Baggage

1.

The fever had her wracked with night sweats. Worse, her dreams were pressing in on her making her feel as if she was in a close-walled coffin. The air was even weighing on her. Making her heave for a simple breath. There was no escape but to wake up. She left the dark swirling dreams that draped her and in doing so she found herself with nothing but her sickness and tangled sheets keeping her company. Moonlight wafted through the curtains that shifted with the breeze the three fans she pointed at herself made. She was constantly turning them off and on to get comfortable. For she was burning up but when exposed to the cool air a shiver set it quick, like she was laying in a snowdrift. 

At this twilight hour she awoke to mostly darkness and realized her throat was as dry as a desert and she couldn't stand the taste of her mouth. It reminded her of dirty socks and backed up bile. She stood up, sitting back down and steadying herself as dizziness fell around her like she was back in her coffin-esque dreams. The feeling of cheap pressed-wood panels shutting around her and carrying her away made her question if she was indeed buried right now. Maybe these were her dying thoughts?

“There’s no escaping huh?” She said to herself. Her words spread out of her empty bedroom echoing to her empty hallway and then to the other empty fixtures of this grand house she owned. If someone wasn’t comfortable with themselves they might get lonely living here. 

After her pounding headache lessened she rose and walked not to her kitchen first but to her walk-in closet. Like a child who liked to cry in the mirror she wanted to see the state of herself during this febrile witching hour. She shielded her eyes, for the fluorescent lights that supposedly lowered her energy bill were far too bright. It took her a full minute until she focused on her sniffling form. She had gotten a little skinner from the past four days, but still regarded herself as too thin and flat at her top and bottom and too lumpy inbetween. Her eyes had bags under them, her mouth and nose was red from blowing her nose so much. Her dark hair is frazzled and frayed and everywhere. She was even paler than usual which was a feat for her.

“God, what a mess.” She said pulling at her split ends and then switching off the light and stumbling out. She marched over the cluttered room and walked among the lightless paths, hands out and eyes closed. In the hall she passed her home office stacked with boxes from her deceased mother. Her fingers trailed across the hallway walls tilting pictures of her college days, her family reunions. She did not care if they were knocked clean off the wall in her hurt. She passed her third room with an attached bathroom that looked like a hoarder’s library, except one corner that held her dainty free weights and a stationary bike that was now a drying rack for her clothes. 

The books were mostly for her career, it was her accounting books, law texts, corporate structure and management, career advice, ledgers from past jobs, and her favorite “How to be a Lion in the Workplace” which was courageously tucked away and gathering dust. Her library was her favorite room, it taught her how to do her job well and she liked the smell of the pressed spines and felt rather important turning through them. More of a lion here in her den than in the workplace. Still there was sadness here that prevailed even in working hours when books were propped open under her thumb. She hated that it was rather drab, rather boring. 

In her younger days she read fantasy and science-fiction but her absolute favorite was non-fiction books about wars during the dark ages. Like the War of Roses and Saxons conquests of the British isles. She even wanted to be a historian at one point. Now, she only cut out a corner of her library for a few dozen romance novels. Those were a guilty pleasure of hers and she especially liked the ones set in that historical time she thought was so fascinating. However, Jacob made fun of her for reading such books so they were stashed away under some papers and reports. 

Jacob…

She looked at the only picture of the two of them she had. The one magnetically stamped to the fridge door. The moonlight casted shadows over ther sunny day in Disneyland. Where they spent an arm and a leg running all over the park and doing... Every. Single. Ride. Jane didn't know why he was so obsessed with it. She thought two grown adults without kids in the line for the two-minute Little Mermaid ride was odd. But Jacob had no complaints. He was happy sweating in the sun and waiting in a ninety minute line for It’s a Small World. She didn’t tell him that it wasn’t really her type of vacation. How could she? He was too ecstatic taking pictures with Mickey Mouse. He was too caught up in it all. What kind of person would she be if she was truthful? The way he talked about it and how he wanted to bring their kids there one day… 

It might not have been that exact thought, but her stomach twisted. She clutched at herself, standing only in her underwear in the silent kitchen. Rocking back and forth and praying. After breathing deeply for a couple of minutes the nausea passed. 

