Episode 2.05: The Inward Spiral

NICHOLAS: (as the intro plays) At the edge of Gilt City, death shows many faces, all of them true, and all await the arrival of the Night Post. [A DOOR SQUEAKS AS VAL PUSHES IT OPEN. SHE WALKS SLOWLY THROUGH THE SHOP AND UP TO THE COUNTER.] VAL: (calling) Hell-oo? Anybody home? [SHE PRESSES A BELL ON THE COUNTER A FEW TIMES, BUT IT DOESN’T RING. FOOTSTEPS APPROACH.] SHOPKEEPER: Quit that! I’m comin’, I’m comin’. VAL: Uh, it’s broken. SHOPKEEPER: I can still hear it. (pause) So, pigeon. What is it? VAL: How--uh, nevermind. Just--just this. [VAL TAKES SOMETHING FROM HER COAT AND SETS IT DOWN. THE METAL CHAIN CLINKS AGAINST THE GLASS COUNTERTOP.] SHOPKEEPER: All right, let’s see what we got here. (picking up necklace) Sterling silver chain, twenty-two inches, tarnished. Pendant looks like river agate, two inch diameter. Hollowed in the center, and something tiny stuck inside...is that a snail shell? VAL: You got it in one. SHOPKEEPER: You can’t seriously expect me to buy this. VAL: Look, I know it’s not worth much-- SHOPKEEPER: I don’t care about that. People bring me their hand-me-down talismans and weird crap from the Skelter all the time. I can make a buck or two on just about anything. Problem is, I don’t buy cursed items. VAL: (taken aback) It’s not cursed. SHOPKEEPER: (unconvinced) Mm-hmm. VAL: What, I can’t want to pawn a regular old necklace? SHOPKEEPER: You didn’t come out here to the edge of town on a weekday to sell me a rock on a rusty chain. This thing isn’t even worth the tire damage from our parking lot. VAL: Well, not my vehicle, so. SHOPKEEPER: Just square with me. You’re here because you don’t know how to get rid of it. [A LONG PAUSE AS VAL CONSIDERS.] VAL: I tried throwing it away, twice. It just kept ending up in my dresser again. SHOPKEEPER: Had it a long time? VAL: I guess. SHOPKEEPER: Well, it’s definitely got an attachment to you. Why do you wanna get rid of it now? VAL: Because I don’t want it to be attached to me anymore. SHOPKEEPER: That it? VAL: (sigh) I don’t know, just--things have been...complicated lately. Shit’s messed up, and I’m just not in the right headspace. I mean, I’m the common factor in all of it, I-I know that. It’s not like I think some trinket is causing my problems or anything. More like...call it spring cleaning. SHOPKEEPER: In the fall. VAL: Yep. [SILENCE FOR A LONG MOMENT. THE SHOPKEEPER TURNS THE NECKLACE OVER IN THEIR HANDS.] SHOPKEEPER: Selling it’s not a bad idea, actually. If you get someone to accept it, it should stop coming back to you. VAL: So…? SHOPKEEPER: (resigned sigh) All right, tell you what. There’s clearly a story here--something happened that made this necklace go funny. Tell me what kinda history I’m stepping into here, and I’ll take it off your hands. VAL: History. SHOPKEEPER: Yeah, you know. Who’s the original owner, how it came into your possession, and suchlike. What’s it mean to you? VAL: That seems like a weird request. Are all pawn shop owners this nosey? SHOPKEEPER: Don’t act like you wouldn’t know. You see anybody lining up behind you to talk to me? I’m bored, and I’m curious. Runs in the blood where I come from. VAL: Where’s that? SHOPKEEPER: Here and there. So, do we have a deal? VAL: Uh, sure. Just… SHOPKEEPER: Yeah, I’m listening. VAL: Okay. Well, uh...this necklace belonged to someone I knew a long time ago. Call her Marian. That’s not her name, but Marian was well-known enough in my neighborhood, and I-I don’t want--anyway, just call her Marian. That’s close enough. Marian was a teacher. Not like, an official, licensed teacher, I...went to a hedge school, if that’s not obvious. Probably not like what you’re thinking, you know, some drunk guy teaching the local brats how to paint warding signs. Uh, no, there were a couple dozen of us, and we had an actual schoolhouse and a curriculum and books, pretty much everything a regular school has except for government oversight, just very low-tech. So Marian was the teacher at this school for twenty years or something before I was even old enough to attend. Point is, she’d had lots of practice managing twenty-plus kids of varying ages, packed into a sweltering clapboard building for hours a day. I know I wasn’t the easiest child to raise or to teach. I own that. But...I couldn’t have been the toughest she had to work with. SHOPKEEPER: Don’t look at me. I don’t even know you. VAL: Right. I just mean that Ms. Marian was known for being pretty strict, but she seemed to take a particular dislike to me. I couldn’t do anything right, as far as she was concerned. It got to where I dreaded going to school, because it seemed inevitable that I’d fuck up and make her mad, and then I’d have to stand in front of the class all day, or make a statement to everyone about what I’d done wrong. So she didn’t care for me, and the feeling was fucking mutual. The thing about Marian, she wasn’t a very showy person. Kept her hair up, wore plain dresses and sensible shoes, was very open about despising tattoos. She wasn’t one for jewelry, but she always wore this necklace. I never saw her without it. SHOPKEEPER: Finally, the necklace. Quite a bit of lead-up there. VAL: You asked me to tell the story. Do you want the context or not? SHOPKEEPER: Eh, I guess. VAL: The longer I went to Ms. Marian’s school, the more fixated I was on this necklace. Every time she’d lean over my desk to say my work was wrong or correct my posture