Tell Me A Story
Out in the taiga, between the trees and beneath a coat of snow, there is a cabin. And in that cabin, behind yellow windows and under the night blue sky, there is a man. Miles and miles away from civilization, this man manages to survive. He collects and sells ice for a living.
We’ll call him the iceman.
(Apologies for addressing you. I hope the extra layer doesn’t make things too complicated.)
Regardless, the iceman is trying to warm himself up. He huddles near the fireplace, putting out his palms. The icicles dangle from his reddish beard like Christmas ornaments. His face is red; a sunburn from the snowstorms. He wears one jacket, one coat, two sweaters, a tee shirt, and a tank top for good measure. Two layers of pants at minimum. The iceman considers why he bothers to leave the cabin. He has enough supplies to last for months. He wonders: Does fire burn more than the cold bites? Testing that experiment, though insane, sounds tempting right about now.
His life is a constant fight to stay warm. The woolen clothes, the extra layers, tucking his sleeves into his gloves, the incessant drying of his shoes—nearly every waking moment he spends is an attempt to stay warm. Even when a suspicion of the cold creeps into his mind, the iceman rectifies that. The cold, practically speaking, is his nemesis. So he warms himself up until he cannot feel the bite.
Outside the wind whistles, wishing it could come in. The iceman is safe behind his door.
Knock, knock.
The iceman whips his head around to the door. He hasn’t seen a person in months. Who else would want to come out here? The wind continues to howl. He waits another moment, to see if the cold has corrupted his mind.
Knock, knock.
Not a hallucination. The knock was real; and forceful, too. A knock that could knock the door down. Unsure of what to do, the iceman holds still. As he squints, he sees the faint outline of a figure. Behind the window, a blackened figure appears, surrounded by the deep blue of the evening. The glistening, golden light of the lanterns now seems like a treasure he needs to protect.
Knock, knock.
Once again. The iceman realizes he cannot wait out this visitor like he might a blizzard. The lights are on, the chimney is smoking—they know someone is home.
The iceman, suddenly, has a thought cross his mind. A thought he ought to have had earlier: maybe the person is suffering. The iceman imagines himself behind that same door. Freezing, wheezing, watching his frostbitten fingers go black. Now, he feels obligated to help.
So the iceman got to his feet, dripping with melted snow, and slowly tiptoed to the door. He steps carefully to avoid any creaking planks. The cabin is small but the walk is long. Still, the iceman cannot make out the silhouette’s face. All he knows is that the circular shape must be a head. It makes no motion at all, standing still as the dark tree trunks behind him. The iceman takes a deep breath in before he speaks.
“Hello?” he asks, louder than normal, but hardly a shout. Not so secretly, the iceman does not want to be heard. The shadow makes no moves.
“Who are you? What do you need?” the iceman asks. If he can get away with tossing an item out, he will. Still, the shadow refuses to move. The iceman shrugs, having convinced himself that he’s running out of options.
“I can’t let you in if you don’t speak,” he shouts. “It’s for my safety.” The shadow, once more, does not budge an inch. There is no sound except for the howling wind. Neither is getting in today, thinks the iceman. He retreats back to the fire and sits on his stool, hoping the shadow will lose interest.
Chomp, chomp.
The iceman whips his head around once more. The sound of crunching wood. To him, it sounded like the splintering of wood. Like an axe. The iceman looks to his left; his axe leans against the wall.
Chomp, chomp.
The iceman watches as the window glass shatters onto the ground. The head of the shadow seems to press against the door, working downwards. Then he sees it—the sparkle of ivory, jagged teeth tearing through wood.
The shadow is eating the door.
The iceman scampers to pick up his axe. The shadow now claws at the door, shoving shards down his throat. The creature continues scarfing down the wooden door until nothing is left but the rusty hinges. The hulking, human-shaped figure licks its fingers. It can’t be human, he thinks, it just can’t be. The iceman doesn’t believe in tall tales, but the name “Bigfoot” did cross his mind for a moment. But he quickly dismisses it, not because of doubt, but because the sasquatch isn’t known for its teeth. This is something else.
The iceman, with axe in hand, shrinks into the corner of the cabin. Breathless, baffled, with his heart beating out of his chest, he assumes his death is imminent.
