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The Box on West 129th Street

Stephen Kramer Avitabile

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No one ever moved that dusty old box on West 129th Street. Everyone ignored it, hoping
someone else would make it their problem. But there it sat, collecting dust, blocking everyone’s
way as they traveled up and down the sidewalk, unable to avoid bumping their elbows into it. The box was devoid of labels, and was so enormous it was hard to fathom what could have ever existed inside it. It was just discarded and left for dead… beat up, torn, and aged.

The first day I saw it was the day after that one terrifying night. The one where I ran to
Mom and Dad’s room in absolute fear. When Dad told me I needed to be a big boy and sleep
alone in my room.

How could I sleep alone in my room when I witnessed a flash of blinding blue light outside
and a high-pitched, piercing screech slashed through the night sky? I did fall asleep after an hour. But the next morning, Dad and I saw it for the first time. That box.

Did the blinding blue screech light drop the box off?

All the grown-ups ignored it, so did I… but after a week of it sitting there, it became impossible for me to ignore. I shuddered when I passed by it; the fact people ignored it made it even scarier. But why? What could possibly be in it? I had to peek inside. I snuck away from Mom and Dad one dreary, gray afternoon while they were playing cards.

“What do you say to a game of cards, Lou?” Dad had asked.

“Maybe later.” I told him, and then he and Mom dove back into another one, unaware of anything happening more than five feet from them.

I meandered onto the sidewalk like I’d seen Dad do when he had something on his mind, pretending like I was deep in thought. But really, I was watching passersby to see if anyone was watching me. No one paid any attention to someone as short as me though.

I glanced at the box, what was the top of the box appeared to be the bottom. Solid, no flaps, no way to be opened. The closer I got to the box, the more apparent it became that a frigid wind was billowing off it. The air directly around the box was freezing, a whole 30 degrees colder than the rest of the air. A faint noise emanated from inside the box and it made my ear ring. It made me uneasy. I backed away, wondering if I should dash back inside and play cards with Mom and Dad.

My curious eyes swept the sidewalks, finding they were relatively empty. All the busy bodies shuffling off in the distance didn’t even look in my direction and my ear stopped ringing. My skin warmed once again, so I moved closer to the box, back into the frigid air surrounding it, crouched down, and lifted up the edge of the box. There were flaps at the bottom and one of them was loose. I pulled and pulled and it was freed, granting me entrance into the cube-shaped mystery. I climbed into it. It was so big; it hid my entire body with ease. I shuddered from the freezing temperature inside and my hot breath sliced through the air like deadly smoke. The one flap remained pried out, but I stayed crouched on the other flaps and noticed there was something squishy underneath my feet. Of course, I prodded. I poked. Until the bottom of the box, though it was pressed against the solid sidewalk, opened… and I fell.

I fell… below the box… into the sidewalk… below the sidewalk…

I fell into… a bed of flowers. Sweet smelling, yet perfumy like Mom’s expensive bottles on top of the dresser. The dirt which I laid on top of… warm… thick between my fingers. The heat bore down on me, but it felt good on my skin. There was dew on my forehead from the humidity of home, but it quickly dried up in the sun of… where was I?

Blinding pain from a sun that was not existent moments ago attacked my eyes. I blinked my eyes rapidly, shoeing away the pain and drawing in sight. Shapes and colors and details came into focus as I looked around. Blue skies and green grass as far as I could see. A bell tolled in the distance. Not a bell like I’d ever heard before.

I sat in that bed of flowers, taking in the sights, looking, smelling, hearing, feeling… it wasn’t until after an hour that I craned my neck back and gazed directly up… noticing the base of the box, squishy hole and all, floating above my head. Suspended in mid-air. The ringing was back in my ear.

It was time to return home. I didn’t want to keep Mom and Dad waiting.

Weirdly enough, I hadn’t kept them waiting. I returned home to hear my dad say, “What do you say to a game of cards, Lou?”

I had already heard him say that… over an hour ago. I spent an hour in the flowers and the heat and returned… five minutes before I left?

I knew the box’s magic and I would meet again.

The next morning, I planned to head back to the box but Dad interrupted me on my journey.

“Was that you last night?” Dad asked.

“Was what me?”

“That screaming.”

“I wasn’t screaming.”

“Weren’t you talking about loud noises recently? In the middle of the night?”

“Yeah. Not last night.”

