With Ripley protected by the cave my lanky body formed as I cloaked her, I stared at the box so hard I almost expected it to get embarrassed…I think it actually DID blush. I mentally snapped a hundred different exposures of the box as it lay there, halfway pushed into the floor.
My eyes, although they may not look like the best quality equipment, are digital cameras. Not metaphorically speaking, either. They are literally cameras. Instead of the latest Japanese technology, though, these camera bodies were constructed over 25 years ago, forged from flesh, tendons and membranes, and they house a one-of-a-kind lens, shielded by a million cells holding hands with each other forming a multi-layer anti-reflection coating. And the memory card in my head made from compacted gray matter holds an infinite number of photos. I can retrieve any one of these photos at a moment's notice, which is both a gift and a curse. My photographic memory surely has come in handy with my writing. Or perhaps it's the other way around, and my writing is the outcome of my memories lacking a printer. I used to love drawing, and this might have been my brain's first attempt at creating a way to get these memories on paper, but it failed miserably. I can't draw. I never could. But I liked it. Then I started writing, and even though I'm not the best author, it's a form I have been able to see improvement upon since I started years ago.
I file away all of the mental pictures I capture in hopes of being able to one day, call upon them to make movies. That's been my dream since before I could walk. Unfortunately, though, movies take more than one person to create, unless of course you made El Mariachi. It's a collaborative effort. You have to have friends, equipment, and, in most cases, money. So, because of the obstacles, my journey to moviemaking has just been forced to be a roundabout one, honing my skills in other aspects of filmmaking while I prepare to make the greatest movie ever produced.
This over the shoulder P.O.V. shot of me staring at the breathing box, slowly zooming past my head while lone feathers gently meander their way down to the carpet as the mixture of pink and yellow hues from the Sandman sign leak in would look great in a movie. I filed it away for later, assuming there would be a later.
Before anything else happened, I decided I need to get Ripley out of there, even if she's in no danger from the birds, or the box, or whatever was screaming in my shower. I shook myself out of my trance and reached for her hand. She seemed scared, but not devastated.
"What was that noise?" she asked.
"It was just a siren, it scared off the birds. C'mon, we gotta get you back to your house."
I kept my bad eye on the box while I gently pulled Ripley up by the hand and escorted her 3 steps away, into the kitchen.
I just needed to get her out to safety before I figured out how to handle this.
I reached for the phone to call down to the manager's office. I don't know if she'll be up to it, especially this early, but if I explain to her that I have to go to work and that I don't want to leave Ripley alone, maybe she'll watch Ripley for a few minutes until Sandy comes back. I ask Ripley if she's ok with staying with Tab, the manager (Tab's a nickname. And it's not short for Tabitha. Her real name's Virginia. Everyone calls her Tab because she ALWAYS wears the same moo-moo, a bright, solid colored-salmon-pink fabric with 3 diagonal white rectangles on it that, if you squint your eyes, looks just like a giant fucking can of TAB, the worst soda that has ever graced our planet. And she's okay with it).
"Sure, she's alright. She lets me drink soda and watch cartoons," said Ripley.
"No, shit…she IS a soda", I mumble under my breath.
"Huh?"
"Nothing."
I found Tab's number in the book next to my phone, but before I could call, Ripley spoke up again.
"Chadam?"
"Yah, Ripley?"
"What's in that box that the pigeons gave you?"
I paused…opened and closed my mouth a couple of times before I replied.
Though I was almost completely dehydrated, I felt a string of spit grip both of my lips, then break apart and half of it hooked around my lower lip, like a lip-ring made of drool.
"…I don't know. I guess I'll have to open it."
"Will you tell me what's in it when you open it? The pigeons said you'd like it."
"Yah, Ripley, I wi -"
I was cutoff by the loud ringing of my phone as I was reaching to grab it.
Hopefully it's Sandy.
I pick it up.
An electronic voice said "This is the county correctional facility calling with a collect call from..Chuvargetsdf (that's how I made out the interference-ridden name that was given). Push 1 to accept."
I didn't know anyone in jail.
I didn't really know anyone at all.
It's probably the wrong number, I think to myself, and if I deny it whoever it is won't get another call, so I should pick it up just to tell Chuvargetsdf (?) that this is the wrong number and hopefully the guard will give him another call.
I push 1 on my phone.
"Hello?" I said, inquisitively.
There was a ton of static on the phone, the voice on the other end was garbled, and I couldn't make out a thing.
"You have the wrong number, sir, I'm sorry."
The static turned into an electronic growl and escalated instantly in volume, then cut short, and the interference was gone.
"I don't have the wrong number, Chadam", the grizzled male voice said. I wish my ears' memories were as good as my eyes'. I tried to remember where I heard that voice, but I couldn't immediately place it. But with his next words, I remembered.
"You let them in. YOU LET THEM –"
The phone cutoff and relayed a busy signal in my ear…
Shit.