BASEMENT COMMANDMENT. Edited by Rowan Silva

“Your biology has been started reminding your consciousness of your identity which had been hidden there for a reason. Your consciousness afraid of any unpredictable consequences suppresses the message.”

She raised her hand grabbed the top corner of the paper, snatched it off the mirror. A tall woman with long black hair appeared in the mirror. “This cannot be me,” She exclaimed staring at her unexpected image in the mirror.

Long coarse black hair waved down in abundance passing her shoulders resting and covering her chest. The tall mirror well matched the woman’s height. Hazel-brown eyes surrounded by thick eyelashes were shining below naturally plucked eyebrows. Aquiline nose over well-formed lips, prominent cheeks, as the true character of her origin. The twelve had not passed in vain; the dusky red color of her teenage skin had changed to some shades of light brown with redness of circulation blood under her cheeks. The straight neck was standing high over wide shoulders and then a broad chest. She enjoyed for a moment the upright breasts. There was still a lot to see if she could overcome the shame of looking down. She paused for a moment then lowered her face to see how rude the semi-transparent dress was.

The skirt edge ended short an inch below her white panty. Slipped down her eyes, overlooked the area belonged to the white panty. She lowered her hand, to touch her thick thighs, make sure, if they are real; so hard. Slipped her hand upward along her arm, a pleasant surprise, not of a very feminine type, but strong, well matched the legs. She murmured asking the image, “Who are you? Are you the same woman at psychoanalysis sessions asking for help every time for seven months? How could the wise man see any notion of a victimized ten-year-old girl in this image?” The embracement could not stop her eyes go down below her belly button; just a glance was enough to pass through the thin dress. “Shame on you woman,” She told the image. She closed her eyes, just one glance was enough to find the true meaning of what the psychoanalysis advised, there was a message in the scent: remember your origin.

She recalled the last session with the psychoanalyst. “But I need more sessions with you, I still feel my soul tormented.”

“Open the door and go out, spread yourself to a dangerous engagement. Your consciousness has created and preserved an image of a desperate ten-year-old girl in your mind to make you afraid of any adventurous effort to decipher the message.”

“What is the message?”

“There is something wild in your nature. The interpretation is beyond the field of psychology.”

“Aren’t I normal?”

“No, you are not. What if we don’t have psychological terms to describe your behavior? What if there are some silent genes in you belonged to a very long time ago that now due the torment of the event have started activating. You get your consciousness by mirroring the behavior of society. This works for the people who are evolved in the same trend. You can communicate through your smell; this is a very primitive ability in humans. Evolution of language area of the brain has made this capacity weak and non-applicable. I cannot verify my analysis by your verbal responses, but I can feel its correctness by your change of smell as has happened recently.

“So I belong to the wild.”

“Must go out’

She noticed the woman in the mirror was smiling, not a simple one, there was some peculiarity in it. The lips were gestured in a smile formation more to show the whiteness of the teeth than the happiness of coming across a friend. An idea came to her mind, why not flirting with her image or doing some oddity she wouldn’t do normally. She took her underpants off and twisted it around her index finger. The scattered scent widened her nostrils, a strange feeling, a white flash blurred her eyes, frightened her. She thought, “This is not a woman you can have fun with.” The smile was gone.

She could not believe that eyes were not hazel-brown as supposed to be but blue; two shining blue pupils were glowing in the mirror. The shock made her threw the panty out her index finger, swirling in the air; it flew into the opening at the back of the mirror.

She turned back, walked to the kitchen, needed some distraction from the mirror. The smell of tomatoes had filled the kitchen. She found an appetite to eat meat, which was a strange desire for a dedicated vegetarian. She acquired the new desire from the time had added these tomatoes to her food. Yesterday, when her downstairs neighbor was barbequing, she could not resist the smell, opened the window, and looked down to his balcony; the juicy steaks were sizzling on the rack. It was strange to her that after eating two juicy tomatoes the meat-eating desire quenched as if the tomatoes had fresh blood in them. It was not only the taste, but there was also something peculiar in the scent, which had filled the whole apartment. The nostalgia of her past blurrily traveled into her memory, a reminiscence of wilds belonging to a time far before she had been born, a dance of ghosts around her.

