somehow knows the name of this creature, and it seems familiar, but any sort of solid memory—the present details like how she recognized the Furby, knew its name, and the bigger details, like her own name— feels just out of her grasp. 

She doesn’t realize, in that moment at least, there are other details she should remember. Does she have a family? A career? Her own house? She does know that she isn’t young.  She certainly isn’t old, or even middle-aged yet. She is of a middling age of sorts. She hoists herself up so she can find an exit, but her interest is piqued and her present focus is on exploring the rest of this trippy house. 

Velvety Lisa Frank posters dot the walls alongside band posters (Kings of Leon, Nickelback, D4L, Mumford and Sons), and pages ripped out of magazines. She spots “the Rachel”  haircut and imagines someone with big hair sporting a stone wash jean jacket ripping it out of Seventeen to show her hairdresser. Pages from dELiA’s display leggy young women in chunky sandals and bucket hats. And there is Mariah Carey in her iconic butterfly top, its wings stretching across her chest, sparkling.

She hears a whirring sound gradually increasing in volume as she approaches a larger room with a vaulted ceiling. She sees dozens of creatures flying through the air but with unnatural rises and falls, floating up and down and sideways. One crashes into the wall above her head and slams into the floor on top of a mound of easy bake ovens. It’s a horde of flying Barbies. She feels a vague sense of anxiety and looks around for a fireplace. She doesn’t want any of them to accidentally fly inside. 

She hears more crashing, the rit-a-tat-tat of hundred of thousands of plastic bits scattering. She only notices the hallway off the parlor when she sees a CD clatter into the room. She walks over and picks it up: The Dixie Chicks. Didn’t they change their name? The case is bent up and slightly melted. She shifts her gaze and sees that it clattered from a plastic mound of CDs and curious triple-armed wheels. Almost like a starfish, but not as many arms. She selects one from the pile, not consciously understanding its purpose, but her body takes over. Two fingers grasp the center and the other hands spins the edge. It’s a satisfying, gliding spin. She imagines that it would be good for wiggly kids in a boring classroom. She sees strange, useless pairs of fluorescent-colored glasses mixed mixed into the pile. How can a person see while wearing glasses with bars where the lenses should be?

She considers the hallway teeming with shiny plastic and realizes she can’t get through on her feet. She worries about flimsy CD cases holding her weight, but assumes that she will be reinforced by the sheer number of them all, plus the spinning not-starfish and various trinkets. Even plastic junk packed tightly enough can withstand some weight—right? She ends up army crawling through the hallway that closely resembles a cave from her vantage point. The corners of the CD cases dig into the soft flesh of her arms, her hair winds around the centers of the spinners. As she crawls, the weight of her body activates various vibrating objects. She digs one out with one hand; it has a long metal handle and something like a whisk on the opposite side. It’s coated in a forest green powder that smells like Whole Foods.

She pulls through to the end of the hallway with too much force and ends up tumbling down to the floor on the other side. She lands on what feels like a collection of teeny tiny, but firm pillows: rainbow bagels, thankfully not yet filled with cream cheese. She, along with the bagels, appears to be in an old-fashioned kitchen. The walls are lined with mini toaster ovens, air fryers, and various small kitchen appliances she vaguely remembers using once or twice in her previous life she can no longer recall. The entire room is littered with clear to-go cups crusted with foamy milk, white cups dripped with coffee, and brown paper bags sporting a green mermaid. She feels nostalgic for something she knows is called a brown sugar shaken espresso. Once she catches the scent of sour milk from the neglected coffee cups, the craving passes. She starts feeling a sense of dread. 