or twist my ear, the rock swung right in front of my face. I couldn’t stop staring at the little shell inside, wondering who put it there, and why. I was afraid to ask, but one afternoon when she’d kept me behind to clean the classroom, Marian told me about it. [IN THE BACKGROUND, THE SOFT BURBLE OF RUNNING WATER.] Maybe she was feeling charitable that day, or maybe she was just tired of me staring at it week after week, I don’t know. She said the stone must be as old as the Skelter, hollowed out over centuries by some strange current. I was familiar with seeing stones, obviously, but the hole in this one doesn’t go all the way through. Marian said the snail must have crawled in there for shelter and grew too large to get out. After the snail died, the soft parts of its body decayed and were washed out by the river, leaving only the shell stuck inside. Then she knelt down in front of me and put her hands on my shoulders, and told me what it meant. She said it was a lesson, that the snail teaches us not to get too big for our surroundings. She said we all have to be careful not to change into something that doesn’t fit. I didn’t understand at the time exactly what she meant, but I could tell she thought the message was vital for me in particular. This was probably the kindest Ms. Marian had ever been toward me, so I gathered the courage to ask a question: why was it the snail’s fault? Maybe the rock was just too small. She gripped my shoulders tighter, her nails pressing into my back. The rock was just a rock, she said. It didn’t change, and it didn’t care who lived or died inside it. I’d do well to remember that, she said. Then she let me go and sent me back to my cleaning without another word. I did remember it, though. I thought about it a lot as I started to grow and change, and it made me...hate her, I guess. More than before. Even without Ms. Marian’s constant disapproving gaze and her criticism of everything I did, it was becoming more and more obvious to me that I was the snail. SHOPKEEPER: But the world isn’t a rock. VAL: No. It kind of is, though. SHOPKEEPER: Yeah, it kind of is. Third one from the sun, last I heard. So how’d you end up with this necklace you hated? VAL: I didn’t hate the necklace, I hated--the truth is, the years after that were a tough time for both of us. I was trying to figure myself out, to negotiate my relationship to the world and my place in it. And Marian was dying. Her failing health wasn’t a fact she shared with her students, but there are no real secrets in a little community like that. She’d been to all the healers in the area, my mamá included. So I knew. We all knew, even before the signs of it started to show. Over time, Marian got weaker. She moved slower, and her voice got raspier. She was tired all the time. But she didn’t stop teaching, I guess because it gave her purpose, or because she didn’t have a choice, I don’t know. The years went on, and Ms. Marian was still the first one at the schoolhouse each morning. As her body fought the disease, the light in her eyes got sharper, her tone harder. If she was strict before, there was no give to her at all now. It was like she was furious with all of us for witnessing this happening to her, and she took most of that anger out on me, or at least it seemed that way at the time. It sounds shitty, but I was kind of waiting for her to die, like I felt in some way that I couldn’t become myself until she was gone. I realized later that that was wrong--her judgment couldn’t and shouldn’t stop me. Marian wasn’t the rock; she had only shown it to me. Either way, it was obvious that Marian wasn’t going to recover. Whatever she had--cancer, bad heart, I don’t know--there was no way she could afford to have it treated. She wasn’t a government-employed teacher, she was supported entirely by the families of her pupils, so she didn’t have health care. The healers in our neighborhood did everything they could for her, but traditional medicine has its limits. Modern medicine does too, obviously, but whatever was wrong with Ms. Marian, plants and prayers couldn’t fix it. She fought it, though. She held on for a long time. I ended up aging out of her school, thinking I’d leave Gilt City and never see her again. That didn’t happen like I planned. When Marian finally passed, I was nineteen and still living with my parents. They dragged me along to her wake. It was important that we all make an appearance, they said, but considering how long Ms. Marian had been part of the community, there weren’t many people in attendance. Maybe they just didn’t want to see her like that, after the disease had finished its gruesome work. It seems to me that the people of the Skelter have an odd relationship with death--it’s supposed to be a transition, a change of state to be accepted, if not welcomed, but there’s clearly still fear there. We don’t talk about or confront it directly, we just go about our rituals of passage and move on, as though we’re not walking among the dead every day. My grandmother used to say that goosebumps meant a spirit had touched you, that when your breath makes fog, you’re exhaling the dead. And yet, at a Skelter wake, no one wants to look at the corpse. SHOPKEEPER: Easier the way they do things in the city, huh? VAL: Makes sense. There’s no room for graveyards between the high-rise apartments. SHOPKEEPER: Think that’s got something to do with it, why they ain’t got all