Remy's Boxes

Remy stood in the room again.

It was already full. Boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling, crowded and leaning, in every shape and size imaginable. Some were small enough to clutch to the chest, while others were so large they sagged beneath their own weight. The room had no windows. It had no lock either, which was the cruel part. What would stop something escaping? Remy’s stomach hurt at the thought.

Each box bore a label written in Remy’s own hand. Or rather, by versions of it.

Some labels were written in the careful, uneven scrawl of a small child, letters too large, some backwards, the ink smudged where tears had fallen. Others were scratched out in a hurried, angry teenage hand. A few were neat and controlled, written by an adult who had learned how to make pain look orderly.

The words were simple.

Too much.

Wrong.

Hide this.

Don’t let them see.

The boxes shook. They hissed and shouted and accused, their voices overlapping until the room throbbed with sound. From inside came growls, whispers and weeping. Laughter too sharp to be kind. They spoke in borrowed voices. Rules learned early, sermons repeated until they felt like truth.

You should know better.

This is what you really are.

If anyone saw this, they would turn away.

Remy hated this room.

Once, long ago, there had been only one box. It was filled on a day when Remy’s feelings arrived all at once and far too loudly. He had been tired and hungry and disappointed, and the world felt unfair in a way he could not yet name. The feeling tore out of him in screams and kicking and sobbing. His face burned. His body shook. He wanted comfort, but received correction.

Stop that.

You’re being ridiculous.

There’s nothing to cry about.

Hands restrained him and voices hardened. All the disappointment was turned on him. The feeling did not go away, so Remy crushed it down. He gathered the fear, rage and grief and forced it into a box, slamming the lid shut. Inside, the feeling twisted, growing teeth and claws.

But the quiet that followed felt like safety.

Next came his honesty. Remy learned that some truths earned frowns, and that honesty could bring punishment disguised as disappointment. So he said what was expected instead. The lie slid easily into place. Later, alone, he boxed the truth he had swallowed. Left in the dark, it learned to sneer.

The next box was jealousy. It came sudden and hot, a wanting he had been taught was ugly. He buried it quickly. Hidden, it discoloured and swelled.

After that, the boxes came faster. Any feeling named improper. Any impulse declared wrong. Each one, sealed away, grew stranger. Shadows pressed against the cardboard. The longer they were hidden, the less human they became.

By the time Remy was grown, the boxes required a room. Inside it, monsters screamed to be seen. Outside it, he was acceptable. He was also empty.

Then he met Agatha.

Agatha was inconvenient in the way living things are inconvenient to cages. She felt her feelings openly and made no effort to soften them for the comfort of others.

One day, she was furious. It was not quiet fury. It came with sharp words, foul looks, and language that scorched the air. She paced, hands thrown wide, jaw tight, eyes blazing. Her anger was messy and unconstrained and alive.

‘Do you need a box?’ Remy asked. ‘I know where to hide that.’

Agatha stopped short.

‘A box?’ she said.

‘To keep the ugly parts out of sight, I keep the boxes in a room,’ he said, already shrinking.

She looked at him steadily. ‘No. I’m angry because something is wrong. This doesn’t need to be hidden.’ Then her tone softened. ‘You have a room?’

Agatha had no room. Her feelings moved through her like weather, arriving loudly, doing their work, and leaving. Sometimes she was changed, more often not. Nothing was kept. Nothing had time to rot.

For a long moment, Remy said nothing. His mind raced through all the reasons not to continue. He imagined how she would recoil, how she would see him differently, how this might be the moment she decided he was too much after all.

‘I need to show you something,’ he said quietly. ‘But... you don’t have to come.’

His hand found the handle, and the door creaked open. The noise rushed out. Remy almost closed it again. His chest tightened, his shame flaring hot and urgent.

‘This is why I don’t bring people here,’ he whispered, more to himself than to Agatha. ‘This is why I don’t let them see.’

Agatha did not step back. The boxes shrieked when they saw her. Shadows battered the walls. Remy knew she would leave.

Instead, she knelt beside one of the smallest boxes, its label written in a child’s clumsy hand.

‘May we open one?’ she asked.

Remy swallowed hard. ‘Only one.’

They opened the box. Something rushed out shrieking, fast and frightened. It filled the space with flailing limbs, with a panic that had nowhere to go. Remy shrank back, but Agatha stayed where she was until the storm spent itself.

Slowly, the shape faltered. The sharpness softened and the noise broke into sobs. What had seemed monstrous drew in on itself, small and shaking.

And then Remy saw it. Not a creature from the dark, but a piece of himself, folded wrong for too long. A part that had been shouting because it had never been answered.

Agatha knelt and held it as one might hold a crying child. After a moment, Remy did too. Then it was only the two of them, holding each other.

They did not open another box that day. But when they left the room, it felt different, and Remy understood.

These were not things to be locked away. They were things that had been waiting.

He did not close the door.

He stood in the doorway for a long time, one hand against the frame. The noise had changed. The shrieking had thinned to murmurs, and the boxes seemed to lean toward the light.

Remy looked at the first box, lying flat and empty on the floor, its label faded almost to nothing. He had spent his whole life afraid of something in here escaping. Afraid of someone seeing what he really was.

Now he understood. The room had never needed a lock. Fear had always done that work, and a door held open by choice was a different thing entirely from a door held shut by it.

Far back, almost out of reach, he spied another box, dusty with age. ‘Not yet,’ he told it quietly. ‘But I know you’re there.’

He would open the rest. Slowly. Carefully.

With love.