Ascending arpeggio, S. left on a business trip. Business widowhood: a relationship with someone who currently doesn’t exist. So I was widowed at the supermarket and now had twice as much food as I’d need for dinner. It was a pleasant ambience and the registers let out a satisfying noise as they were used, murmurs of hundreds of conversations blended into a single variegated voice. Footsteps echoed in a patter, mine with a slap because my shoe was disintegrating more and more rapidly. The aisles were narrow and cosy, a pale comfort for knowing that I would come home to a house twice too large for a single person; I’d accepted S.’s trips, but never got used to them. Nestled between ground spices, raspberry jelly and lifestyle magazines, I felt safe from the man and woman who had stalked me at work earlier that day. A packet of popcorn to compensate for being recently widowed. Highly strung from today’s events - from the past week’s, too - I yelped as a blue shape suddenly appeared and blocked my way, other shoppers turning around and staring at me briefly. He leapt over the shelves from the aisle beside mine and landed, hands-on-hips, in front of me and beaming. The high performer delivered the usual message, a professional courtesy, screaming that he was sorry but she wouldn’t be around for a while, his condolences. Every time he called me ‘buddy’ I flinched, the volume of his bass-baritone voice rustling my hair and dishevelling my clothes, some food was blown off the shelves.
We lived so close to everywhere relevant that I almost always walked; home was only half an hour from the hospital, a bit longer to The Tower. Company advertisements were playing in the supermarket and I heard them on the way home too, jingles and ditties through the streets whistled by pedestrians, from open windows as families listened to them over dinner. Streetlights led the way in silver lines to quieter streets and home, it was already dark. Front door opened and closed, shopping bags and my coat, they were left in the hallway and would be dealt with later. No point keeping things tidy when you’re alone, with or without S. Now upstairs, I sat in the chair beside the window and had not turned on the lights. Watching The Tower shine at night, I listened to the radio: a panel discussion on slogans. I hoped that it would take my mind off of what happened at work.
"Well, you see, the slogan is neutral. It’s not like the slogan in and of itself is malicious, it’s there for us to make of it what we will, know what I mean? It’s like, we could use this to create a better world, where we could just say what we wanted and it would just, like, appear. Or—"
"The military-industrial complex, though. We just, we can’t let this out, we don’t want nuclear proliferation, do we? Every state with its own slogans, terrorist cells, lone, ah, lone wolf attacks with slogans, the lot. We research enough ways to destroy ourselves, don’t we? Well, why research another? We don’t have to make this worse!"
A third voice: "Why bother? Nobody cares, nobody except for a few cranks in academia, whose funding has been cut to finance slogan research. Under ten percent of the public, when big polls were conducted, not even ten percent of those asked listed the slogan in their top five most important issues. You people always want to complain, even though all of you are employees or shareholders—"
"I resent that, I resent that, that’s unfair. Look, the only slogan that manifested is our company’s: ‘Our Employees Are Our Company’. Does that look like a safe path to go down? Mass disappearances, and with the— these effects don’t even follow the slogan verbatim. It’s not just employees, it’s also shareholders, any beneficiary, they disappear—"
"That’s why we need to understand it. There’s some underlying logic to this, it’s, it’s not magic—"
The presenter tried to adjudicate: "Now let’s get some order, remember that this is a debate and discussion in good faith and we need to let everyone speak without interruption, we’re—"
"—our company needs to take some responsibility. Their CEO, she acts as if—"
"Our company only stumbled onto this, they didn’t mean to manifest the slogan. Would you blame the discoverer of a volcano for its eruptions?"
"—S. hiding behind her husband’s medical work, as if that somehow absolves her—"
I turned the radio off as the presenter lost control, my interest waned. The slap of my shoe’s sole had been irritating me for days and now was the time to fix it, it had gotten bad enough, the sole was almost totally separated from the shoe. It reminded me too much of those snarling teeth, opening and closing its mouth and it clapped the stairs as I descended. Maybe it would grow teeth too, smiling unpolished shoes. The cupboard below the stairs contained mostly dust and had a pleasant smell of dry age and unpainted wood. When the door was opened cobwebs would sigh towards you and then sway back as you searched for whatever it was that you wanted, between the old bags, a single black gumboot, a box of unused tools. Stairs in reverse marched down the ceiling to the floor in the gloom, a comforting space that never changed. On opening the door, the first thing that I noticed was not the cobwebs or the pleasant smell, not the shoe polish or glue, but a black shape sitting on one of the crooked shelves, rectangular, a handle pointing upwards. Before resignation could run through me, it began to wail. Without stepping backwards I slammed the door and stood facing the closed cupboard while Briefcase howled. The door was white and I took an unusual interest in the simple carved woodwork at its edges, the chips in the paint. Maybe I could focus on something else for long enough that all of this would pass me by. Screaming crept from beneath the door.
