The First Time Again

Maybe it was the excitement of our holiday that made the shock seem greater – that and our childish delight upon entering the gorgeous wooden cabin and exploring its small yet thrilling confines for the first time. Nothing was too plain or insignificant to receive an awe-filled ‘woah!’ or ‘this is so cool!’ whether it be the woollen rugs covering the couches, the stone-paved fireplace, or the breathtaking view of the mountains from the balcony. You can never be too old to freak out about an amazing place. When there are no real adults or real kids around, the standards for what three twenty-year old’s should behave like goes completely out the door and down the road to the next town – or something like that.

“Ooh, what’s this?” I chimed upon coming in from outside. A small package wrapped in stained brown paper sat on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. I don’t know what it is about things that are wrapped up; somehow it just makes me want to rip it open in case there’s something interesting inside.

Vonny’s curly head popped over my shoulder. “What? What?” she chirped, and half pushed me across the room as she scurried behind me. Apparently, she had the same fascination with the wrapped-up object. Either that or she just wanted something new to look at for five seconds before she got bored and wanted something else to entertain her.

It was her hand that darted for the package as soon as we reached it, only to be stopped a centimetre away as Seamus grabbed her wrist. “Wait a moment,” he said, just a little too quiet for us to ignore him. The fact that my boyfriend was actually being serious caught us both by surprise. We each turned a curious glance in his direction. “Did anyone see this here before?”

“Before when?” I wanted to know. We had barely been there two minutes, after all, and though we might have spent most of that time exploring, the mantelpiece hadn’t exactly been our main focus.

“Before we went outside onto the balcony.”

Vonny and I shared a look. If he was trying to prank us, neither of us knew where he was going with it. “Does it really matter?” Vonny asked her brother and groped for the package again with no more success than before. She exhaled in frustration and tried to wrench her hand out of Seamus’s grasp. “Fine, I won’t touch it, alright? Just let me go.”

Seamus obeyed, though with visible uneasiness. He had to clench his own fist to stop himself from reaching for Vonny’s hand again.

“Seamus.” His sobriety had killed my own enthusiasm. “What’s wrong?”

He passed a furtive glance from the package to me and back again. “I’m not sure. I’m not sure yet. Something just seems strange about it – the package, I mean.”

“What seems strange?” I urged, stepping around Vonny to stand beside him.

“Well, it’s just that…” His eyes still hadn’t left the package. “I didn’t see it here before.”

Vonny snorted. “Were you looking right here before?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must be blind.” And she sauntered off down the hallway. “I bag this room!” she called out before we heard the soft thump of her back flopping onto the bed. “Ah, I love this place! Izza, come check it out!”

“Sorry,” I muttered to Seamus and squeezed his hand, pulling him along behind me. We didn’t reach the room, however, for scarcely had we approached the doorway than Vonny bombarded our path.

“Is this a joke or something?”

“What?” Seamus and I said in unison.

She raised her eyebrows and nodded her head sideways.

We leaned forward to look into her room where she had indicated and gasped.

“See!” Seamus burst, barging into the room between us and striding over to the package which now sat beneath the lamp on the bedside table. “I knew it.” He flung his gaze towards Vonny. “Was this here when you came in?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. The bedside table wasn’t exactly the first thing I looked at when I walked in.”

“Well, when did you see it?”

“I lay on the bed, called out to Izza, then looked to the side and saw it sitting there.”

I sighed. This was getting a little too sensational too quickly. “Couldn’t there just be two packages?”

The way the twins turned towards me with their matching blue eyes almost popping out of their heads would have frightened me if I weren’t so used to their habitual exaggerated reactions.

“Stay here, Iz,” Seamus ordered as they both clambered over each other to race back into the living room.

“And keep your eyes on the package,” Vonny finished for him.

I didn’t bother protesting or even questioning them – not that they gave me the chance to do so even if I had wanted to. “Is it still there?” I called out. All I could hear from the other room was their heavy breathing – mostly Seamus’s.

“Is it still there?” Seamus echoed back to me.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, this is getting weird.” That was Vonny.

“Is it there, or not?” I pressed.

“Nope,” Seamus answered after another pause. “Ah, no, it is… not there.”

Most of the time, I do trust my boyfriend – and my best friend, too – but this was not one of those times. A few footsteps later and I was standing between them in front of the fireplace again. Only this time, the mantelshelf was empty. My lips pursed together, and I threw a sceptical glance on either side of me. “Show me your hands, both of you.”

“What?”

“We didn’t take it, Iz.”

I rolled my eyes and grinned. “Then you have nothing to hide, so show me your—”

Both pairs of hands were empty.