She looked into the dustbin at the three empty silver bags of the super fertilizer. She took one of them out and read the information: “Miracle Fertilizer. Add this magic additive to the soil of your pot. The miracle of creation; you will be amazed that your plant is growing 15 times faster with an unbelievable taste and a strange aroma. Effective only for 24 hours that is actually comparable to 15 days of similar ones.” “Certainly 15 times more expensive. It is odd that one describes his fertilizer with the word Miracle.”

She had bought the additive and tomato seeds from a shop in a remote area out the suburb as she was seeking a new way to fill her free time, of which she was going to have plenty. She thought to go and see different items in shops until she may figure out of some hobby. It was three days ago that as she was driving idle and talking to herself lost the time and the road. Unknown streets started and ended with shops at both sides closed until she found one in a place with the least possibility. At a large parking lot, a light on the other side attracted her attention. She drove closer across the lot. Strangely, it was a big store located out of nowhere in that deserted area at the end of the vacant huge parking lot. She parked her car by the store to ask for direction. It was a big botanical store with no customer and one old Botanist owner standing at the cashier.

She could remember her first encounter with the man vividly. As she was going to ask for the direction, he said smilingly, “Hello, my beautiful vampire, what has brought you here? Unfortunately, we only have flowers not human flesh or blood.” “My mistake, I can’t also catch the smell of anything here but dead flesh and rotten blood,” She retorted and amazingly, the brief offensive conversation changed her mood, made her relax, and thought to buy something.

She remembered the Botanist got in the mood too; his smile grew wider and started narrating his life story, “My dear father was saving money all his life to buy this land, in a hope that someday the rich people would build a road passing beside this area; then we would be some among the rich people. As he was dying, gave all his savings to his only child, me, as well as his last and only lifetime-unfulfilled hope. Unfortunately, the rich people were too rich; they built a highway instead of a road and along that highway were stretched guardrails, the not busy area became dead vacant. Yet, I kept the promise, could not spend his money otherwise. I purchased the land, build a store and a big parking lot same as he had always been describing for his beloved son. I am old now and have not saved much for me, nevertheless was able to save him in my memory.”

“Sorry, I was wrong your blood is not rotting.”

She did not feel lost anymore, turned her face looked around, then walked along the aisles of the store, browsing the items sometimes taking an interesting piece to look at. At the end of one of the aisles, she entered a large open area; a simple advertisement on a sign caught her attention: “So many humans were engaged in the production of these fertilizers. Their souls are in it.” Below the banner, there was a cardboard box filled with silver bags of Miracle Fertilizer. She bought three bags, some tomato seeds, and a large rectangular flowerpot.

“I have run out of the god damn good fertilizers, have to see the Botanist again,” She was talking to herself in the kitchen, looking at the empty silver bag in her hand. She turned her heels from the dustbin to her kitchen cabinets at her back, raised her hands up, opened the cabinet door, there was a glass jar filled with crumpled money bills and some coins in it. She took the jar, opened the lid, removed a ball of money out of it, and placed the jar back. Snatched her car keys off the cabinet counter and rushed to the door, it was already late in the night.

Last glimpsed into the mirror, “Oh, I am not wearing my panty,” She said with a shameful laugh, noticing that the white underpants had fallen on the floor, in a gap between the back of the mirror and the wall. She crouched, stretched her index finger while holding the ball of money in her palm, as the finger reached the underwear, hooked the tip of her finger into the elastic band and pulled it toward herself. The elastic stretched but it was like something was holding it back. The panty was stuck to something at the back of the mirror. She dropped the money on the floor forwarded her head toward the gap as close as possible to realize what had been tangled in her panty. Her left eye saw in the darkness deep behind the mirror a wooden frame. She stretched her arm into the gap, felt the wood of frame; grabbed the outer side of the frame and slid it out. A small part of a wooden frame appeared out the back of the mirror. It was a wooden frame with canvas stretched over it.

To get the whole of it free out the back of the mirror, she stood up and dragged it out until the frame reached and inclined to the apartment door. She lifted and carried the frame to the wall in front of the sofa, placed it on the floor and inclined back of the frame to the wall. She stepped back to figure out the painting. The canvas had been painted with a white paint, no drawing, or figure on it.

“Whose is the painting and why it was hidden behind my mirror? At least now I know why the nails are on the wall.” She hung the painting on the two nails above. It fit perfectly stable on them; she went back and sat on her sofa, leaned back with a fearful thought in her mind, “I am leaving in the house of the wild beauty in the mirror, things belong to her.” The new puzzle gave life to the idea that the woman in the mirror was responsible for all the unsolved cases. She had brought things which belonged to her to the apartment. On the other hand, even if the idea was an illusion, how she could rust her mind? Her fear was gradually escalating, she couldn’t sit on her couch and seek a peace of mind anymore. She felt being trapped by the woman in the mirror; she had never felt surrender like this that the prey willingly embrace the hunter.