Back up the stairs, each step vibrated with Briefcase’s cries up my legs through to my neck making my throat prickle. Back in the chair by the window, observing The Tower standing vigil over the city, wishing back to a time when S. would have put a hand on my cheek or her head on my shoulder and to tell me that we could find some sort of solution. I looked to The Tower for answers but it remained monolithic and inscrutable on the skyline. My hands gripped the chair more and more tightly as the moans continued to ring out relentlessly and my eyes were closed. But I couldn’t stay up there forever; S. was gone and I’d have Briefcase all to myself, at least for a moment. Maybe the papers inside Briefcase would tell me something. Even better, they’d say nothing and I’d have one thing fewer to worry about.
Now standing at the cupboard door with my hand on the doorknob, then in the kitchen pacing, then back at the door.
Rapping on the cupboard door with my knuckles: "Why have you come back?"
With that, all the noise stopped, making the house feel hollow in its absence. And there was no answer. In the quiet, I looked up at the stairs. Just walk up, sit down in the chair and wait for S. to get back. Keep safe, that’s what I thought to myself, maybe talking to Briefcase will tempt those eyes and teeth to come closer. A clack on the ground, my loose sole slapped the floorboards as I stepped away from the cupboard.
And then Briefcase spoke; the decision had been made for me. "Why did you take me back home?"
"I didn’t. Why are you in my cupboard?"
"So S. brought me here?" The voice behind the door sounded hopeful as it said S.’s name.
"S. doesn’t exist at the moment."
"But then how did I get here?"
"That’s a good question."
I’d have more time to react up here if S. walked through the front door, then I could hide Briefcase or pretend that we had never talked. That was why I brought Briefcase upstairs and sat down in the chair by the window, the briefcase open on the small table next to the chair. It didn’t make much sense, I’d hear from the transponder if S. re-existed again, but being away from the front door made me feel safer.
"So you don’t remember being carried?"
"No, but we, ah, we did go somewhere. First you just— I remember being closed up in the box—" Staring out the window, I couldn’t quite look at Briefcase when it said this. I was obviously guilty. Tantalisingly, the papers in Briefcase sat within arm’s reach. "—then there were holes punched in the box with, um, a knife or something—"
With scissors. I’d poked air holes in the box. So at least I’d done something kind.
"Ok, ok, ok, I know this part. What about after we, um—" How to put it sensitively? "You know?"
Maybe it was furrowing its brow, thinking. It could have been frowning. I don’t know, it’s hard to tell with briefcases. "Well, someone picked us up, kept shouting about ‘buddy,’ and, well, we stopped calling out after a while because, because whoever was carrying us just found it funny." It couldn’t have been a good time to ask about the papers. That’s invasive, and Briefcase had no reason to trust or like me. Plenty of reasons to feel the opposite. "And then we just sat there, you know, there wasn’t all that much for us to do. Hat said a few things, like, muttered about you and then asked what I thought S. was doing. Actually, is, um— does S. have a twin, or, or is there someone else who looks the same, and has the same name, but isn’t, you know—" S. was notionally the same person, although she’d changed a lot since the slogan. "—S.?"
"No, she doesn’t. That woman you saw, that’s S. So, what next?"
Briefcase was getting more confident in talking and wasn’t whispering anymore. "Um, then we didn’t speak at all after that. Then, uh, then—" Shifting in the seat, raising my eyebrows. Briefcase’s papers shone white in the city’s nighttime glow, lit office-block windows and streetlights. "We couldn’t see anything outside the box anymore because, well, we thought that it was nighttime. Or, maybe I thought it was, because Hat didn’t say anything. And, and, that reminds me. Do you work in a hospital?"
"How do you know that?"
"I, I, I— ok, I don’t know for sure, but I think I saw you, or, or maybe someone who looks like you. Is there someone who looks like you who works in a hospital?"
"Tell me what you saw."
Briefcase spoke more softly, maybe I had scared them by snapping back so suddenly. "It wasn’t much, just a little, you know, like a little flash, but—" I really didn’t want S. to get back. Not yet. "—but then, the holes in the box, we were up so high! I was, it wasn’t pleasant at all, just like that and we were above the city and it was daytime again, or, you know, maybe when it got dark before it wasn’t nighttime, but it was dark for some other reason, I don’t know, like—"
"Sure sure, good, what did you see next?"
"Well, through the holes in the box I could see a city - I think it’s this city, but maybe not, but, but probably— and from so far above everything else. So high. And through the holes in the box I could see this building, big, or, like, a collection of buildings all built together. It was like I was focussing on it, the building there got bigger and bigger, then suddenly, um—" Briefcase paused.
"And?"
"And then I saw you."
"And you’re sure it was me?"
"I—"
"Ok, ok, so tell me, where was I and what was I doing?"