The shadow, at last, steps out of the gloomy blue and breaches the yellow light of the cabin. A man with a vacation shirt appears. The iceman raises an eyebrow.
The man—or so he appears—wears an unbuttoned red shirt with hibiscus flowers. His sun brown skin glistens instead of reddening. He wears white shorts that don’t go past his knees, revealing hairy legs. And on his feet? Flip flops. The intruder runs his hand through his slick black hair and adjusts his aviator glasses.
The iceman is absolutely confounded. He looks as though he just came from Cabo San Lucas. Or maybe just the airport gift stop, judging by the tag hanging from his sunglasses. All the iceman can think about is how the man is unaffected by the cold, in complete disregard for the blizzard behind him. The intruder locks his gaze at the iceman, drops the tacky glasses and reveals two beady black pupils. The intruder lets out a smile. He lets his jaw hang open so the iceman can witness all three rows of spiky bone knives. A few teeth fall out as he grins.
We’ll call him the sharkman.
(I had considered using “door-eater” but ultimately decided against it.)
“Get the hell out of my house,” shouts the iceman. His demand comes out more like a question. He is juggling his judgement between bewilderment or true terror. Most of his days are monotonous, so anything out of the ordinary would seem bizarre. This was bizarre incarnate.
The sharkman marches forward.
“I said get back!” The iceman raises the axe. The sharkman continues ahead, seemingly unmoved by anything. He backs the iceman into the corner of the room into the circular table. At his doorstep he seemed huge, but only now that the sharkman’s shadow was looming over the iceman did his size become apparent. Before the iceman even decides to swing, the sharkman smacks the axe out of his hands. The iceman, mortified, watches his one chance at life go careening into the kitchen and then out of view. The sharkman stands in front of him, once again motionless.
With quiet resignation, the iceman lets out one last exhale. Past the sharkman, through the opening created by the since-eaten door, a second intruder had arrived: the frigid wind. It extinguishes the lights on its way in. The yellow hues were now replaced by light blue. He was so terrified that he’d forgotten how cold it got. The thought alone disgusts him: not only was he going to die, he was going to die cold, too. At least corpses don’t feel the cold. But the iceman got to inhale again.
The sharkman sits down on one of the two wooden chairs. He smiles and silently gestures at the iceman to take a seat in his own home. The iceman has never been more grateful for another breath, but he wonders if maybe this toothy intruder wants to play with his food. Regardless, the iceman sits. He moves gently as when he first walked to the door. The iceman’s hands shiver beneath the table. The sharkman appears immovable. A moment of silence passes.
“Tell me a story.”
The iceman is gobsmacked. His eyes widen, his nostrils flare, his head rears. Once again, he’s unsure if he’s more alarmed by the message or that he can talk at all.
“Huh?” blurts out the iceman, before covering his mouth. He wonders if that blunder could cost him his life. But the sharkman smiles, nods, and gestures to the iceman to go ahead. The intruder drapes his left arm over the back of the chair, spreads his legs, leans back, and casually props his right hand on the table, ready for a story.
A story? he asks himself. The wording is so vague. What kind of story? Any story? What kind of nightmare is this? These are some of the questions swarming around in the iceman’s head. He decides he has no time to think and just goes with the first thing he can think of.
“Once upon a time—”
The sharkman shakes his head immediately. He smiles softly as he does so, and then returns his gaze back at the nervy iceman.
The iceman’s mouth hangs open. He was about to tell the story of the tortoise and the hare. Since the sharkman stopped him beforehand, he wonders if his guest knew what he was going to say before he said it. Or maybe because he’d begun with “once upon a time.”
The iceman races to think of a story. He rummages through his memory for anything, anything that could be considered a story. Not too long after, the iceman comes up with an idea. But he continues searching—he worries it won’t be good enough. All he can think of, still, is the same, stupid story. Maybe it was the image of sand tiger shark teeth that put him in the mood. But anything should do, according to the sharkman’s phrase.