Troubled minds can better communicate with horror. She leaned back to the sofa, felt the dampness of her sweat on her back, clung her fingers into the sofa fabric, twisting the leather, stared at the painting. “Have the courage; there is no session for help tomorrow.” She was sensing something in the painting in the whiteness.

The various shades of white and grey, a landscape of a snowy day. The ground was covered with deep snow, thick fog in the air, some movement. Grayish shapes were appearing, very vaguely, in the mist, and then before acquiring a clear shape out the mist they disappeared, and then there was the plain white again. The nostalgia, she turned her face to the window wished she could see the same scenery in reality out the window. She said with a soft voice, “Oh tomatoes, I fully forgot the shop might close any minute.” She jumped off the sofa on her feet, grabbed the car keys off the sofa, rushed toward the door. Strangely, all fear had been removed; either the woman in the mirror had captured her or they could share the room. She had a desire to smile like the woman with blue glows. She threw her last look at the mirror; the reflection of the mysterious shades of the painting appeared once again in the mirror. This time they brought to her mind some reminiscence of the past; she had been there.

3

The Book

She opened the door. The ball of the money and her panty stayed behind on the floor. The elevator door was open she entered. She looked at the floor buttons, waited, thought, “How can I manage this time to deal with the landlady’s scolding complaints; to calm her down of my two months overdue rents, the money I spent on the mirror. She was there when the men were carrying the huge mirror up to the stairs for me. I cleverly walked at the back of the moving mirror past her front desk. Last time she caught me, I had to listen to her nagging for more than half an hour. Her husband doesn’t seem to be a bad guy; though too much obedient to her. I have never seen he looks at women straight into eyes, bashful and afraid of his wife’s wrath. Apparently, she is the real owner of the building, the business, and the husband. Fortunately, the couples are asleep at this time of the night; I hope.” She pushed the first-floor button, the elevator door closed.

The old landlady and her silent husband were working behind the counter at the side of the corridor, exceptionally late this night. She was declaring the apartment number of the tenants with overdue rents and the husband bent over the countertop, submissively, as always, was writing them down on the day’s collection sheet paper. She used to stand at the elevator side of the counter and her husband in her shadow; by the time the elevator doors would slide back, she was there to corner the renters with arrears before they have time to escape. They would either pay with many apologies to lower down her naggings as less as possible or run away to save the eardrums from the nastiest insults, all the way through the long corridor while followed by her with her mouth stuck behind their ears.

The elevator cabin was hot, sometimes the heater did not work, and sometimes overworked, the air conditioner was always broke. She had been sweaty before entering into the cabin, furthermore going down five stories in heat; the perspiration had completely saturated the thin dress. It molded her body like a transparent wrapping. She tried to pull the dress out to reshape the dress otherwise than her cleavage, the displaced fabric reversed as a magnet to its sinful position. The confined air was filled with a strange body odor.

The elevator doors slid back open to the corridor. The old husband was cleaning his eyeglasses to take a few moments out. Somebody at the same time went out the entrance door, leaving the doors open. The cold air outside plunged headlong into the corridor, rubbed all the precious perfume out the cabin, vacuumed it out the cabin into the corridor. The loaded air in its way out, in a hurry to steal all the loot, gave a share to the old man’s nose. The man dropped his eyeglasses on the countertop, his mouth opened, his nostrils widened to inhale a good of this rubbery. The stream of strange aroma burnt his nostrils for some milliseconds; his mind paused then a powerful wave of electricity flowed through the nasal paths all the way with the speed of light to all his six million sensory cells. The incomplete evolved sense of human smell was unable to assess it in any of the primitive rankings between pleasant to unpleasant, therefore, succumbed under the influence, and paralyzed.

Floating in the passing current, anchored to the countertop in greed for the source. His upper body past the visual blockage of his fat wife; laid his chest on the countertop, secured his belly to the inside edge of the reception desk in an attempt to get more share of running air. His head overhanging out the edge of the countertop, he faced to the woman shyly stepping out the cabin. His eyes got a blurred vision of a white feather angel parading across him; as she passed the intruding head, the man’s head and the two full-circled pipes in the nose were detecting her movement like a turning around radars. The unclean eyeglasses were smashed under his chest.