She pulled out her jug of filtered water… Only the finest for her pallet. Sure the filter needed to be replaced every two weeks but it cut out lead and even microplastics. How exceptional. She would probably live to ripe old age using the special monthly service plan where filters were shipped right to her door. As long as she didn't have to go anywhere to get it. On closing the door the only other thing attached to the fridge fell off and fluttered to the ground like a feather on a breeze. She groaned, ignored it, poured her drink and drank so long and much that she burped and felt nauseous again.

Picking up the thick stock paper that fell she read it again. She didn’t have to. She knew it well. She could probably recite the invite word for word backwards. It was her invitation to her cousin's wedding in Puerto Rico. A week away. Jane knew that, the date was cauterized in her mind. It sat here everyday mocking her. She couldn’t escape the gaze of the soon-to-be bride and groom in the lovely field of flowers smiling at her. She couldn’t escape the fact she had already RSVP'd. Nor the fact that she hadn’t even bought her plane ticket yet… She wanted to avoid that train of thought as much as possible. 

She really wanted to throw the invite away altogether and tell her cousin the truth. That she couldn’t go. Jane had too much work to do. Plus this illness made her even further behind. She had responded to the invite when wine drunk and brave, even requesting that she needed a plus one. God. Jacob didn’t even know that… It was okay. Now that she was sick there was no way she could peel herself away for the three more days the wedding would be. It was impossible. She couldn’t leave the country either. Not when she hadn’t ever before. It would be too overwhelming for Jane. Her passport needed to stay by the romance novels. A fantasy right there with them. 

Jane knew the moment, the very millisecond, she responded she needed a way to get out of it. She was almost thankful she had gotten sick. This was a great excuse. Maybe the stress over the impending date actually helped her get sick. Her sleep was terrible. She took poor care of herself due to the trickling of time as it approached. It felt like every passing day was another weight she carried. Piling up on her. Maybe she was asking for a flu like this and her prayers had been answered? Now she could stay home, work, watch TV, and be comfortable. 

Damn… It would break her cousin's heart. 

Danielle, her cousin, was always the outgoing type. Opposite of her. Dragging her along everywhere when they were children and Jane stayed with her auntie and uncle for months at a time when her mom was on a bender or in jail. Now Danielle’s dreams have come true. She had found a nice guy and they were in so much love it was almost disgusting to watch. She sighed. It was pathetic that Jane couldn’t be there for her like Danielle’s family was when they were growing up. 

She slid the invite across her thumb hoping for a papercut. She thought about letting it go again and sweeping it under the fridge. She hated to see everyday, reminding her of failure. She just wanted to focus on getting better. However, to be fair, Jane had gone through this same thought process again and again. Everytime she opened the door. Everytime she grabbed her lunch from the fridge. Everytime she got a sip of water, or passed the kitchen to leave for work. Everytime she did nothing but stare and think and bring on a mild panic attack. It sat there and haunted her. She would not get rid of it. She could not. 

There was a part of her that liked seeing her cousin so happy. There was a part of her that relished, even more so, feeling terrible about her decision. She knew she deserved the pain over the inevitable betrayal. Her punishment for it was how distraught she felt on the daily. The truth was, Jane couldn’t leave here… Here was everything. She had worked so hard for it all. Worked so hard to become an accountant, worked hard at finding her job and in her life in general. There was nothing she could gain from going abroad, even for a couple of days. It was too much an ordeal. What if something went wrong? What if her asthma got terrible? What if she needed a hospital? What if the food made her sick? 

She pinned it back to the door. Feeling that loathing feeling so familiar these past months. Knowing she should feel so rotten. She had said she would be there and she wouldn’t. She was a coward. Always had been. She took after her mother. Not in vices but indecisives. That was enough for Jane. 

The worse fact was this, and this was what made her feel like an absolute monstrosity of a human being, if truthful to her cousin… Her cousin would understand. She knew her too well. They grew up together. She knew the way she was. Danielle always knew how different they were. With that thought, Jane decided that she would call her when better. Have that terrible talk and let her down with a fib about how bad her sickness is. Only a fib. A little one. Pouring from her lips like bad water from a spout. Like the vomit she suppressed. No expensive filter for it. 