“OK. Anyway, come with me to the hardware store.”

“What for?”

“Cause I’m tellin’ you.”

I assisted Dad with picking up the necessary materials for his project, and then was the assistant for the project as well. It turned out that somehow, the window to Mom’s china cabinet had shattered. Broken glass was all over the floor and she had cut the bottom of her foot. She’d have to stay off her feet for a couple weeks. Dad and I fixed up her cabinet; it took all day. By the time I was freed by the foreman, it was too late to investigate the box, so I just read through my comic books like a gentleman scholar.

After an excellent night’s sleep, I managed to sneak away and climb inside the box the next morning. That time, as I crawled through the squishy hole at the bottom, I was transported to a desert with a pink lake beside it. I sat there for hours admiring this beautiful lake. I didn’t know they made pink lakes. Maybe they made them on other planets? Was “made” the right word? Wasn’t sure. Wasn’t much of a Lake Expert. Maybe someday when I grew up. A few men dressed in robes passed by at one point. They spoke no words that I understood.

When I returned home through the squishy hole in the bottom of the box, it was half an hour before I had left. What a glorious find! My own transportation machine that afforded me trips to places in the world at random… and it gave me more time! Those chores I was supposed to do, the ones I had put off, now I could get started on them… early!

Dad wondered why I was so happy to do chores and I told him sometimes I liked doing chores, even though he knew that was a darn lie. He shrugged and chuckled my cheery persona away. Mom didn’t make dinner that night because of her injured feet, so Dad made something and it was awful. Oh well. I suppose there had to be some sacrifices in life. I went to sleep, dreaming about the trip that I had taken, but I was jolted from my slumber in the middle of the night when a horrifying screech shook my window in the pane violently! I shot up and saw a flashing blue light. Silence. 10 seconds later, another screech, and a second after that, a blinding blue light. Was this like lightning and thunder? The amount of time passing between the two signified the distance of the lightning from my location?

I heard no other screeches and saw no other flashing blue lights, but as I peered out the window, the box was all too obvious. As if it stared back at me.

The next morning, I saw Dad in the kitchen collecting water in a bucket. There was a hole in the ceiling and a pipe protruded through it, spewing murky fluid. The tip of the pipe had something red on it. As Dad scurried past me to retrieve another bucket, I saw him wincing, and I saw a bit of the red on the back of his head.

I didn’t go near the box for a while. Days. Maybe over a week. But there were no other surprises in the night, so I told myself I was just being silly. I probably just heard an injured bird or bat. And the light? Ehh… I just made myself forget about that.

There was another trip through the box that landed me in a place where everyone ate croissants and cheeses and rode bicycles. There were some pretty buildings and coffee shops. I couldn’t read anything. But I spent about 10 hours there. I returned home two hours before I left. That episode of my favorite show that I watched with Mom, I watched it again and even said the hero’s line before he did! That one freaked Mom out. Hilarious. It was too bad I didn’t get to bring it up again the next day and impress Mom and Dad further, our neighbor had a heart attack and we had to go to the hospital to visit and be serious.

Another time that I went into the box I wound up in some Asian country. I got lost admiring the countryside, I almost didn’t find my way back to the box. It took me over three days, but I found it. Returned home 12 hours before I left. I had gained nearly a whole extra day, but I was so tired. I spent most of the day just watching the rain pelt the window from my room. Watching the rain shower down on the tall tree across the street. The tree bent and bent under the stress of the rain. I probably should’ve told someone, but how was I to know it’d crash down on the Bellmonts’ house?

I saw London, I saw Prague… I even saw a place called Boise, Idaho!

That Idaho place fascinated me. I asked Mom and Dad about it, wanting to know more, wanting to learn as much as I could, but they would hardly even acknowledge me that day. It was strange. Later on, I heard them whispering in their room so I snuck through the hall to listen.

“How do we tell him his best friend died?”

“That’s not his best friend. Marty is.”

“He plays with Harry all the time.”

“Because he lives down the street.”

“Right. That’s his best friend.”

“That’s his best friend on the street.”

“Fine, how do we tell him his best friend on the street died?”

I cried in my bedroom before they officially told me the news. They came into my room after I had dried my eyes, told me about Harry, and even though I thought I had no tears left, I cried more. I was dehydrated all week. And sad. Like a depressed raisin. It was the first funeral I went to.