She as passing the counter remembered the ball of the money had been missed on her apartment floor at the door. She decided to turn back but the elevator doors closed and she heard the screeching noise of the cabin moving up for another passenger. “I cannot go back and stand at the elevator with my sweaty back stuck to the dress in front of the man’s widened eyes, besides the landlady’s head is bent over a paper and I am fortunate that she is not raising it to see me. This is an exceptional opportunity to flee her nasty complaints.” She sweated more when remembered the money was not the only thing she had forgotten to pick up, her panty.

She walked toward the building door, her head up was looking straight. There was no sound except the provocative sound of slippers flip-flops on the laminated floor. The movement randomly was waving the flower pattern over the bulge at the junction of her thighs on and off; fanning the mystifying scent from the source. The all-of-the-time nagging landlady was staying dead silent during the procession. The overdue resident passed her, no complaint of her. She was pretending to read the sheet paper, staring all the time from the corner of her eye to the old man who was swimming over the countertop. The woman was not very ashamed of her situation under the synchronized twist of the man head, rather happy that her body solved, for now, her problem with the landlady. She rewarded the poor man a generous amount of her heavy aroma as passing the poor man. He deserved some short time vacation in paradise before going back to the life sentence with a punishment term of the everyday ration of the vinegar smell of his wife. The man’s eyes escorted her until she passed the building glass door and disappeared in the dark night.

“I am so ashamed of you,” the landlady shouted at the man, burning fire had scorched her face. The man slowly straightened up. Looked calmly at the broken eyeglasses, one of the lenses smashed the other taken out. The man’s indifference raised landlady’s anger to fury; she added insult to her accent, “I guess you cannot recall your posture old man, a few inches further if you went, you would be now outside the building with your head between her wet thighs.”

“I was reading.”

“Reading?” the landlady’s mood changed a bit, as she didn’t expect such an excuse for his rudeness.

“I was reading a book together with my deceased father. A fairy tale for a four-year-old son. I was leaning to his chest, sitting on his laps, listening to his articulate storyline and repeating while looking at the text as if I could read the book together with him. I had heard the story once and never after because at the same night my father died of heart attack while I was asleep on his chest. The same night the book was lost. For more than sixty years, I lived with the guilt that I was responsible for his death. I remember I was crouching under a table hiding behind the overhang of the table cover, in fear staring at his coffin in the room. I was overhearing the conversation between two of the guests at the funeral. They were saying in a low voice that my father had felt pain in the chest but didn’t move afraid of waking his son up,” He paused took the unbroken lens and placed it back. “I don’t understand, you mean you could read at the age of four. How come do you say you were reading?” The landlady asked doubtfully, her fury replaced with amazement of the sudden change in the man’s behavior. There was emotion in his expressions, imperiously glancing at her.

“I don’t know. I could not recall father’s voice, but I could see myself at that age and could read word by word every page. It was a story about thirteen fallen angels who came to earth. As the story goes, if one wants his wish come true he must be able to recognize his angel out of ordinary people. Unfortunately, her appearance is not different from normal people as she is wingless. The angels live among people but there is no way to find them unless you are blind. Their body smells different, inexplicable by no humans’ words. Blinds shape the scent as an angel in their mind, they ask for a favor, their wish comes true,” He paused for a second. Facing the landlady he continued, “I can recall the whole story word by word except the ending. Supposedly, I got sleepy and he didn’t continue. I have a strong urge to know the ending.”

“But the book is lost.”

“Tonight, the woman of heavenly scent, my angel, fulfilled my wish. The location of the book was always at the back of the mind of the four-year-old boy.”

“Where is the book?”

“The boy waited until the guests left the coffin room, went out of the room to his bedroom, took the book out the father’s chair. He then went back to coffin room, opened a gap in the lid with all power he had and slid the book in. A harsh punishment, the boy sentenced me to deprivation for life,” He inhaled and continued, “I am pardoned now, my freedom is granted; I am going to take back the book and read the ending.”

“You are insane. It is in a coffin, under tons of soil.”

“So I need a shovel,” he went to the tool room, grabbed a shovel and came back in front of the landlady who was staring at him round-eyed in amazement.

“But you can’t see.”

“I can see enough,” he took the one-lens frame.

“I am not going to give you the car key.”