FICTION

By Dina Cox

The toy sur­prise at the bottom of the cereal box turned out not to be a fidget spinner or packet of magic markers, or minia­tur­ized plastic batting helmet, but a message in a bottle, a very small bottle, for­mer­ly a bottle con­tain­ing Tabasco sauce, and now con­tain­ing the scrawled missive of an unknown madman.

She poured the last of the cereal into a bowl and unscrewed the cap from the bottle.

You’re living in a dream world, the message said. A world of star­dust and clouds. Unless you leave the house at exactly 4:15 this after­noon, the world, along with all its phan­toms of sorrow and regret, will disappear. 

Her much younger half-brother, not yet a teenag­er, was going through an Edgar Allan Poe phase and so had been tor­ment­ing every­one with raven calls, arti­fi­cial heart­beat imi­ta­tions, and pleas for inex­plic­a­ble house ren­o­va­tions with a flash­light tucked under his chin. He was a good can­di­date for someone inclined to tamper with her break­fast cereal.

The next day, she started what she thought was a brand-new box. All the cereal had been removed, and only the Tabasco bottle remained.

You failed the test, the new message said. This is why you must suffer without break­fast cereal. 

She was hun­gover and in a hurry to get to work and so threw the box and the bottle and the message all in the trash, for­got­ten entire­ly until the next day at breakfast.

Her half-brother was pouring Tabasco sauce on a plate of scram­bled eggs. He had a new haircut that made him look like one of the Beatles, only not as cute. When had he learned to scram­ble eggs? When had he learned to eat them? It seemed like only yes­ter­day he’d been a toddler, the kind of child who threw things on the floor for no reason. Now he was after her. He was, to use a phrase she dis­liked, messing with her mind. 

At the car deal­er­ship, she was in charge of accounts payable, a very boring job, even for someone who liked numbers, as she sup­pos­ed­ly did. She was aware of her friends giving up their own jobs in favor of staying home with the chil­dren. She didn’t have any chil­dren, a house, a husband, or a wife. She had nothing at all save a steady pay­check and her morning bowl of cereal, some­thing that had become more impor­tant than it should have been. Now that the box was empty, she con­sid­ered skip­ping break­fast in favor of a larger lunch; still, she was annoyed someone—her half-brother—wanted so badly to disturb her equi­lib­ri­um he would prob­a­bly feed her cereal to the birds.

The next morning, the cabinet usually housing her cereal was empty. The cabinet was very large, so it was strange to see that not even an old box of crou­tons or a tin of tuna remained. The madman was growing bolder. She searched the pantry for some­thing suit­able but ended up set­tling for black coffee and a stick of gum. The bottle of Tabasco sauce, for­mer­ly on display in the center of the dining room table, was nowhere to be seen. Was such a thing as a sur­prise, a true sur­prise, even pos­si­ble in the current age? There were tragedies, sure, people down on their luck, natural dis­as­ters, and men­da­cious politi­cians and house­hold repair issues that turned into insur­ance night­mares and poverty and des­per­a­tion and divorce. But was anyone ever sur­prised by any of these ongoing obsta­cles to sur­vival? Not in the slightest.

Her half-brother’s name was Royce. What a stupid name. It was not as stupid as her own name, but no one ever asked what her name was, so it didn’t matter. At the car deal­er­ship, they called her Clara, which was the name of the book­keep­er who’d worked there many years ago. The real Clara had retired, but her legacy lived on. Royce had been named after a favorite car of her stepfather’s, a prized pos­ses­sion he never drove but washed and waxed in the dri­ve­way on Sat­ur­days. The human Royce was unwashed and unwaxed, a mis­chief-maker and a reader of bad nine­teenth-century literature.

Not-Clara saved enough money to put down a deposit on her own apart­ment. The sur­prise was that Royce did not want her to move out. Don’t leave me alone with these space aliens, he said. Such a twelve-year-old thing to say. She told him she’d con­sid­er staying if he stopped tam­per­ing with her break­fast cereal, but he denied the whole thing, insist­ing he didn’t even like cereal and was too busy with his home­work even to con­sid­er such an endeav­or. He used that word, too, endeav­or. He was all set to become an annoy­ing adult, the kind of person who used only nouns but never pro­nouns. The car sales­men at work used only pro­nouns, but never nouns. She herself thought adverbs were getting a bad rap these days: sadly, quietly, absent­mind­ed­ly, she told Royce she would stay.