But I wasn’t convinced just yet. Assuming the role of inspector, I turned first to Seamus, then to Vonny and patted them down as they both complained wildly about me not trusting them. Well, their complaints were not invalid because even when I found no sign of the package on either of their persons, I began a hurried investigation of the room, checking underneath the coffee table, under the cushions, under the rugs, between the gaps in the couches, in the fireplace. By the time I finally gave up searching, Vonny had already returned from checking her room again for the package.

“Well, it’s not in there anymore,” she announced, and now even I believed her.

“So, what do we do now?” I asked when the ensuing silence grew too loud to bear.

I looked at Seamus, Vonny looked at me, Seamus looked at me, then he looked at Vonny, then I looked at Vonny, then Vonny looked at Seamus, then I looked back at Seamus and back and back and back. We were all waiting for one of us to be the brave one and suggest we calm down and act like normal, but that was too simple and too sensible for any of us to initiate. Two more looks and, as though acting with one mind (in hindsight, no mind would be a more appropriate explanation, really), we dashed off in all directions, whether in flight of or in search for the package I’m sure none of us knew.

So, that was how we conducted the rest of our exploration of the cabin until, out of breath, screaming our heads off and with the package held aloft in Seamus’s hand, we stormed out to the balcony and cheered wildly as he threw it over the edge of the cliff. And the next moment, our voices died, we raced back inside, slammed the door shut and locked it.

The next hour or so was spent lying on the ground, panting for air.

“Lucky we brought everything inside before looking around when we got here.”

The other two smiled half-heartedly at my attempt to lighten the mood as we brought our pasta to the couches to eat in front of the fire. At least the flames were there to answer me… and the clinking of our spoons in the bowls… and Seamus’s loud chewing… and Vonny’s sigh.

“Alright, maybe we did over-react,” she admitted and eyed us both to see what we thought.

Of course, Seamus had an opinion on that. “Over-react?” he blurted, accidentally flicking my spoon onto the couch as his arm swung beside me. “Sorry, sorry!” He grabbed the spoon with lightning impulse, licked it clean, then handed it back to me with a grin that died an instant later as he snapped his attention back to Vonny. “So, you think it’s normal for a package to appear and disappear by itself? It’s wacked, that’s what it is.”

“But it’s gone now, so why are we still scared?”

“Scared? Who’s scared?”

“You flung Izza’s spoon out of her bowl, you nong. You’re the scared-est one here.”

“That wasn’t because I was scared; that was because I was shocked at what you said.”

“Yeah, because you’re scared.”

I’m pretty sure Seamus made another retort, but I didn’t hear what he said. I was too focused on the sour taste in my mouth as I realised my Bolognese suddenly didn’t taste like Bolognese anymore. I spat my food out and raised my spoon to my eyes with disgust. The metal glinted in the firelight and my vision blurred from the flames to the spoon, back and forth until the two blended into one with the spoon dancing before me like a silver flame. “Seamus, what did you do to me?” I drawled and immediately lurched forward at the effort of speaking. My bowl rolled off my lap onto the floor and I would have followed it had Seamus not pushed me back up with concerned words that sounded like a distant muffle in my ears.

Now they were both beside me, their mouths moving frantically as they held me up. I tried to listen to them, I tried to respond, tried to regain control over myself, but I was just as clueless as to what was happening to me as they were… or at least it seemed so. Exactly when they switched from holding me up to pulling me down, I could hardly tell. The only thing I knew was that at some point I felt the wooden floor collide with my head, followed shortly after by an intensifying heat that soothed the pain of the collision only because a greater agony replaced it: a burning agony.

If I screamed, I couldn’t hear it. The fire devoured the last remnants of my sense of awareness, leaving only blinding light, scorching heat and ravenous crackling.

Then something fell from the chimney– it mustn’t have been long after, though it certainly felt like it – and landed in the flames right in front of my face. It was the package again, but I didn’t have the strength to recoil in fear. All I could do was watch the brown paper curl into glowing black flakes and dissolve into the flames.

I imagined the skin on my face suffering the same fate.

Yet just as the orange tongues began licking up the last layer of paper, they illuminated a line of words which my eyes set upon with greater hunger than the roaring furnace.

‘I had you from the start. Use me now ;)’

The words vanished, the paper fell to ashes and my teeth opened and closed over the pin sticking into the small bomb the package had held. I wrenched out the pin and a white cloud immediately filled the air, killing the flames, releasing the hands pressing into my back and leaving me panting in the embers.

When I came to, I found the cabin empty. I re-wrapped the package, placed it on the mantelshelf and climbed out from the balcony just as the three of us walked inside for the first time again.

I think Seamus caught a fleeting sight of me.