The iceman begins his story with a nervous chuckle. This is the first story:
“So, okay, there was this one time,” he begins. “Where me and a friend of mine were at the beach during the fall, I think. It was in… well, let’s just say, a hotter place than we are now. So we—me and my buddy—were out swimming, just having a good time. We waded in the water, carelessly, but then, suddenly, there was this manta ray. Or sting ray, I don’t know, either one. But anyway, this manta ray—mind you, I’d never seen one before—seemed so huge to me. So I screamed, I mean, screamed screamed, like a little girl or something. I swam away as fast as I could. So did my buddy, too. We swam to shore until our knees weren’t submerged by water. Once we got to that point, we thought, for sure, we were safe. And a couple seconds after, my buddy turns around and I see—you’re not gonna believe this—the manta ray was on his back! I know, right. So I was, obviously, terrified. He looked at me, probably seeing my terrified face, and said: ‘what? What’s wrong?’ and I couldn’t even get the words out. I was part paralyzed by fear, but also desperate to warn him, but also concerned the creature might, you know, sting. So I stuttered and stuttered until I pointed at him and finally let out the words “stingray.” My buddy, I don’t know how, figured out there was a manta ray on his back and swatted it away. In that half second I wondered if I’d done my friend in by hesitating or—well, anyway, he swatted it away and that’s that…”
Suddenly the iceman realized he was at the end of his likely too-short story, and scrambled to find more words.
“But yeah, it was insane. Honestly, I’m really underplaying, or understating how crazy the situation was. I mean, he was, like, in a lot of danger, you know?” the iceman said. The words “you know” seem so inconsequential to the sharkman that they might as well have not been said. “Not as much danger as I’m in, though, haha, right? You kn—”
“Tell me a story.”
In the same tone, the same cadence, the sharkman repeated himself. The iceman’s desperate smile fades. Amidst his terror, frustration sets in. That was a story! he shouts in his own head. Maybe not a good story, but a story nonetheless. But the iceman dared not protest. The sharkman’s smile is friendly, but something told the iceman he wasn’t the type to argue with. It might be because he ate the door. The sharkman crosses his legs, awaiting his story like a customer awaits an entreé.
“What will you do if I don’t?” he asks.
The sharkman responds with a toothy smile. The iceman gulps.
So he gets to work on a new story. He bows his head while his eyes dart back and forth across the floor. The sharkman makes no effort to hurry the process along.
“So there was a bear, a wolf, and a fox.
They all lived in the same forest. The forest, over the last few years, had been getting hotter and hotter.
The bear was hungry. So without any strategy, he did as bears do and went straight into the water. The bear caught some fish, in fairness to him, but not enough. Eventually, he had to find a new forest.
The wolf, seeing the bear’s middling success, gathered his pack and marched upstream. Together, they had a better chance of catching fish. The pack, unfortunately, was large. The wolves had to feed themselves but also their pups. Eventually, they all had to find a new forest.
But the fox was clever. The fox decided to hibernate early. He decided to hibernate in the summer, all alone. The other animals were confused, but they said nothing. They assumed the fox’s absence would mean more food for them. What they did not realize was that the river was drying up.
So when the fox awoke from his long slumber, the river was far more shallow, to the point that catching fish was incredibly easy. Not to mention, he wasn’t competing with the other animals, who had already moved on.
The fox got really fat on all those fish. And when he had a family of his own, he taught them the importance of patience. And every year thereafter, the fox family hibernated during the summer.”
The iceman had completed his story. He looks over at his unwelcome guest. The sharkman continued to stare at him, blankly.
“The end,” the iceman clarified. There was a long pause.
“Tell me a story.”
The iceman’s heart sinks. The sharkman is unmoved.
But deep down he knows: the stories are not enough. There was a time, long ago, where he could do this. Where had that person gone? Had they frozen over? Or settled for warmth?
The iceman feels a new type of chill. A piercing chill that not even a snowstorm could inflict. He glances down at his hands. His fingers haven’t gone black, but he’s lost almost all feeling. All suffering can be avoided if you can’t feel pain. And he was so close, too. So close to having no feeling, having it all sanded off by snow. But he would not live as a ghost any longer.
The iceman puts his hands on the table, and bows his head over the table, bowing for a beheading. And so, offering his neck, the iceman finally begins:
“In my younger years I carried around a somewhat blue blanket.