Not-Clara stopped eating break­fast, and so stopped buying break­fast cereal. The sur­prise was she didn’t miss it. Sur­prise, the car sales­men said in unison one day at work. She was being pro­mot­ed from accounts payable to comp­trol­ler, which meant more work, but the same salary. Someone bought her a cake: Con­grat­u­la­tions, Clara. 

Royce started eating Tabasco sauce on every­thing, a clue he’d been the orig­i­nal culprit for sure.  One day, a Sat­ur­day, she decided to toast half a bagel for lunch. The bag of bagels, housed in the cabinet for­mer­ly housing the break­fast cereal, con­tained only one bagel. In the center of the bagel was—of course—an empty bottle of Tabasco sauce, only it wasn’t empty after all because it, too, con­tained a message: You must drive me to fencing prac­tice tomor­row after­noon at four, it said. No one else will. She turned over the slip of paper and saw there was more: Your tender heart is ever true.

The sur­prise was that Not-Clara liked watch­ing fencing prac­tice and didn’t even need to read the novel she’d brought along to keep her company. No one else had come to watch, which suited her fine. Royce was a deft and con­fi­dent fencer, some­thing she would not have sus­pect­ed.  The coaches used him as an example for the others to imitate, and the addi­tion­al sur­prise was that when his oppo­nent lunged toward him, he pulled a bottle of Tabasco sauce from his pocket and dumped a dime-sized, blood-red spot of sauce on the upper reaches of his own thigh. I’m injured, he said. The dark­ness. It’s fast upon mine eyes.

Never again did she eat a bagel, and never again did she eat lunch at home. she only went next door to the sweet roll shop called Dough­boys, where, thank good­ness, they also sold sand­wich­es. Royce said he wanted to become an actor. Like John Wilkes Booth, he said, except for the crime. He quit fencing and joined the drama club. For this new endeav­or, he did not require trans­porta­tion because the drama club met and rehearsed on school grounds. The sur­prise was that his drama teacher was named Clara, though she was not the same Clara who’d once worked at the car dealership.

Her step­fa­ther sold his Rolls Royce. It was a dif­fi­cult deci­sion, though not entire­ly unex­pect­ed. In addi­tion, he sold his Volk­swa­gen Bus. With the money, he bought a sail­boat, though he never went sailing. One Sunday after­noon, their cat, an ancient classic tabby her mother found under the porch when he was a kitten, jumped into the sail­boat and dug his claws into every avail­able surface, shred­ding the leather seats. The seats were ruined, and every­one but her step­fa­ther was glad. He sold the sail­boat for half of what he’d paid for it and used the money to buy a motor­ized bicycle. A lazy man’s bicycle, Royce said. A bicycle built for fun. 

Soon enough, Not-Clara stopped eating dinner at home. Instead, she went to the burger joint called Burg­er­Max next door to the car deal­er­ship and behind the bank. She con­sid­ered getting a new job at the bank. She was tired of the car deal­er­ship, tired of cars, and, most of all, tired of car sales­men. Her half-brother was star­ring in The Glass Menagerie. How a thirteen-year-old—he’d recent­ly had a birthday—could con­vince anyone he was Tom Wing­field was a mystery to her, a hilar­i­ous mystery, in fact, a cause for cel­e­bra­tion. At Burg­er­Max, she invited the cashier, an older woman named Clara, to accom­pa­ny her to opening night.

She sat with Burg­er­Max Clara in the row behind her mother and step­fa­ther. Before the lights went down, she folded the program in her lap. The usher had insist­ed audi­ence members down­load the program app to their phones, but she’d asked for a paper copy, the only one, she real­ized, in the entire audi­ence. Burg­er­Max Clara leaned close and read the small print from over her shoul­der. She smelled like burgers, which, she real­ized, was actu­al­ly a very good smell. Burgers with Tabasco sauce: that was what she wanted.

