Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - 1. Someone Else's Story from Chess

Sitting on the corner of the cabinet was a set of ordinary house keys. Nothing special about them. A cat crawled from her desperate darkness in the corner, where she was accustomed to sitting. She leapt majestically from the floor to the top of the cabinet where the keys were set. A Radio in the corner of the room began to play a recognizable tune until the radio voice began to speak, “Hey you cool cats and foxy ladies, the year is 1969 and we are hot here at B98.5FM in sunny Georgia and we are lookin’ forward to tonight’s big Hand Jive Dance Contest down at the Moonlight Café at 7.30. Be there or be square, but for now here’s ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ by The Foundations.”

The cat, as if she was playing with a ball of string, began to move the keys about between her paws. The cat looked up inquisitively as she began to hear footsteps approaching the basement. In her haste to disappear from her current state, for she was not allowed to sit on top of the cabinet, she knocked the keys off the cabinet and into a rusting suitcase.

“Where in God’s name did I put those keys? I’m going senile in my old age, I swear it...” she murmured to herself. She began to search the basement, in every nook and cranny, in every drawer, on top of every shelf and cupboard and under every chair and table. Eventually, after a good fifteen minutes searching, she collapsed into a chair directly next to the suitcase where her keys had fallen. “I give up.” She began to feel some more pain in her wrists. “That hasn’t happened for a few years, it must be when I’m under stress or something. I hope it isn’t arthritis,” she began to mutter once again.

She looked into her basement and saw the elegant carpeting within the room. It had a classic Edwardian feeling, as was the feeling of her entire house. The only room in the house that wasn’t so regimented was Ivan’s. She never changed it after he left; a sort of shrine to her son. She looked to her feet as she thought to herself, “Well I can’t go anywhere if I don’t have those keys so I might as well stay here.” She poked her nose around the room looking for something to occupy her and she then looked down to her right when she noticed the suitcase that contained her keys. She bent over, but did not see the keys lodged on the edge of the suitcase. Instead, she extracted a photo album. It was dusty. She had not looked at it in quite a while, but she did not care. It was her turn to look through the album again, even if it caused the pain that she felt before. It was worth it to see those moments of happiness that she once had. She took a look through her album, thinking of her sweet memories, though very short and small, but mostly thinking of her sour detestable stories as well. She thought to herself, “Man, my life should be a novel, I’ve had a lot of events happening, I should write this down, or maybe I should bring out my drawings...”

She continued to look at her book of photographs and a light began to shine in her intelligent mind as she began to realise why her photos are arranged as she had arranged them. Each of the photos had a specific importance to her when she was younger. Well, not younger, most of these events were only 10 years ago. She looked at the calendar and realised that it was 10 years ago she created the pieces that she had chosen never to show to anyone... ever. She felt herself realising that she was happy about her past. Her difficulty was that she never knew that each event had changed and affected her in several different ways. She took a pair of glasses from her handbag and placed them on her crooked nose so that she could look closer at her own photographs. She smiled at her own genius. She loved to take photographs or even be in them. To her, being part of people’s lives was always enough for her. She took her bag and placed it down beside her.

She sighed to herself and closed the album. Then she began to search deeper into her memory suitcase. She felt around until she found a small box. She felt a sudden twinge within her soul and her heart. She should have thrown this into a lake herself or something, but she felt as if she needed to keep it, in case of the low likelihood of him coming back to her. She lifted it out of the suitcase and felt it as the memories that caused her the pain of a thousand wars came back in a sudden rush. She placed her elbow on the armchair and began to rub her head softly and reassuringly. She ran her fingers around. Each chip and bump reminding her how badly she had treated this case when she discovered the events that happened. She stared down at the box and slowly opened the creaking hinge. Within its feeble container it revealed a glistening ring, 24 carat gold with a small but eloquent diamond. She extracted the ring from its box and stared at it, “Maybe he will need this...” She placed the ring back in its box and placed it in her coat pocket for safe keeping.

Erica picked up her bag and noticed another box next to her bag and opened it. She saw the book that horrified her beyond any belief she had ever had. The most important book in the world to her and yet it scared her to look at it. She struggled to stand, which was different for her as she usually was fit as a fiddle. She thought to herself, “How very odd.” She reached down and took the book that took her very last moments of artistic genius from her and threw it into the waste bin. “I hope I never see you again,” she whispered to herself.

It was then that she saw her keys near the suitcase. “How did these get here?” she wondered, and picked them up. She looked at her watch and realised that she should be going soon if she was to get to the café whilst it was open. In haste, she removed three photographs from her album of photos, a woman and a man, a group of people and a photograph of a lone female. Not very important in reality, but so very important for sentimentality. She replaced the album within the suitcase and locked it. As she did this, she took a deep breath and made her way up the stairs. As she advanced up the stairs, her thoughts drifted back to a much simpler time, when she was an innocent single parent in the 1950s...

**

From the noises coming from outside of the house, you could think there was an argument going on, when suddenly, a young man appeared. He was aged sixteen, tall, brown wavy hair, thin rimmed glasses, carrying a book of photographs. He began to race down the stairs to the basement and promptly tripped down the stairs causing the photographs to fall everywhere. “Bloody feet!” he exclaimed loudly.

From upstairs the voice of a younger Erica could be heard. “Is everything alright, Ivan?”

He responded quickly, “Yes, Mother, everything is fine, just fine.” Ivan started to gather all of the photographs up. He began to mutter to himself. “Parents can’t mind their own business, always having to know what you are doing all the time. Why don’t I just tell her everything about things? No, that would ruin everything for me, I guess that’s life.”

After gathering several of the photographs, he placed them back into the folder from which they came. As he began to make his way out of the basement, his mother began to shout “Hurry up Ivan, we are going to be late.”

“I’m coming, Mother. Just wait a minute!”

He began to grow agitated, as he often did with his mother, but he had to follow his friend Mellissa’s advice. “In one ear and out the other,” she always said, but he believed it to be so difficult for this to happen. His mother was so easy to argue with. He made his way to the door and turned around realising that he had left three photos that had fallen onto the chair. His mother had bought it only recently for their basement. He thought to himself, “Why do we even have a new chair down here? No one even uses in here except me.”

He giggled to himself thinking of the adventures he had been on in there as a child; going from his home town to England and back all in one jog around the room; and when he used to play doctors and nurses with Mellissa. He remembered that as a memory he would rather forget. He would have much rather played with someone else other than Mellissa. But he knew that he couldn’t do that while his mother was around. He was only sixteen and too young to really have a girlfriend or boyfriend or animal friend. Whatever he was interested in. But he already knew what he was interested in... Even if his mother had no clue.

He picked up the photographs that he had left and looked through them and came to the last photograph and gasped. He saw a picture of his mother and someone else. Someone he had seen regularly in his day to day world of simplicity, a friend who worked with Mellissa. He remembered that his mother had met Tony before and they were forced to have a photograph together. She looked obviously annoyed and he was obviously wishing he wasn’t there. He remembered how they left without even properly introducing each other and not even getting eye contact.