It was, originally, baby blue. But the days, weeks, months of use began to take a toll on its color. By the time I was seven years old, it was honestly more of a gray. Ha. I really drooled all over that thing. I’d use it to wipe the snot out of my nose, too. I remember one time I barfed on it and then cried because I thought I was going to have to throw it away. We probably had to wash it all the time. Oh, and it ripped up a couple times so mom had to knit in some patches for me. Yeah. Mom did that for me. Man, I can’t believe how small my problems used to be.
Now I’m thirty years old. One day I was rummaging through some things in my parent’s basement. There were piles and piles of things. Things we never threw out, either because we were all too busy or didn’t have the heart to part with them. And by “things,” well, you know: clothes that don’t fit, obsolete computers and keyboards, and toys that kids these days wouldn’t touch. Bikes we never used, a treadmill that probably doesn’t work. Old photos, canned food, and parts no one is sure.
I had to step carefully just to get to the other side of the room. Before I started organizing, I wanted to take a look through some of the boxes. At one point I had to leap off one foot and land on the other. Like that “Jack be nimble, Jack be…” whatever, you get the idea. Eventually I stumbled upon this one beat-up box. Peeking out the sides were the same lapels of that somewhat blue blanket.
I felt nothing. I hate to admit it. No, that’s not true, I don’t hate to admit it. I guess I’ve become apathetic about my apathy. Anyway, when I looked at those knitted patches, I thought maybe someone else could use it. Or would appreciate it. She definitely would, I thought to myself. So I brought that box and a few other things I thought she might like. Anything to cheer her up.
Mom got sick.
Tumor in her head. Cancer. It’s terminal.
Later that day I visited the hospital. Everything is so white there—Jesus, it’s like you’re in heaven already. The bed sheets have this corny Dixie cup pattern. The blinds are half-closed. She’s hooked up to a feeding tube now. It won’t be much longer.
In my younger years my mother had mostly brown hair. Time had turned it gray. Cancer got rid of it. She looked at my chin and frowned.
“Do you think you’ll ever shave that beard?”
“Mom, I’m thirty two years old,” I said, as if all men my age should have beards.
“Oh shush! You can grow a beard all you like, age all you like. You’re still my baby.”
As she looked at me, or really anytime before then, I got the feeling she was seeing the child version of me. Man, her voice hasn’t changed one bit. Every time she speaks, it sounds the same as it did when I was very young. Back when she read me stories as I fell asleep in her arms.
“I found a few things in the garage,” I told her, pulling out a few boxes.
“Oooooh!” she exclaims. “What is it? What is it? What is it?”
“Don’t stress your voice.”
“Oh, just show me already.”
I pulled out the somewhat blue blanket.
I could already see the tears welling up before I pulled it out. And when she saw the blanket, it was over. Man, I hate seeing my mom cry. I hate seeing anyone cry, but with mom it’s different. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that anyone else should be happy while she’s sad.
“Where did you find this?” she whispered.
“In the basement. In a box near the corner,” I shrugged. Meanwhile, she was looking at it as if it were the crown jewel or something.
Sorry if I seem cold. It’s just hard to care about things when you’re about to lose a person. And not just any old person, either. It’s mom. I’d trade a billion blankets if I could give her one more day. So I wasn’t really sure what to say when she thanked me profusely. I mean, it was originally her gift to me. I only brought it to the hospital.
She held up the blanket, looking at it as if it had eyes.
Thirty-three ago, the mother was visited by her uncle.
“Rahahaha!” His laughter was layered by a deep grumble and tinted with childish mischief. His niece rushes down newly built stairs, past the furniture, and pushes open the pristine white door.
“Uncle Gio!?! What are you doing?” she asks. In front of her Uncle Gio, stands a thin little stick. A tree, recently planted just beside the porch. Uncle Gio looks up to her from beneath the deck. He lets out a naughty grin; like a schoolboy.
“I hope you like figs! Rahahaha!”
She and her husband had just moved into their new house. Uncle Gio arrived unannounced. So did the tree. But she never had it uprooted.
“Do you know how long you’ll be staying with us?” she asks him, as they sit on the new couch.
“Not long at all,” he replies.
“Well that doesn’t really narrow it down for me.”
“I know,” he replies. He had the gruff of a grandpa but the cadence of a kid; only ever out to amuse himself.