After the cat, her cat, shred­ded the leather seats in his sail­boat, her step­fa­ther secret­ly took the cat to the city’s animal control facil­i­ty, for­mer­ly known as the pound. They later found out a young couple several blocks away had adopted the cat, but they made the mistake of allow­ing the cat to roam the neighborhood—a deci­sion that proved fatal to the cat. Her mother found him dead in the road. A dead cat was the last straw: her mother divorced her step­fa­ther and moved with Royce to another state. She con­sid­ered going with them, but she had her job at the bank to con­sid­er, as well as her quest to help Burg­er­Max Clara join the Peace Corps.

Royce became the star of his own YouTube Channel. His most popular show, Royce Reads the Clas­sics, drew hun­dreds of thou­sands of viewers from around the globe. She’d never watched an episode, but one day after Royce and her mother had moved away, she fin­ished a long day at the bank, ate dinner at Burg­er­Max, walked home, and opened her laptop on the dining room table. In the episode she chose at random, Royce read a chapter from The Great Gatsby, com­plete with sala­cious sound effects and back­ground music she rec­og­nized as orig­i­nal, with “exper­i­men­tal” com­po­si­tions for har­mon­i­ca and tam­bourine. It wasn’t good, exactly, but it was, somehow, strange­ly com­pelling, and she found herself fol­low­ing along in her own copy of the novel and watch­ing until the very end. She real­ized then that she missed him, and resolved before bed to quit her job at the bank as soon as Burg­er­Max Clara left for Thai­land. And what would she do for money? She didn’t know, but she was sick of per­form­ing rit­u­al­is­tic secu­ri­ty pro­to­cols and pre­tend­ing it didn’t bother her when cus­tomers called her “sweet­heart.” Maybe she’d go back to the car deal­er­ship. Maybe she would go back to school. Maybe she would become someone else, some­where else, any­where else, as long as it was far away.

The sur­prise was that her mother and step­fa­ther rec­on­ciled long before Burg­er­Max Clara left for Thai­land. Not-Clara didn’t quit her job at the bank, and Royce ran out of clas­sics to read on his YouTube Channel. She sug­gest­ed a library card, but he said he didn’t like to read books that other people had touched. Her land­lord unex­pect­ed­ly raised her rent, and she decided the sen­si­ble thing to do was to move back in with her mother and step­fa­ther. Royce moved into the garage. To get away from those one-celled organ­isms, he said. I don’t care if it’s cold and dark in there—at least I have a freezer full of meat. When he deac­ti­vat­ed his YouTube account, she sug­gest­ed he return either to the fencing club or the drama club or both, but he insist­ed there was nothing left for him in this world. I might as well get a crappy job at a car deal­er­ship, he said. Or a bank. Sorry. 

After Burg­er­Max Clara moved to Thai­land, she stopped eating in restau­rants, first Burg­er­Max, then Dough­boys, and then took all her meals at home. One morning, she opened the cabinet housing her break­fast cereal and dis­cov­ered that what she thought was an unopened box was unusu­al­ly heavy, as if a dis­grun­tled assem­bly line worker had com­mit­ted a serious error on the factory floor. When she opened it, she saw only a handful of Corn Flakes, a bottle of Tabasco sauce, and, alarm­ing­ly, a small handgun. She couldn’t tell if it was real or fake, but it was heavy, very heavy, and sud­den­ly she felt as if the mere act of holding it in her hand would make it go off. She unscrewed the cap on the bottle and found a folded piece of paper inside: Pow. Bang. What’s the point? Bang. Pow. Smoke a joint.

Under­neath the Corn Flakes was a small plastic baggie con­tain­ing what appeared to be a pro­fes­sion­al­ly man­u­fac­tured pre-roll. She ate the Corn Flakes, threw the message and the empty bottle in the trash­can, and restored the handgun to the empty cereal box. She knew this was unwise. Also unwise was her deci­sion to restore the box con­tain­ing the handgun to the cabinet.  The only smart thing she did was to take the joint outside to the back porch and smoke it. At least this time, she’d fol­lowed directions.