kinda ghosts downtown? VAL: I don’t know, but I don’t think ghosts come from dead bodies. I didn’t see anything like that in Marian’s, anyway, and unlike some of the guests, I actually looked. She was wearing a dark blue dress, with flowers embroidered around the collar and hem in silver thread. Her lips were painted dark red, and her hair was arranged around her shoulders. I remember all this because I was startled by how unlike her it was, how different from how she dressed in life. Maybe the undertaker was trying to distract from the marks of struggle on her body, the deep shadows and ragged lines. But they did get one thing right: Marian’s dress was open at the collar to allow for the long silver chain, the pendant resting at her sternum, undisturbed by breath. Right where it had always been, so I should have expected to see it. But I had gained some distance between myself and those memories by this point, and I wasn’t prepared for how forcefully they’d come crashing back. There was too much curled up inside that shell, too much of me. To see her wearing it then, lying in her coffin with her hands clasped just beneath the pendant, felt like the last insult, the last time Ms. Marian would reduce my whole being to the size of a pebble and deem it unfit. Even in death, she had this bearing of venomous self-righteousness, and I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t feel sorry for her, even as I stood over her emaciated form. I was grown, and fervently alive, and she couldn’t intimidate me anymore. The only other person actually watching by the body was her sister, a woman almost as gray and worn as Marian, so the moment she turned her attention away--I took it. SHOPKEEPER: Wait, what? You saying you snatched the necklace off the dead lady? VAL: Did you think I was Ms. Marian’s heir or something? SHOPKEEPER: How do I know? I’ve seen a lot of jewelry come through this place that was...creatively acquired, let’s say, but the sellers don’t usually admit it to me. And taking from the dead is--well, it’s like you said, people are weird about that around here. It’s something else entirely. VAL: Did you want me to make up a story? This is how it happened: I unhooked the clasp and slipped the necklace into my sleeve. No one saw me. SHOPKEEPER: Smoothly done, I’ll give you that. VAL: Probably just luck. But it didn’t last. On my way out the door, some duck-footed asshole stepped on my shoelace. When I knelt down to re-tie it, the necklace fell out of my sleeve. [THE SOUND OF NECKLACE AND A LONG CHAIN HITTING THE FLOOR.] SHOPKEEPER: Unusual place for a necklace to appear from. VAL: Yeah. It would’ve been a hell of a party foul if anyone else had noticed. Only my father saw what happened. He dragged me outside by my collar, cursing at me as loud as he dared. When I explained where the thing came from, he wouldn’t even touch it. SHOPKEEPER: And you still have it. Your pops didn’t turn you in? VAL: Not out of consideration for me. He wouldn’t be able to hold his head up around the neighborhood if everyone knew what I’d done. No, he kept it hush, and no one came around asking for Marian’s necklace. My parents quietly consigned me to the Night Post, with instructions never to come to their house unannounced. If anyone asks after me, they say I’ve gone to work on a long-haul boat, but I write them when I can. (bitter laugh) SHOPKEEPER: I ain’t got kids, but I don’t know if I could do that, even if they did what you did. VAL: My parents are very devout, in the local sense. I guess giving me to the Skelter is their way of...expurgating the sin of having raised me. [A LONG, UNCOMFORTABLE PAUSE. THE NECKLACE CHAIN CLINKS.] SHOPKEEPER: So you’ve been holding onto this thing...uh, how long now? VAL: Eight...going on nine years. (pause) So, you still want it now you know I got it in pretty much the worst way possible? SHOPKEEPER: Deal’s a deal, even among thieves. I can give you five bucks for your trouble. VAL: Five dollars? Come on. SHOPKEEPER: Tell me you’re not gonna haggle with me over this definitely-cursed river rock. VAL: Hey, I became a pariah for this river rock. And I just spent twenty minutes spilling my guts to you, the least you could do is give me enough for lunch and gas money back. SHOPKEEPER: You ever tell anyone this story before? VAL: Why do you care? SHOPKEEPER: (pause) Ten. Final offer. VAL: Done. (pushing the necklace across the counter) Maybe now I’ll have a bit of peace from these damn messages. SHOPKEEPER: How’s that? VAL: Nothing, just talking to myself. That’s apparently a thing I do now, but hopefully not anymore. (crinkle of paper money) You kind of bailed me out, I guess, so...thanks. SHOPKEEPER: Don’t mention it. You know me, I’m a kind old soul. VAL: Uh...sure. See you around. [VAL WALKS OUT QUICKER THAN SHE CAME. THE DOOR SQUEAKS OPEN AND SLAMS SHUT.] [THE CLINK OF THE NECKLACE CHAIN AS THE SHOPKEEPER HEFTS IT BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THEIR PALMS. THEY GIVE AN ODD, SHORT LAUGH.] NICHOLAS: (as the outro plays) Thank you for joining us on tonight’s route. You can find the couriers of Station 103 at nightpostpod.com or on Twitter @nightpostpod. If you’re satisfied with your postal service, please rate and review us. Send a letter to your least favorite teacher, and tell them about The Night Post.

Episode 2.05: The Inward Spiral

Written and Produced by Rae Lundberg

Content Warnings (Click to expand)