“Oh, hey!” Uncle Gio says, seemingly remembering something. “I have something for ya.” He walks over to his bags and rummages around for something. She follows after, partly out of curiosity, partly because letting Uncle Gio out of sight could be bad. At last, he finds what he was looking for. In an uncharacteristically gentle way, Uncle Gio pulls out a blue blanket.
“Oh! That’s adorable,” she says, waiting for him to unfold the rest. But the rest is already there. “Isn’t it a bit small, though?”
“Not at all. Here!” he tosses the blanket over her head, and then walks off into the kitchen. She feels its soft threads against her skin. It occurs to her.
“Who is this for?”
“You.”
“Gio, I don’t even know if we…” she stops before she can finish. Uncle Gio is giving her that immovable look. He’s more planted than the tree.
“Alright then, but why wouldn’t you just hang onto it and give it to them yourself?”
“No. This is a gift you give. You get to give it!”
“They should know it was from you.”
“Pfft. Yeah, right, when I’m just some random geezer in a photo,” he waves her off, walking back onto the couch. She can’t even stand the thought of it.
“Don’t joke around. You’re not gonna die.”
“Course not! And if I do…” he appears to close his eyes as he leans back, but opens his left to peer at his niece. “…we live in other ways.”
He laughed once more as she smiled. Whether he knew the heart attack was coming is anyone’s guess.
That was the last time she ever saw him. He passed away a few months before she gave birth.
For almost two whole minutes she stared at the somewhat blue blanket, holding it up in the air before herself. I thought I’d give her some silence, but eventually I got too worried.
“Mom? you alright?”
“Yes. I just remembered something from long ago.”
She looked back into the blanket’s eyes and said:
“Hug him for me while I’m gone.”
She died about a week later.
There was a funeral. Life was moving on but it still hadn’t hit me. It had, but only in the way a hard slap does. It should have hit like a freight train. For a while I wondered if there was something wrong with me. Then I saw that mostly blue blanket. And I shattered like glass. By the time I was done sobbing into it, it was as blue as before.
Thirty two is too old for blankets. But I hugged the thing anyway. Was I too old to have a mother?
I mean, having the blanket was a nice comfort. Not everyone has keepsakes, you know? But mom was still gone. I was hardly empty, but for a year I lacked spark. My only desire was to hang on in life, just to hang on instead of steering the wheel.
I thought about how my daughter would never get as much time with her grandmother as I’d hoped. As she hoped, too. And then I thought of that Uncle Gio guy, that guy I’d only ever heard about in stories but never met. To me, a second-hand man. And now third-hand to my daughter. But that’s sort of when it hit me—mom got the blanket from him. The memory of my mother, preserved by the gift of a stranger. So, does that really make him a stranger? He’s still around, in a way. Mom is still around. Everyone is still around.
I mean, yeah, they’re dead, but still kicking—if that makes sense. I don’t know how to put it exactly, but… we have other ways of living, don’t we?
So we trudge along, planting trees we won’t stand under, building bridges we’ll never walk across.
That night I got out of bed, tiptoed out the door, and went into my daughter’s room. She was sound asleep. I put the mostly blue blanket over her shoulders and quietly left the room.”
The iceman’s head hangs. His body is still. There is not an ounce of fear in him anymore. He has shed all desire for warmth.
Then he hears a sniffle. The iceman glances up. He had forgotten about his mortal predicament. The sharkman continues to stare directly at him. His expression is virtually unchanged, except for the slightest drop of his mouth, the faintest twinkle in his eye.
The sharkman sniffles again. And then he wipes his beady eyes. The intruder finally gets up from his seat.
The sharkman has been moved.
The sharkman badly wants to ask his host if the story was actually true. To know how he’d known what his uncle had said if he’d never been told. But he stops himself before he can say anything in order to respect the agreement he’d already forcibly imposed. Salivating yet satisfied, the sharkman heads for the door.
The iceman pants heavily, making up for lost breaths all at once. Upon seeing his reflection in those glistening black mirrors, a wave of warmth passed through the iceman’s body. He watches as his unwanted guest walks across creaky wood facing the forest. The red, hibiscus patterned shirt flutters in the cold wind. But before he braves the blizzard, the sharkman looks over his shoulder with the same smug look.
“Same time next week?”