Two pairs of eyes locked in the full-length mirror, “that’s not me,” floated behind her eyes, and she believed behind the eyes of the strange alien body she knew represented her. Mandora Tinsolvy occupied the 27th floor of the Paleyard building in downtown Svitzelburg. A recluse, Mandora wanted to know nothing of her zip code, state, middle name, or allergies. She wanted no contact with newspapers, tags, social security cards or birth certificates. In fact, she wanted not these things so desirously that Mandora Tinsolvy practically didn’t exist in any tangible way to anyone outside of her apartment; she was not prepared to leave until the reflection left first.
Mandora was not obsessive compulsive because there was no one to diagnose her as obsessive compulsive. Certainly not insane, because there was no one to see the intricately arranged piles of nail clippings, all perfect crescent moons, the photographs with all the faces cut out, all stand ins for stars atop the upside-down puzzles she had completed sometime within the past decade. With the shades drawn the occupants of neighboring buildings were unaware of the constant stream of cigarette smoke, or several streams of cigarette smoke, floating about the interior of her three-bedroom apartment. These potentially peeping toms were also unaware of the taxidermied cats and birds perched on her windowsills (all of her deceased pets were preserved to protect the pieces of Mandora’s soul she believed to be trapped in them).
Tinsolvy, Mandora did not like to cross from one room to another with a lit cigarette, and so each room had an ashtray, and often, each ashtray had a cigarette working to slowly extinguish itself behind a snake of soft ash. Currently Mandora sat anchored to an ashtray in a room she had deemed the “Realm Revealing” room. If anyone had seen the room they might think this title came from the fact that all of her mail from the past ten years lay haphazardly about the beige carpet, most of it bills. Opening bills would reveal too much information, so eventually they stopped coming after Mandora used the Internet to automatically pay for her bills each month. Along with her bills being virtually attended to, groceries also arrived every third Thursday of the month-a neat box wrapped in white paper with no writing containing ten cans of tomato soup, two loaves of bread, three blocks of cheese, milk, and occasionally light bulbs or some personal hygiene products.
The realm room had water stains on the ceiling and trimming the tops of the walls, which Mandora believed to be people from the other side trying to communicate with her. The letters on the floor, she believed, contained the cries of secrets of everyone trying to slide discreetly into her dimension. Within these envelopes was probably the answer to many of her problems, but it could also be a lie that would ruin everything she had worked for. After coming to these conclusions, it became obvious that the Realm Room would ultimately be a place of prayer and worship and pondering, filled with intense energy and vibrations. Mandora would sit there, cigarette dangling between her fingers, an unenthusiastic claw, psychologically dancing with the vibes that tickled the perimeter of every pore on her body.
Lurking in the same location doing the same exact thing was Tinsolvy, Mandora’s exact opposite evil twin… but the twin could only be evil if Mandora, Tinsolvy was entirely good. So, the twin was probably not evil because Mandora felt an obligation to not be absolutely good for fear of releasing an absolute evil upon a world that she had little knowledge of. One might even take pity on Mandora because they might come to the conclusion that she had given up, or hidden away from the world. The opposite was true, for she believed that interacting with the constructions of humanity would muddle her interaction with celestial beings and other worlds. Cultural barriers would prevent the liquid flow of communication between Mandora and her twin, who she knew was undergoing the same strenuous process, for they always seemed to be doing the exact same thing.
It was Mandora’s goal to cross into the world of her identical opposite by means of becoming so connected that they were both seeing simultaneously out of one another’s eyes. However, this could not happen outside of the 27th floor Paleyard apartment, for exiting meant traveling away from the nucleus of the entire operation. Most people wandered around lost, a yin without a yang, searching for meaning in the one sided coins of human invention, all trap doors to the world Mandora was now navigating through. The only way to escape this severed cycle was to rejoin with the other half.
Mirrors filmed over by years of second hand smoke marination practically papered every inch of every wall in Mandora’s apartment so that she could always see her other half. Seventy-five percent of each day was spent toddling to and fro, or resting motionless, or swaying wildly (or only slightly) in front of the mirrors until the face staring back truly felt like a stranger undergoing the same investigation and, just as anyone does with strangers, watched each unfamiliar move so intently that she became unaware of the way her own body was moving, no longer aware of the simultaneous gestures between her and her company.
On a day that was indistinguishable from any other day (for Mandora slept rarely and whether it was day or night did not affect her) Mandora was soaking in her bathtub filled with cold water the color of weak coffee. Some people would think it’s been a long year for that round of bathwater, but Mandora knew very well that the water was slowly evaporating, for she added about a cup of new, hot water whenever she noticed the level falling.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
okay, first of all props on "mandora." that name alone is a story.
ReplyDeletei really liked "mandora felt an obligation to not be absolutely good for fear of releasing an absolute evil upon a world that she had little knowledge of." this character is so intriguing. i want to know more. i want to know when she started smoking cigarettes and how she managed to stay so far removed from this society that throws itself at you from all angles. does she go on wikipedia?
Cool! Thanks for the feedback. I wasn't sure if I crammed too much into a small space and made it overwhelming. Also, I have been unsure of what direction to take with this, so it's helpful to hear what you'd like to know about her. I could flashback and also talk about the ways society is trickling in to her life, and/or her elaborate systems she's developed to avoid it even further. It's funny to think of someone living in an apartment building as being so extremely detached from society, seems like you'd have to move to the hills.
ReplyDeleteyeah it's a really rad idea. i'm super excited for more. you should call it "mandora's box" haha
ReplyDelete