She felt hot again and popped another ibuprofen and collapsed back to bed, her icy water sweated on her nightstand as she did the same tangled among her sheets and blankets, trying to get comfortable. Trying to find a sweet dream to fall into. Trying to forget about her waking world of disappointment. Of her mousy and lousy and meager existence. She found instead images of things she found terrifying. The ocean waves during a storm. Bugs infesting her house walls, chitinous chirping coming from behind the plasterboard. Losing her teeth one by one as they clinked into her tea cup. Her insides boiling and twisting, a terrible twin of herself growing out of her navel. 

Then. With a quaintness of leaves blowing across your shoulders she turned and found herself at the airport. She was alone and watching the luggage roundabout. Waiting. What was odd about this luggage roundabout was that it was outside. On a field of wildflowers and swaying green grasses. Someone should really trim that grass back, people like Jane had allergies that they had to deal with. The other oddity, which she didn’t realize was odd at all, partly because she had only been at an airport three times in her life, was that the luggage roundabout went on forever. To her left it wheeled towards her in a chugging serpentine pattern until it stretched past clouds and was lost. To her right where it was going, was more of the same but she noted it wound through patches of trees and under one particularly rusted jungle gym. 

The airport must have bought the land from a nearby park. Although that was strange Jane supposed that was a nice use of community resources. She also didn’t want to be too judgemental about Puerto Rican developments. It was a different culture with better weather, why not have the luggage pickup outside? She watched as the conveyor belt shuffled along, going off to eternity. Angels need their luggage too, she thought. But she was not an angel, she was Jane and her bag would be coming along very soon because she had taken the flight after all that worry. How brave of her. How very, unlike her. 

Her bag, she realized! It was very important that she didn’t miss it. It had her entire life for three days in it. As she looked left to right she saw that the roundabout was working properly but no bags were on it. Maybe she was in the wrong spot? No one else waited around for their bags here. She figured they would be. She knew bags were important, there were all those fees for them, and in movies people always got red-hot angry when they got lost. 

“Hello?” She called out, feeling quite out of place. No one replied. She was upset at this mishap right at the start of her vacation and wanted to give someone a piece of her mind. This was exactly what she was afraid of all along. She hated other people handling her logistics. They always mess it up. Then she realized that she was no main character in any movie and she should just be patient and not bother anyone at this strange airport. She waited. When nothing but ladybugs came along the conveyor belt she huffed, tapped her foot and set off. She would walk along it, left to right, determined to find where the bags ended up at. 

She kicked through long weeds and waved gnats away from her face, sweltering under the sun. She found that even over the mechanical sounds of the carousel were the song of blue jays. It reminded her of the playground her and Danielle would play in. How they would sit and eat rocket pops in the shade of the slide. They’d make up stories about the adventures they’d go on one day. How Jane wanted to marry Indianna Jones but not for the adventures fighting evil, just for all the grand libraries they could visit and tombs they would discover under them. She found it funny how she felt braver as a child. Why was that? 

She realized it was because a kid doesn’t have a checking account. They don’t know the term ‘no free lunch’. They don’t know how unsafe road conditions can be in Guam. How expensive a plane ticket is and how jet fuel is killing the world. What does a child know about the difference between hourly and salary? What that entails, along with the fees and pitfalls, money sinks… The world was dangerous alright, dumb fictional movies got that right, but it wasn’t the jungles that held traps and tombs it was the financial institutes that did, the walstreet big-wigs and banks that pick and preen credit scores and say who gets what and why and how and here’s some more red-tape for the fun of it. Here’s why we can break the rules but no one else can. She knew it was true, she balanced their books when they fucked it up, excuse her language. 

It was the world they lived in. All of it made up the concrete jungle six inches in front of your face. If you didn’t have your eyes open, if you weren't literate, it'd smash your teeth in then you’d end up… End up… End up, like her mother. Her mother. Never having anything. Never owning anything. She didn’t even own herself. She couldn’t. She was too full of holes to carry anything. Not even an ounce of love to give or take. That’s something you couldn’t trade like ticker tape on the trading floor. Jane sighed and stopped. She was getting hot and heated from her missing bag. Letting her frustrations get into her head. 

She wiped sweat on her forehead with an embroidered hanky. Wait. 

She knew this cloth. The white silky touch of it reminded her of the gift she gave her mother once. As she ran her fingers over the embroidered initials she realized something, it was the same exact cloth. She must have packed it from home. But it was deep in one of her boxes, wasn’t it? She must have fished it out. The feel of the riveted letters elicited the memory of the Christmas that she gave it to her mother. Jane remembered the next one, now a teenager and how her mother gave it back to her. Acting like it was custom made for Jane. In fairness it wasn’t malicious, her mom had forgotten about Christmas until the morning of. She was too destitute to buy any gifts anyway, and too delirious to remember the origin of this gift. All her mom knew was that they had the same initials, so she gave Jane her own gift back and played it like she did some great thing. When she had only broken her heart. 