As I stared at Harry for the last time, dressed in a suit he’d never worn, I wondered if any of this was connected to the box. Or the screeching. Or the blue light. Or all of it. I wondered if I should get rid of the box. Bring it somewhere else. But then if I brought it somewhere else, wouldn’t it then pose a problem for someone else? If I wanted to know the secrets of the box, I’d have to go in again, but this time, I’d have to do some serious investigating. Luckily, it afforded me plenty of time to do so.

Weeks later, Mom and Dad were tired and just lounging around the house, reading books, a half-completed puzzle on the coffee table. Their eyes looked the same as they did on every third Saturday of the month when Dad made Adult Cokes for him and Mom to go along with my Kid Coke. I snuck out to the box, feeling that frigid air billowing off of it, warding me away and enticing me all at once. I’d have to be sharp… on my toes… this would have to be my last excursion through the box. But I needed to get answers this time around. I climbed inside, pushed down on those squishy flaps, and the box transported me somewhere I always wanted to visit. Hawaii! The sun was beaming, there was the sound of the ocean waves crashing just 100 feet away from me. It was heaven. There was no one around. I had a Hawaiian beach all to myself. I assumed it was Hawaii, anyway. I had no way of knowing because I wasn’t yet a Hawaii Expert, but it looked like all the photos I had seen. I felt it was safe to assume so.

The warm sun kissed every inch of my skin that was exposed as I meandered the beach, studying the sparse trees and the few rocks at their bases for clues. No clues from the rocks, and as I explored more of the beach and even neared the water, I couldn’t find anything else wrong with the place. It looked beautifully ordinary. I pulled my shoes off and held them in my hands as I kicked through the sand.

But then off on the horizon, a blue flash! No screeching noise. Was I too far? It looked like it came from the spot I landed so I raced back there. I stood at the edge of the ocean as the sun began to dip and the air cooled. An uneasy feeling came over me as I waited for something that I didn’t really want to see, but that I knew I needed to see. This blue flash would hold the answers I needed. The ocean water lapped at my toes and it delivered a chill through my entire spine, more than it should have what with the remaining heat in the air. Why did the water feel so cold?

I backed away from the water and returned to my original spot underneath the box. It still floated in the air… suspended in place. I watched the sun dropping slowly towards the ocean, its bright orange rays in direct contrast to the flashing blue light I saw before. If it came back, I’d surely see it. I had to keep my eyes trained on the sky next to the sun.

But the brightness of the sun made me squint.

My eyes stung.

I stayed vigilant.

But my eyelids were heavy.

And I fell asleep.

I awoke to the sound of the ear-piercing screech. My head was attacked by an instant headache and as my eyes burst open my retinas were scorched by the flashing blue light in the air.

Oh no, not this again. Then again, isn’t this what I wanted?

I blinked my eyes hard and focused on the skies, a cerulean scar left behind in the dim pink sky from something that had just ripped through the clouds. A soft whistling was left behind in the wake of this thing as it pushed through the clouds above. I saw my knees wobbling and heard my jaw chattering. I didn’t want to be alone on the island anymore. I had no idea what to learn from this thing but I knew I wanted to return home and be with my parents, not just because they were old, not just because they were tall, but because they were both old and tall and that meant they could protect me from anything. It was time to head back through the box.

Only it wasn’t time. Or it was time, once upon a time, a time ago. I looked up to where the box should’ve been suspended in mid-air. Nothing. Nothing but sky. I brushed the sand off myself.

How long had I been asleep? Where did the box go?

I waved my hands around in the air where it once was, hoping my hands would bump into it. But there was nothing.

Nothing but me, alone on this island, staring out at the ocean, a distant blue flash behind the clouds accompanied by muffled screech. The waves rolled off the beach and sucked back into the ocean. The ocean began to creep far away from me… leaving me with the sand. The ocean crawled off, farther into the distance, until it engulfed itself, and disappeared.

They must have moved the box off West 129th Street… or they didn’t put it there to begin with.

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Stephen Kramer Avitabile is a New-England-born, Los-Angeles-based writer. He writes short stories, novels, screenplays, and even dabbled in stand-up. He’s had his work appear in publications like Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Fifth Di…, and Clever Fox Lit. When not writing, he spends his time watching TV, movies, and sports with his partner Evelyn, guinea pig Peggy, and tortoise Joey… and also feeding any animals outside his apartment

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