But then she notices the buttery warm gleam of sunshine through a window above where she assumes is a sink. That general area is overwhelmed by similarly sized piles of pans, stacked haphazardly, crusted with baked sauce and cheese. She stares at the pans for a bit, convinced that she knows that taste, knows the recipe of what used to occupy them. She remembers the natural light and realizes that an exit must be nearby. She sees one door other than the hallway entrance. She charges it and pushes with force—but the door doesn’t budge, causing her own body to slam into it with full force. She feels a sharp pang in her chest; not from injury, but from embarrassment. Seedlings of panic sprout. She reminds herself that she has no audience, and she can do hard things. She wills her rational mind to come through for her, to get her out of this house. She applies steady, slow, pressure to the door, which allows it to open just a crack. Various fabrics smelling of laundry detergent and department store are piled up over her head, exceeding the top of the door. She pokes at the pile and her finger comes back with a little slip of stretchy fabric that reminds her of a slingshot. She examines it. It has a stitched line across one side. She realizes that it must be a sock, a secret sock, that covers just the heel and toe of a foot that hides inside of a shoe. An invisible sock, a trick of the eye. She can’t imagine the thing staying on after a healthy step or two.

There’s another smell, one she realizes is a strong musty cologne. It’s woody and floral and reminds her of darkened expensive places with tiki exteriors. She maneuvers clothing out of the sliver of the door opening piece by piece, chiseling a tunnel through the mound. Once she gets to the other side, she realizes that making it outside fully depends on which way the door swings. She crosses her fingers for outward.

She finds the handle, twists, pushes, then (thankfully) tumbles out of it along with a wave of clothes. She lands on a shocking amount of Shein and FashionNova. She looks longingly at some nearby LuluLemon, thinking that the tights and jackets would have provided a cushier landing. She stands up and dusts herself off. She sees a backyard with plush green grass, but gets the uncanny feeling that this is yet another room of the house; the piles and mounds and mountains of stuff extend out here. There is a thick wood at the perimeter of the yard, centering the house beneath a section of bright blue sky. Then she notices swirls of smoke curling up into it. 

She picks her way through mounds higher than her head and sees a woman at work shoveling piles and piles of the stuff into a massive bonfire. She must be in her 70s at least. She wears classic blue overalls with a white button up blouse stained with soot. Her hair is white and coiled into a braid, loose tendrils framing her face, which is dripping in sweat. She pauses her shoveling to mop the sweat with a red and white cloth that looks like a picnic tablecloth. She doesn’t obviously acknowledge the middling-aged woman. She keeps shoveling for an indiscriminate amount of time. The middling-aged woman waits. It feels like the polite thing to do.

The shoveling woman finally stops shoveling. She looks up, directly meeting the middling-aged woman’s eyes.

“You’re here. Good luck.”

The now retired shoveling woman tosses the shovel in the middling-aged woman’s general direction and stalks toward the house, again mopping her brow. The middling-aged woman stares at the shovel, imagining the cracked wooden handle digging into her hands. She blanches for a beat, but then follows the older woman’s trail. She spots her navigating straight through a tangled mess of jeggings and low-rise jeans. 

“Excuse me? You’re leaving me here? With all of…this??” She gestures indiscriminately.

The old woman keeps walking so she tries again: “I’m not supposed to be here.”

The old woman stops, shoulders stiffening. She doesn’t turn around. She shakes her head and keeps walking. 

“…and you threw a shovel at me! What am I supposed to do with that?!”

The old woman whips around, eyes blaring. Then she sighs and says resignedly, “Do what you want. You’ll learn this place soon enough. But you’ll need to keep a spot clear in the house for you to sleep.” She pauses, reflecting on her wording . “Don’t sleep outside. Animals pop up here too, and I’d guess they ain’t been fed in awhile.” 

She starts picking her way through the clothes, but turns around to reveal her profile, and turns to lock eyes with the middling-aged woman once more, “I suggest you make your bed up somewhere high. The house sometimes fills up during the night.”

The middling-aged woman is desperate to keep her here. She tries once more just as the old woman reaches the back door.

“But how will you even get out?!”

The old woman pauses. After a beat she says, “I reckon the same way you got in.”

The old woman disappears inside. The middling-aged woman stares. Then she walks back to the bonfire, picks up the shovel, and feeds the flames.