If Royce had become an extrem­ist, rad­i­cal­ized online by second amend­ment sup­port­ers of the right-wing variety, he didn’t show it, at least not imme­di­ate­ly. What he did show was a new inter­est in recy­cling. He was saving his money, he said, and alu­minum cans were fetch­ing a high price at certain grocery stores. The glass jars and bottles he sold to a woman, a neigh­bor who used to feed their cat when they went out of town. The woman had quit her job as a recep­tion­ist at a doctor’s office to become a maker of home­brewed alco­holic bev­er­ages, organic baby food, and scented candles, and she was glad, she said, to take the bottles and jars off his hands.  Between this arrange­ment and all the scrap metal he’d stolen from con­struc­tion sites, he claimed he’d be rich in no time. Was he saving for college? Some kind of ado­les­cent hobby like base­ball cards or action figures, or video games? One day she asked him. What are you doing with your recy­cling money? Don’t be ridicu­lous, he said. I need more guns. 

Her step­fa­ther took to riding his motor­ized bicycle for hours at a time, some­times all day Sat­ur­day and all day Sunday, and again most days during the week after coming home from work. Her mother seemed happy to have the house to herself.  Burg­er­Max Clara sent a post­card from Thai­land, though it took several months to arrive. Some­thing about the sight of the Thai palm trees and the fishing boat pushed up into the sand made her wish she had quit her job at the bank. Burg­er­Max Clara had been unhappy at Burg­er­Max, unhappy in general, and yet she’d managed to make a new, better life for herself. But somehow, she knew she’d work at the bank forever. Even after she was too old for cus­tomers to call her sweet­heart, she would con­tin­ue sorting slips of paper into mean­ing­less piles and count­ing out bills into the hands of sex­u­al­ly-harass­ing strangers. Every day she would show up ten minutes early and leave ten minutes late. She would go on like that as long as the sun was in the sky, never pro­mot­ed, and never noticed at all.

Not-Clara read all the plays of Ten­nessee Williams. She’d read some of them before, but now she read them again. She reread her old copy of The Great Gatsby. Now that Burg­er­Max Clara was gone, she was without the plea­sure of human company, but she found that she didn’t need it. She read One Hundred Years of Soli­tude and dreamed of South America.

Her mother came home with a new cat. Her step­fa­ther, now spend­ing every waking hour watch­ing (but not par­tic­i­pat­ing in) live-stream­ing fitness videos from New York City, hardly noticed. The new cat lived exclu­sive­ly indoors. Her mother named him Divorce Lawyer, but every­one called him Dick.

Living there felt suf­fo­cat­ing, like hiding under a blanket without warmth. Her mother hid away in the bedroom, and Royce was always gone. The pattern of Not-Clara’s life had become very clear: work and rest, rest and work, not in equal measure, but one in service of the other. Even the bank hol­i­days seemed like a drag. She started putting Tabasco sauce on all of her food. She wrote daily, hand­writ­ten letters to Burg­er­Max Clara. She read more and more novels. All the while, the handgun inside the cereal box inside the cabinet, inside the kitchen, inside the house, lurked like a bad idea. Pow. Bang. Shake your head. Bang. Pow. Now You’re Dead. 

Every day, Not-Clara con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty Royce would become involved in an active shooter sit­u­a­tion. Every day she con­sid­ered either telling her mother or remov­ing the handgun, taking it to a pawn­shop, perhaps, or driving it out to the woods to bury it. But she did none of those things. Maybe her step­fa­ther would use it to hold up the bank. Maybe her mother would use it to kill her step­fa­ther. Maybe her step­fa­ther would use it to kill Dick the cat. Maybe it wasn’t loaded. Maybe nothing would happen at all. Maybe the entire world, along with all its phan­tasms of sorrow and regret, would cease playing out false scenes of sur­prise sadness and sad sur­prise, fold into itself like a message in a bottle, clear its throat and start some­where else, taking no pris­on­ers and no heroes, either,  until all the old prob­lems became new ones. And Not-Clara’s own daily dramas, her unnamed, unsung worries once so urgent, oppres­sive, larger than life, would dimin­ish in the distance.

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 19. Support local book­sellers and inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers by order­ing a print copy of the mag­a­zine.

Photo by Rebecca Lee.