"There were two times, so the first time you were in a, a— you were with a few other people, sitting down and talking to them—" I didn’t like where this was going. "Then you turned around and looked right at me. Right at me! And wow, you really didn’t look happy. And I could feel— it was like looking through someone else’s eyes, and feeling through their feelings, too, feelings like, ah, like a predator, you know? But, but, anyway, you were in a hospital. There were sick people everywhere. And people crowding me! They were all bunching up and pushing towards me, but I just looked at you through the hole in the box and you stared at me before leaving. I watched you go. That was you, wasn’t it?"
Wearily: "The second time?"
"The same thing. I stared at you and you stared right at me, again! Did you recognise me? Was I there?"
"Where were you and what did you see?"
"I was in a crowd - another crowd - and you were standing above me, like, far above me, standing by a window. And then you opened the door."
"The door?"
"The cupboard door."
Had Briefcase been following me? I looked at it. It didn’t seem threatening, not personally. In what it represented, maybe, watching me through those teeth and yellow eyes, intentionally or not.
Too late to back out: may as well dig deeper. "Those papers you’re carrying."
"Yes?"
"Do you mind if I have a look at them?"
"No, uh, no. That’s no problem. No problem at all."
A few sheets of paper were already in my hand when Briefcase answered. I was trying to be polite. Briefcase kept talking and I ignored it.
The weekly planner was the same, nothing new was in it. It was blank, apart from the note about going full-time, which I had read a few days ago. The handwriting was still disturbingly familiar. Of the loose-leaf pages I held, only one had anything printed or written on it, and I shook my head as I read.
A list of twelve names, beside each was a brief radioalmological description of the person’s soul. I recognised several of these names, although I had not heard of them in years. None of them had existed for years. A handwritten note on the bottom of the page:
"compatibility of souls high
construction of soul seed to begin"
The same handwriting as in the weekly planner. Those names, I remembered them and I remembered the descriptions of their souls. I had imaged them and I had written those reports. S. wanted them imaged, a team-building activity to welcome everybody aboard, the new hires. Like a group photograph of the twelve new board members who S. had worked hard to bring aboard. Back then, I had thought nothing of it. At the top of the page, the letterhead was our company’s, the old letterhead that they had before the slogan and before the entire board disappeared on the first business trip, one which they still have not returned from.
"Find anything interesting?"
I grunted and asked Briefcase where it wanted to sleep, laying the papers and weekly planner back inside, carefully. Everything needed to look untouched.
The Tower’s yellow windows blinked at us from across the city. The briefcase wanted to sleep downstairs, in the kitchen. I, widowed by The Tower, and Briefcase, maybe widowed too, we stayed together as the room grew darker and darker, I stood by the kitchen counter and Briefcase lay on top of it. Amber windows shone over all that they observed. The continuous murmur of traffic outside was punctuated by the occasional, fragmentary conversation. It was a warm evening and the air was thick in my mouth and lungs as we were still and lost in ourselves. Briefcase insisted that S. had taken it to work each day, fondly remembered the things she placed inside it, university textbooks, work documents, cafe loyalty cards. It described a city that we had once lived in, here, whose bones are buried under The Tower and its slogan. A tenuous link to the past, or at least a hint: I saw my old feelings for S. from far away, lived in them for the first time in years, a past when we found each other exciting, remembered in the descriptions Briefcase gave of old streets or shops that we had spent time in which no longer existed. We used to sit here, at this table, now would have been the time when I’d sit across from her, maybe with food, maybe without, maybe with conversation or maybe not; not that it would really matter. It would be warm and well-lit. Instead, here things were: dark, S. was absent, I didn’t want to finish the half-eaten bag of popcorn on the table and there had been too many surprises today. I was tired and I wanted to go to bed. Turning to leave the kitchen, now in the doorway, I stopped and toyed with the thought.
Maybe I could just ask; maybe I wouldn’t need to image them. "Briefcase?"
"Yes?"
"Do you, um— do you have a soul?"
"What do you mean?"
It didn’t understand the question and I left the kitchen without saying anything more, the bell of a distant train rang, the floorboards and stairs creaked. I ran my hand over S.’s belongings lying on the hall table - a pile of papers, odds and ends - and imagined her hand there. The past seemed closer tonight, we were almost touching, I was just a few moments late, not too far off. It was now dark enough that I was navigating by unconscious memory. Stepping down the hall to the stairs I bumped the hatstand and knocked it to the ground. Tripping over, the house felt even quieter after the sudden noise, sharp wood-on-wood snaps and dull thuds and whispers of fabric on the floor. Cautiously, I found the lights and squinted from the sudden brightness; an upended hatstand lay sideways underneath coats and other clothes which tented over its branches. I picked up the larger scattered objects and lay them across the bannister of the staircase. As I brushed aside a tartan scarf, a red brim peeked from under the hatstand’s limbs. Inevitability, I lifted the scarf and saw what I had been hoping not to see. A secret to myself, I understood that I had expected this.
"The temerity," sneered Hat.