The Brown Box

Visual Voicemail

0:19 02/18/2019

Hey babe... I haven’t heard from you today. I just wanted to know if everything was okay?... *Sigh* I don’t want to be upset, but how could you forget— *Background noise of laughter.*

Just shoot me a call when you can.

Log 1:

5 Months

Stage 2: Panic Attacks and Hallucinations

05/11/2020

Notes:

*Symptoms beginning to worsen. Sleep comes sporadically for approximately 2-3 hrs per night.

*Unable to recall dreams.

*Speech and cognitive functions impaired.

When I was diagnosed with fatal insomnia, I had already begun counting the days of my life.

The disease, caused by a mutation in the PRNP Gene, has no known cure. Its progression is absolute: sleeplessness, paranoia, vivid hallucinations, the decline of memory, and at last death. I had come to terms with this outcome.

I would die alone. That was my only desire... Or so I believed.

Before the sleeplessness came, I was a surgeon. Always vigilant, calculated. Poised. My hands, once precise and clean, parting flesh as if some sacred word, now violently shook. I ached to create, to mend. My work was my heart. Death was no longer the immediate absolute, only the eventual, inevitable.

My hands were God!

My mind was far too unraveled now. I remained in my apartment; I ordered meals and jittered at the slightest sound. The world outside was quiet, so still. My only company was that accursed doorbell. Constant and insistent like a dreadful gong.

I was haunted by one word and one word alone.

Elena.

Like a hum at the back of my skull, her name was all I knew. There was no face to the name, no pictures, or sound to her voice. It was her name, and her name alone, that I remembered.

She was a doll in my mind, a being I had perfectly crafted for my needs. At times, she was a fierce strawberry blonde. Others? A brunette with gentle almond eyes. Tall then broad. Forming then dissipating.

Elena.

When I lay alone, she was beside me. When I ate, trembling, she steadied my hands. She rarely spoke. Often, she was just a lap for me to rest my head upon. A body to lie next to when the bed was emptied. That was all I wanted, truly.

I wondered if she had always been with me. If she were some apparition made flesh only by my cognitive decline. The thought was comforting. A ghost, a deity, a being I alone could fathom. My only fear was her slipping from my mind entirely as the disease worsened.

Her hand brushed mine as I lay in my bed, sleepless. I held her closer. Never let go.

“You won’t die alone,” she whispered. And indeed, I was not alone. Never alone.

***

Log 2:

10/13/2020

10 months

Stage 3: “Complete” inability to sleep (REM)

Notes:

*Rapid weight loss. BMI is currently 15.96.

*Remember to remember the new LED bulbs arriving today.

*PING*

I lay still with her fingers threaded in mine. Her hands were the only constant, small and delicate, with the faint scent of Madeleines. No, not Madeleines. Strawberry birthday cake. Yes, that was the scent I missed.

The only noise that disturbed me was that insistent ringing. The sound cut through the apartment. It reverberated through my diaphragm and pulsed alongside my heart. My feet were bare and clung stickily to the stained yellow tile as I made my way to the door. But even then, there was hope…

I knew what would rest on the other side: some useless mechanism I had ordered in haste, or food I had no true desire to consume. I flung it open. There was a chance, no matter how small, that someone I once knew would answer. Perhaps even Elena, not the fragment I had curated. Though I hoped she was real. Desperately.

Yet, alas, there was no one on the other side. Not a body. Not a voice. What was there? A small brown box.

My thumb met with resistance against the cardboard before letting out a sigh. I shook it gently as if it were a present; it answered with a distinct rattle. I don’t remember what was inside. I only remember the disappointment that followed when I tossed the useless thing onto the couch.

There was a faint clinking sound from within—glass, I think? Shattered now.

The phone lay there too. Far too heavy, abandoned. My fingers brushed it gently. It flickered to life weakly. Ten percent. New voicemail.

I considered charging it, but for what cause? It was filled with messages I no longer cared to see.

I finally came to my senses and walked toward my room. The hallways vibrated with a static buzz and the cold white glow of dying LED bulbs. They flickered brightly once. Then…

POP!

It was only darkness now. The bulbs were gray, burnt to exhaustion. I would have to order more. I felt the wallpaper—torn—as I shuffled forward blindly.

The door to my bedroom creaked with a low groan, and of course, Elena was on the bed, waiting. Sprawled out on the right side, where she always lay patiently.

“You returned…” She whispered in a desperate plea.

Of course, I had.

Where else would I go?

I sat beside her, my weight sinking into the plush. She nestled closer to me. So close now, I could swear I felt her breath against my shoulder. It was only an echo, I know.

“ You can stop answering the door,” she murmured. “It confuses you.” I had no strength to argue with her; I was tired. So terribly tired. It’s funny how the mind has forgotten sleep, but the body still returns to bed.

Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

That was the only thought that echoed. It was a word that no longer meant anything at all.

The room became brighter. Brighter than the bulb could achieve. White light, all-encompassing. Surgical.

Light! Shut the light! My heart raced on its own accord, and my breath was choked out. Even Elena's presence became just a dead weight at my side. I tossed. I turned. I couldn’t breathe. I can’t breathe—I am suffocating! My hands shot up in the air. I reached out to nothing; my breath came in shallow bursts. Heavy. Growing heavier. Until my arms fell back down onto the bed. Useless. Was I dying?

Sleep!

I closed my eyes, hard. I must sleep. I must remember how to rest. A red light from a dead bulb filled the room, and in bright flashes, I saw multiple women. Not just Elena, but different sutured women I had grafted together over the years. Parts I had taken. Faces, I had loved, wronged, or ignored, in various measures, all stitched into one pulsating mass. Fantasma! They moaned and morphed into a unified organism, calling my name. Pleading for a mere glance, I never gave. And at the very center of it all was a singular, large eye. Brown, almond-shaped, staring through me. Their hands reached toward me in anguish, Elena’s hands, as I had always imagined them. All reflections of my failures. They grasped at me. Pushing me down. I sank.

Reach out.

She leaned in close, her lips brushing my shoulder. Her words came as a disjointed whisper:

“Do you remember… what you have done to me?”