Jane never told her that. Jane never told her a lot of things. Even when she was dying. She just sat there and told her she forgave her and yadda yadda yadda. Then after, Jane went through and collected her stuff hoping to feel some great catharsis as she poured across her paltry possessions. In reality she just felt like she was going through a stranger's apartment. One she had constantly called the cops on. She was reminded of the life that she tried to forget. One of constant worry, of stress, when she should have just been a child. 

The one thing Jane was thankful for was that she learned early what she had to do, to not just survive, but thrive. She had to get smart and useful quickly. That’s why Jane was adamant she was going the right way. Jane was smart. All the bags would end up at the end she reckoned, she just had to keep pressing forward. She had twisted through some trees and almost splashed through a glade. It was buzzing with swampy life and around her were leaping frogs with little cowboy hats on. Jane watched from above as she sat atop the conveyor belt now. She didn't want to get her feet wet. These were her only shoes, her others were packed in her bag. However, she couldn’t quite remember what other shoes she had packed. She couldn’t quite remember what she had packed at all. Odd.

The luggage line to eternity wrapped over the glade, floating on giant lily pads and wriggling through trees. It passed over pristine waters no longer holding that muddy placid smell. Clouds came down and touched the world around her as she scooted slowly across this mirrored lake. She sat and waited, liking the feeling of being pulled along. It felt like hours had passed. She questioned if she was really moving at all. She reached over and trailed her hand across the water and saw the lines she created, the ripples that sliced behind her. She was moving. That was good. She smiled to herself and started giggling. She was looking for her luggage but somewhere on her journey she had became it. She was holding her legs to her chest and laughing at the sight of herself. How she sat riding this conveyor belt like a child on a merry-go-round would.

Off in the distance she heard a child laugh. It reverberated around her and she heard the squeaking of a swing. It was louder over the water. Her head flicked around, hair whipping around her neck and chin. She spied behind her a jungle gym. It had swings and moving figures among them. Small ones. Children with long wild hair and stained red lips from ice creams they ate. They ran around each other and swung on swings and laughed so hard they were out of breath. Like little manic fairies. Full of chaos and glee.

“Hello!” She called out waving to them. They ignored her while jumping off the swings and pretending they could fly. It was two little girls Jane figured as she squinted into the horizon behind her. 

“HEY!” She shouted louder, hands cupped around her mouth. It was no use. They couldn’t hear her. She was getting dragged further away from them and she wondered how she had passed them at all without noticing? She took a couple steps back. Opposite the movement of the luggage line. It only held her in a relative place. The kids could not see her still, in fact they were shrinking. Jane started shuffling faster. She called out to them again before she broke out into a run. They still ignored her over the winds that picked up around her.  

Jane knew the carousel was picking up speed. It was dragging her out of this vision, not wanting her to meet the little ones. She glanced at the clear water below her and decided she had to get off. The jungle gym was almost gone entirely. The laughter of the kids now only a softs as a bird's wings far above your head. The problem was she didn't know how deep the water was below. Jane couldn’t swim. 

She figured it wasn’t too deep. The water was without waves. The surface was probably right below. Plus the luggage line was sitting on top too. It wasn't floating, it was vibrating along, situated atop a flooded floor she couldn’t see. She was panting trying to keep pace with the movement. A cramp had come forward and was painfully pulling at her side. She looked back and saw the line stretching into coming clouds and twisting along the horizon. On looking back the kids were just a speck. She had to make a choice now before it was too late. Before they were gone. 

She leapt. The free-fall picked up her hair around her. Her feet crested the reflection of herself. It splashed and splayed up around her like she was gloriously stomping through a puddle. She felt brave and a lunatic all at the same time. Then the water kept on going. She plunged into it deeper and deeper. Falling like a lead weight. She broke through the mirror surface and was completely engulfed. This was an ocean, she realized horrified. The water shot into her face and up her nose. She coughed and breathed it in right away. There was no bravery then, only panic and ice cold fear as she struggled against her fate.