Wayward

CHAPTER NINE

Jim pressed the old key his father had given him into his palm. The autobus stopped and he stepped out into the murky rain. He was deep in the city. It was a hive of activity. Car lights hovered down rain-drenched streets. Frenetic, colorful advertisements barged into the lives of passerby near and far. Crystalline skyscrapers punctured the looming clouds.

He checked his screen. It wasn't far. He could cut through the alleyways and be there in no time, but he knew not to. Not after Fritz. He found the nearest respirator, paid the fee, filled his lungs and started down the main street.

He kicked a piece of trash into a turned over aluminum garbage can. Something was moving inside. He watched as a tail - and then the kitten attached to it - wiggled backwards out of the can with a candy wrapper stuck to its fur.

The kitten's tail swished back and forth as it watched him. The eyes were almost cartoonish. He reached out to remove the wrapper. It hissed and snapped. He pulled his hand back, wincing as a claw sliced through his palm. The feral cat dove back into the trash, sending plastic packaging and old soda cans into the air.

Jim pressed his shirt against his hand to soak up the blood. He walked a while longer before he came across the place he was looking for. He found another respirator and doubled his intake. The streets were empty. Everyone was inside, sucking in the treated air and hiding from the wind and rain. He checked the scrap of paper his father had given him against the metal letters on the side of the building. They matched.

He tried the door, but it was locked. He pressed his face against the window. Not a soul inside. The gate on the side of the building was wide open.

There were lines and lines of long forgotten storage units. There were shattered windows and dead yellow weeds trapped between the rows. He walked along the fractured asphalt, following the dirty signs. He wiped his hand across one of them and followed it to the end, stopping before a roll up door that was twice his height.

He found the lock and tried to place the key inside, but the elements had not been kind. He cracked the lock against the concrete until the flakes of rust fell away. The key turned, but not without a struggle.

It took a good heave to get the rusty hinges to move. He was sweating by the time it was over, lifting with all his might to create enough space to stand. The door rested on once-oiled tracks that hadn't been used since long before him.

He coughed. His lungs rejected the musty air. There was an ancient engine block plopped up on two 4x4 slabs of wood. Beneath it were a few pressed down pizza boxes, caked with oil. An empty gold frame poked out from beneath a ratty, motheaten blanket.

There were cardboard boxes full of papers, unused wooden shelves, a pair of hockey sticks with tape around the handles, and a pair of ice skates, tied together in an impenetrable knot. It felt like he was standing in a graveyard for memories.

Altogether, it stacked to the roof. He dug until he found it. It was behind a dishevelled box of ancient and uninteresting textbooks. The box his father wanted.

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"The things that drive your mother crazy are the things she loves most about me," he said. "Hand me that cloth. The other one."

His father dusted off the strange, revolving machine. It was another of his beloved artifacts. Jim wasn't sure whether his mother knew that the storage room existed at all. In all likelihood, it was a successful last-ditch effort to keep things he was asked to get rid of. Jim only watched while his father tinkered away.

"You got the other one too?"

"Yeah."

Jim patted the other box. It was close to splitting at the corners. He dragged it out of its resting place with great care.