Flicker Flight Part 02
I sit there much longer than it seems; I have to stop looking through the photos because it’s too dark to see with the sun setting. I don’t remember getting up, but next thing I know, I’m at the kitchen counter, using the microwave light to see. The last box only has a few photos, this time of the same few people. Each picture has a different time and date written on the back and a word. One of them reads Crow, 07–24–1977, 4:27. None of this makes any sense, but I try the best I can to organize them. There are about fifteen photos of each subject, each marked in the same style: Crow, Badger, and Fox.
At the bottom of the box, there’s a scrap of paper. It’s not like any of this mess is organized, at least to me, but this strikes me as unusual. It is a ripped strip of paper, one corner sharp; looks like it was torn from an envelope. On one side, in large square letters, it reads “To Whoever Finds Me.” The flip side reads, in angry, large letters:
LEAVE ME BE
And underneath, in smaller writing, almost as if he was tired:
There’s nothing here for you.
His name was signed at the corner: Henry. The strokes of his pen looked as if every letter took all his energy to put on the page. I must have read these words a dozen times, just trying to make sense of… any part of it. It is clear this mystery will not be solved this second, so I put the note in my wallet and reach to gather the photos and replace the box. Before I do, the light catches a dim metal object at the box’s bottom. I fumble at it for a second and lift a dingy key toward the light. It has no markings, nothing to indicate what it might unlock. I pocket this too, wishing I could forget this whole thing.
I honestly leave them alone. For a little while at least. But as I drive home, those words echo in my head.
This is the new home for the serial novel formerly titled Remembered.
New parts coming every week.
